theblogofthehandoftamm

Forgive the gap in posting. It’s the holidays, don’tchaknow? I too have been holidaying from my usual routine here and indeed had not looked at a computer monitor for 10 days already. It’s been grand but now it’s time to share again, as it’s still the giving season.

It may come as a great shock to one and all but I am in a state of disrepair. You see, there was this ice-luge for shots at the bar last night and… well, to make a thrilling story mercifully short, I am today once more under a doctor’s care.

In other matters of health, my toe is much improved but still sore. Thank you for your cards and letters.

So what’s been happening in the last ten days? The hours have been packed with excitement of all variety. I’ll stick to the highlight reel with hope that it provides a compelling snapshot of my escapades. Take a couple of nitro-glycerin capsules and read on, ye of heart!

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The holidays are coming and I’m chopping wood down at the plant. “Got to get the wood in,” says the foreman. And I do like to please -so I chop.

I chopped and piled all last night and I’ll be a-choppin’ and a-pilin’ all day today, so I haven’t the time to tell you a story. Perhaps tomorrow. For today, I’m whistling while I work at the factory.

The burger bandit strikes again. After a company knees-up last night, I’m once again a delicate flower where constitutional fortitude is concerned. How is it that fermented yeast could produce such effects on a man of my stature… a man of my carriage… a man of my considerable bulk? Well, consider this: I tore it up last night and it’s tearing me afresh today.

So I went to the walk-in clinic, where the physician on duty wrote me a prescription for cheeseburger, rings, and fries (or as I’m telling Mrs. thehandoftamm later, “I had a sandwich and onion salad and potato salad”). Having administered the dosage correctly, I now await signs of recovery.

Thank you for all the kind letters and phone calls of support, get-well wishes, and enquiries about the possible redistribution of my worldly goods after my inevitable passing. I am hopeful to make at least a partial recovery very soon. I am now under the care of a physician who has me on a strict diet scientifically proven to help in extreme cases such as mine.

Five minutes later:

odearlordofangelsofmercyhavepitymyheaditiscrusheddeliverme

I’ll have more stuff later but, in the meantime, to keep you bastards satisfied, I have this entertaining exchange to set up.

As you will recall, I operated on little sleep following Thursday night’s frolic. I did rather similarly (if less dramatically) on Friday night. By Saturday, I was an extra from Shaun of the Dead. Nonetheless, the family and I went to visit friends in a New York border town which eerily resembles Barter Town from Mad Max: Beyond Thunderdome. No, it doesn’t.

We had a lovely visit but I began to flag before long. I needed a nap after dinner if I was going to be able to drive back to Toronto. Nap I did, for about 30 minutes. This was followed by a little more chit-chat and coffee and jumping jacks and slaps across the face. Much recovered, we said our thank-yous and took our leave.

Reaching the border, we were dismayed to find the line-up was growing long and only longer by the minute. I guess everyone wanted to leave the USA with trunkloads of Thanksgiving Sale shopping and trampled big-box store employees in their trunks. Sensing a dull time of crossing the bridge, my passengers all promptly fell asleep just to taunt me.

We crawled along, bumper to bumper, for the entire duration of Thievery Corporation’s excellent Mirror Conspiracy album and, upon reaching the last cut, I was in front of The Man. He asked where we were from and what we were bringing back with us, to which I replied (truthfully) that we had nothing.

“So your trunk is empty then?” He asked.

“Oh no,” I foolishly (and truthfully) reply. “It’s full up.”

“With what?”

“Um… stuff.” Honestly, this is the best I could come up with. Total zombie brain. If he would have asked me what make of car I was driving, I would have been stumped to call up the right word. We stared blankly at one another for five seconds that felt like 500 (he, I imagine, thinking ‘that can’t be your answer, numbnuts’), before I began stammering something about jackets and school bags and diapers and what-have-you but our Canada Customs agent was already suspicious that I had a trunkload of booty or was a complete idiot. He commanded me to open the trunk for inspection and soon confirmed I was the latter, as I had no commercial goods, purchases, or contraband in my possession.

The ride home was uneventful. Despite my poor command of vocabulary at the crucial moment, I was alert enough to keep children and adults alike safe on the highway. We (or I, more accurately) listened to Saint Etienne’s marvy Finisterre album on the trip, followed by a touch of the Ceeb. Did I go promptly to bed when we got home around 11:30? No, I watched a movie.

My sleep defecit continued to make itself felt until I collapsed into sleep last night at 7:30pm, even before my children. Didn’t get out of bed until 7:00 this morning. This zombie finally concluded his swagger ‘n’ stagger routine. Much to the sure dismay of Mrs. thehandoftamm, I predict the dead may rise up again in their stink and muttering and poor example in the latter days of this week. Stay tuned for updates in the zombie forecast here.

This is how it feels to sleep 3 hours and go back downtown for your vehicle.

This is what you find.

As I type this I sit in the car dealership, where my wallet helps keep the very patient people’s car in fighting trim. Thankfully they also boast free wireless so I can share the trials and small victories with you.

As always happens when I’m sitting in the service lounge, the desk manager comes over to tell me what extra deficiencies the technician has noticed. Today I’m here for a coolant flush and a oil change but I haven’t been in my seat for ten minutes before I’m advised that the air filter, pollen filter (hunh?), brake fluid, and spark plugs also need to be done. The shop asks if I had the 64k overhaul on this car, which I dutifully did do some 18 months ago at another dealership. They seem suspicious.

Does this mean that the other shop did a half-assed job or that I’ve just been really hard on my brake fluid, filters, and plugs? Like everything car-related, I’m convinced it’s a scam. The machines are so beyond my understanding that I can be easily taken advantage of. Is this my fault? Kinda like computers where I’m concerned: just make the thing work for me without my needing to know what I’m doing!

So I’m getting plugged again.

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There’s no glory in being well rested. I can only create semi-legendary fables from late nights and irresponsible escapades. After another BBQ and another step closer to the next waist size in trousers last night, I decided to have a rest at 8:30pm, with an aim toward getting up at 9:00 for laundry and housework and that kind of thing. Instead I slept through the alarm and rose at 6:30 this morning. How does one add to the mythology of thehandoftamm on 10 hours of sleep? It can’t be done. Exhaustion followed by rest is deadly dull. Exhaustion followed by double-ended candle burning is where the literary pay-off resides. I blew it. I’ve let you down, dear reader. (And I use that word in the singular as I optimistically imagine one person may eventually read this post.)

Here’s me in a bubble from my more adventuresome day earlier this week.

I’ve been away a few days (but nearly wasn’t) and there was no wireless in the hotel so haven’t jumped on. [How a self-respecting hotel doesn’t have wireless in 2008 is beyond me but maybe that’s another matter.] Dig this nearly departed tale of how I came to be in New York.

I’m off on one of my thrice-yearly jaunts to NYC for work and am packing the night prior, as one does. My flight’s leaving at 6:50am so I’m going to leave the house by 5:00, which means getting up at 4:30. It’s 10:30 now so I’m thinking fill the bag and put your head on the pillow. Never that easy, because there’s no justice in the world. I can’t find my passport in the usual place. It’s always in the usual place and I haven’t used it since February so where on earth is it?

I start going through all my bags, drawers, jackets, and other places about the house that make sense to me. Nothing. I’m beside myself with fury –the kind of fury that leads a man to curse and punch holes in the drywall. We have plaster so I keep the cursing down and my hands on my hips as I blame the children for my passport woes. Should I wake them up and interrogate them as to where they’ve put daddy’s passport? Not advisable.

It occurs to me that often my passport makes its way briefly into my leather brief, which is on my desk back at the office. Knowing that I can’t board a plane these days without a passport and don’t want to force the company to eat a ticket and a hotel room because I can’t find my papers, I decide to set mind at ease by driving the 35km to the shop. It’s now 11:30pm. What makes that hour interesting is that my security card for the building only works from 7:00am to 7:00pm. What am I going to do when I get to the office? Improvise, baby.

11:55 and I’m at the shop. I can’t get in. There’s a code for security on the panel by the door but pressing it doesn’t call through to anyone. Great. Then an angel in shoulder patches and black boots turns up at midnight. It’s the security guard and he’s not accustomed to seeing people at this hour. He also has a company policy about not letting people into the building, no matter what, that he’s supposed to follow. I make an impassioned plea and maybe even offer him inducements that I can’t chronicle here without fear of reprisals –and, would you believe it?– he lets me in on condition that he chaperone me throughout. No problem!

New problem, more like it. My passport’s not in my office. I thank the security guard and leave empty-handed. Well, not quite. He let me remove my leather folio. What if the whole scene was a scam and I made up the passport story just to steal the vital documents from atop that desk? Leaving this scenario for another short story, I head home and think about the 10-12 hour drive I could do to New York City at this hour, were I not already exhausted (having slept 4 hours the night before). Do I buy a dozen Red Bulls and endanger my fellow motorists? Will I be able to cross at Buffalo on my driver’s license and birth certificate?

I go home and, after a little more searching, go to bed. Nothing more to be done tonight. Get a bit of shut-eye and hope to have breakthrough in the morning. Actually, it’s already morning: 1:30am and I have to wake up in three hours. Not that this poses much problem as there’s no way I can sleep now that I’m fretting about what to do about my flight in a few hours. My elder son wakes up and needs comforting. I’m not in the least put out, as I’m not sleeping anyway. Except he wants mom so I go back to the pillow and before long The Creator has pity on me and decides to stop fucking up my life.

I leap from bed and creep down the stairs with the fervour of a dog on the scent. In the basement I zip open the garment bag and reach into the breast pocket of my winter coat, where my fingers immediately find my government-issued, internationally-honoured identification.

I go back to bed the happiest man in Toronto, until I realize I’m getting up in another 90 minutes.

I endanger motorists while driving half-asleep and drag myself to the airline desk only to be told my flight’s been cancelled, as weather last night prevented the plane from coming in from New York in order to make its return leg. I resist the temptation to cause a scene that would surely risk a tasering at the departure gate. My cool head earns me a 9:30 make-up flight on another airline that’s not actually going to New York but I’m willing to take Newark rather than waste my triumphal passport-finding altogether.

To wrap up this long story, I get to New York, go to my meetings and, in case you thought I was going to crash on the bed or in a chair at some point in this narrative, go out for drinks following the meetings and call it a night only after 1:30am. Details of that night’s carousing to follow another time.

Even when I’m irresponsible, scattered, and shattered… I still rule. That’s the wellspring of over-confidence from which I drink deeply daily.