It Really Satisfies…

  • by Drew

One time, when I was a teenager, I found myself in a situation where I felt I might need a condom. We won’t get into the details, but that’s where I was. Back in the 80’s it wasn’t quite as easy to find an open shop carrying such things, especially when you didn’t have a car, so I ended up in a pharmacy within walking distance of the house I’d grown up in. I’d been shopping there all my life, and usually, after 7 o’clock I could count on the crusty old man who ran the place to be sitting behind the counter.

But this fateful night, it was the elderly woman I took to be his wife at the register. With great inner fortitude (or maybe it was just desperate lust) I got the little box from the back of the store and brought it to the front counter. She looked down at my intended purchase for several long seconds. Then she looked me in the eye with a mix of contempt, disgust, and perhaps sadness as she saw the little boy who used to buy Mother’s Day cards here with pocket change now all growed up and doing the nasty.

With a low growl she asked, “Is that all?”

I hesitated only a moment, and then reached to one of the boxes in front of the counter. I slapped an extra large Snickers bar on the counter and said, “I’ll have this too.”

I don’t know if she got the joke, but at the time, you always saw Snickers commercials on TV about being low on energy until you had a Snickers bar. Then you were revved up and ready to go because Snicker “really satisfies”. I thought it was funny – an early example of the true wiseass jerk I would mature into.

In any event, I was reminded of this whole sordid little moment in my post-adolescent history just the other day at the Rite-Aid by work. We recently moved offices, to a huge plaza with offices on the back side of the building, and tons of retail establishments in front. Yeah, it feels a little like working in a strip mall, at least in the parking lot, but the access to A&P, Subway, BK, Blockbuster, and a slew of delis, pizza places, liquor stores, etc. all within walking distance more than makes up for it.

So I went into the Rite-Aid with a coworker for the first time the other day. When we were standing on line, I noticed the purchases of a woman in front of us. She was normal looking. Not heavy, not skinny, mid-length brown hair, and somewhere around 30. She was buying two bags of Reese’s Peanut Butter Cups (buy one get one 50% off) and a box of Alli. I thought it was some sort of feminine hygiene product, or maybe fancy pants salon style hair care stuff. Then I did my research. It’s a weight loss pill.

So tell me this, couldn’t she have saved a lot of money by skipping the candy and the pills? I mean, isn’t one just offsetting the other? Maybe she should have gone next door and bought a freakin’ apple and called it a day.

But it did make me think of a funny story, so we won’t be too mean and judgemental. Just a little.

Spoiler alert for Carol’s B-day!

  • by Drew

That’s right! If you are my wife, you should stop reading now. 

Okay, I’m whispering here because I don’t want Carol to hear, but I just made  a few plans for her birthday towards the end of October. The last few years have been pretty rough during the holidays for all sorts of reasons. This year, finally, we’re all looking forward to lots of family time.

I’ve got a little something in the works, and I’m psyched. I hate waiting to give presents. I get all excited and pop my cork too soon, most of the time. Maybe I need to think about baseball or something.

Anyway, it’s not like anything major. Like, nothing that would require passports or travel insurance or worrying about wearing comfortable shoes…probably not even overnight baby sitting, but hopefully it will be a decent surprise.

Now, don’t tell her I was talking about this. I just needed an outlet so I don’t up and blow the surprise too soon. And getting it out here helps keep me from telling Jake (who is a sieve when it comes to secrets) or walking around the house chanting “I know something you don’t know.”

The Ongoing Struggle

  • by Drew

Last year we got this recumbent bike at sears. It was a fairly inexpensive model on sale, basics without the crazy bells and whistles. Like, no extra cupholders or vanity license plates. But it works and it’s a great way to get some exercise while watching a movie or something. It’s way quieter than the treadmill we’ve had gathering dust for like 6 or 7 years now, and it’s more than enough. I’m not a gym guy so I have no desire for big equipment, ellipticals, or Chuck Norris gear. (I’m also not interested in Christie Brinkley’s old equipment.)

We had the bike in the den when we first rearranged rooms in the house last year – we moved upstairs to the guest room and Jake and Noah share the other upstairs bedroom now. Our former master bedroom became the den/playroom. But a couple months ago we put in a new floor and fixed up the den a bit. We’re trying to minimize the feeling of playroom craziness right now, so we moved the bike (in two pieces) down to the basement.

I was just about to put it back together and maybe start looking for some biking time when I discovered that the wonky old TV we have in the basement is acting up again. It’s an old Zenith my father gave me years ago. He had thought it fried when his building got hit with lightning many years ago. It lived in storage for a couple of years when he discovered that it actually worked. Paired with a cheap DVD player, it’s 20 inches of monkey-barrelesque entertainment. Or was. Now the picture is splitting and the color is whacked.

What is the point of all this? I don’t know. I guess I’m just going to have to blame Zenith for my love handles.

New Wheels

  • by Drew

So we’ve been driving the new Forester for a couple of weeks. I have to say I really like it. It’s pretty loaded, and the massive moonroof is nice. I’ve always like the sunroof/moonroof option since my first new car, a green ’96 Escort with a manual flip roof. It’s just so enjoyable when you’re tooling around town on a fine Autumn day.

But man, I wasn’t sure we were going to get the Liberty there for the trade. I mean, I can’t complain too much because the thing was really crapping out. It had like 80,000 miles on it, the fan was shot, maybe the ac compressor, it started leaking some freaky fluids and the timing belt was on its last legs. I would imagine the water pump wasn’t far behind, and about 100 feet from the Subaru dealership, the transmission started making some weird noises. Oh yeah, and the closed radiator system was probably shot, because it dumped some fluid on the way, and since you can’t add coolant or even crack it open unless you’re a licensed technician…well, it was in rough shape. And the alignment was crap and it really needed new tires.

The dashboard started beeping about halfway between home and Subaru, so I was pawing through manual trying to figure it all out. The beeping lasted only a few seconds, so I hoped it was nothing major. On the Kingston-Rhinecliff Bridge, it started beeping again. This time, as it was beeping, I was rifling through the manual. In the ‘V’ of the spine I caught site of the temperature gauge. Yeah, the arrow was hard in the red.

In summary, the Jeep shit the bed on the way to be traded in. This sucked, but it could certainly have been worse. We might not, for example, have even made it to the dealership. Or it might have crapped out a few months ago when we were emptying out the basement of the wine shop. So all in all we are looking at this in a positive light. And once again, we have a hell of a story.

This is the Season

  • by Drew

Despite a few days of past-life insanity thanks to Facebook (see IH8FCBK), I am happy. Why? It’s this time of year. The weather is just perfect for sleeping, cozying up under the comforter. It’s the time for picking apples and pumpkins at the farm. I can cut wood without drowning in perspiration or worrying about poison ivy. The boys are so cute in their jeans and hoodies. And it’s great weather for heavier reds, and bourbon nightcaps. It’s definitely time to open a few new bottles from the bourbon collection.

It’s also getting on toward holiday season. Yeah, Thanksgiving is going to rock – how I do love stuffing. And Carol’s birthday is coming up, so we’ll have some fun family time. But this year, I’m really psyched for Halloween. We haven’t had a Halloween party in a long time, and it was always one of my favorites to throw. I especially love the tasty treats. Brain matter punch, eyeballs on a stick, finger sandwiches and other thematically appropriate holiday appetizers make for a swingin’ good time.

And if any Facebook crazies want to visit I can always try and dig up some insanity peppers.

IH8FACBK

  • by Drew

If I ever get a personalized license plate, that will be it. Yes, I do. I hate it. I hate it. I hate it. While the thought of connecting with people who walked divergent paths many years ago is nice enough, it just don’t happen for me.

See, this crazy chick I dated something like 15 years ago friended me and started sending me messages last week. Okay, crazy may be harsh, because I think clinical depression is the extent of psycho-malady she claims. Incredible narcissism and a weird vindictive nastiness – does that qualify as crazy?

Anyway, I gave a pleasant “here’s where I am in life” response. She followed with several books worth of stream-of-consciousness babble telling me about her academic triumphs, her sexual exploits, her drug use, her advanced degrees, and something about learning fellatio from a nurse. Oh yeah, and she wants to have a kid because she and her husband are so beautiful they would make a beautiful child. I made the mistake of not responding fast enough (because I hate Facebook) and she quickly soured into some real nasty comments.

I am sexually repressed. I am a hermit living in secret. I think I am high and mighty because I have kids. My wife is sexually repressed (apparently because she married me). I am jealous because I am not living the life of the artist and I am not as beautiful as she is. I am really an asshole, I guess. And, this is like a cherry on top – she can’t fathom why I started bothering her just to pick on her and be mean. So I am apparently now no longer her Facebook friend. I am blocked or something. I haven’t gone in to check because I hate Facebook, but I probably should.

But wait – there’s more. I emailed her to leave me alone – mostly because she’s fucking nuts. Want to see the response?

Email me again and I will call the police. I don’t threaten. I follow through. And
trust me, the police loooove being chivalrous with a beautiful woman like me, and we
can find you through Amherst, and you can get arrested for threatening me, as it
feels to me, because I’ve made it clear you are to stop stalking me, and  then you
can explain to your wife, who doesn’t deserve this, why you’re obsessed with
contacting me.

Other people get  “Hey, how are you doing. Can’t believe it’s 20 years since Freshman Algebra.”  I feel like I’m taking crazy pills.

For the record, I emailed her 3 times – the first to accept the Facebook friending, the second two to tell her to leave me alone. Somehow, I think Carol will find it in her heart to forgive me. 

I HATE Facebook.

The accolade room

  • by Drew

We went to the First Grade open house for Jake the other night. His teacher was very cool – I think she is going to be good for him. And, since we didn’t get the polite smile and nod followed by “Yeah, we should probably have a meeting…” that happened at every such event last year, we were pretty elated.

During the ‘check out the classroom’ portion of the evening, I did some chatting with the father of two of Jake’s Tee Ball teammates from last Spring. He told me his daughters were just starting up soccer and wondered if Jake would be playing. I honestly hadn’t even heard about a league, so it had slipped past me, but I think the only thing he’d really want to play for would be the trophy at the end of the season. And I don’t know if that’s enough of a prize for all those practices and games and arguments. I mean, it’s not like when we were kids. These days, everybody gets a huge-ass championship style trophy. His tee-ball trophy is bigger than just about any sports trophy I ever saw. By third grade I think he’ll be bringing home a freaking punchbowl.

I can see it now – in this era of overenthusiastic parents trying to manufacture “well-rounded” college fodder – swimming trophies, baseball trophies, football trophies, soccer trophies, tennis trophies, sack-race trophies, ping pong trophies and hot dog eating trophies (that’s a sport, right?)

We’re gonna need a new shed – we’ll call it the accolade room.

Clutter Be Damned

  • by Drew

We used to have a much smaller house and a lot more room. We now have twice the square footage and only one more kid, and no place to put anything! What happened?

Part of it, I think, is the retiring of baby and toddler stuff. Yeah, we’re probably done in the baby-making department – the baby factory is closed – but we’ve got all this great stuff. We’ve got the beautiful Italian crib we braved the wilds of New Jersey (TWICE!!!) to get at a killer discount. We’ve got mega giant plastic monstrosities that whir and glitter with toddler friendly noise courtesy of the grandparents and uncles.  We’ve got all kinds of crap that’s fast becoming useless, annoying, or both, but is in good shape and I can’t see stuffing it into landfills.

Oh, and before you suggest it – nobody wants any of this stuff. Charities won’t take anything more than a year or so old because safety regs change faster than the dancers between numbers at a Ricky Martin concert.

Betcha didn’t think you’d be seeing a Ricky Martin reference any time soon, but here I am with the cutting edge references.

I’ve been wrestling with this old wooden high chair we have. We got it for Jake, and used it a lot when he was little. Noah barely ever sat in it. He’s never been fond of highchairs. But it was really nice, a shower gift, and it’s the kind of nice wooden chair that grandparents pull out of their attic when the kids come to visit, so I fee I need to preserve it. Or at least pawn it off on some relative or cousin if any of them get of their butts and start procreating.

I just wish that the baby stuff wasn’t so limited in its usefulness. Everything is so age and weight specific. It’s a drag.  Why can’t the chair grow with the kid. But wait…there is such a chair. Check this thing out. It’s the Stokke Tripp Trapp, and I like the functionality. You can slide the seat around so big kids or even adults can use it. They should have guys selling these things outside the subways in Manhattan.

And another thing…

  • by Drew

I was talking about my disgusting back fat the other day and got onto South Beach. Now it’s stuck in my mind. We did South Beach almost a year ago. During the time we were following the plan pretty closely, I dropped about 30 pounds. And that carried through the holidays, so I was pretty happy about it. Since then I put about 10 pounds back on, but I’m still at like a -20 net, so…cool.

This time around though, especially with our basement currently full of wine and booze, I have been enjoying my evening cocktail quite a bit. Honestly, those first two weeks of the South Beach program, where you drop all alcohol along with the white bread and other junk, that’s sounding tough. I mean, I don’t think it’s time for a 12 step program or alcohol rehab or anything, but I have been making a lot of excuses, and the booze thing is definitely a contributing factor.

Anyway, I was always saving my institutional cherry for a nice drug treatment center after my rock opera did a three year run on Broadway, but my third major label release was summarily panned by the critics, but before my seminal ‘back-to-basics’ fifth album, self-produced and on most critics top-10 for the year lists…

Oh crap, did I write that or just think it?

Anyway, clearly none of this is in my future (or past or present) and I am destined to just be me, sans critical acclaim, so I think the Beverly Hills rehab is out. I’ll leave that to Britney. I’ll just forego my cocktails for a couple of weeks, try to melt some of the back bacon, and skip the liposuction. I’ll leave that to Britney as well.

Damn, she gets everything…rehab, lipo, K-fed. Some girls have all the luck.

Back Bacon

  • by Drew

So we’re putting in a wood stove. I figure we can either pay the oil companies thousands of dollars to heat our home this winter, or we can take advantage of our three plus acres of trees – many already on the ground – to heat our home. Yeah, it costs some bucks to put in the stove, but I’d rather give that money to Tim the stove guy.

And here’s a tasty tidbit I picked up while stove shopping – did you know that a fallen tree rotting in the woods produces more noxious junk than if you burn it in a proper wood stove. Holy crap! Environmentally sound combustion! There’s got to be a flaming tree-hugger joke in here somewhere…but that wasn’t my point.

See, the best place for our super efficient wood stove is the corner where our highly inefficient wood burning fireplace was. I say was, because it’s gone. It was a corner fireplace. The fireplace and angled-off corner are now gone, replaced by a proper corner and a lovely bluestone stove pad. Demolition is awesome.

While removing the old fireplace and tearing down it’s surrounding wall to make room for the new stove, I had to work around the protruding chimney apparatus that will be removed and replaced. A few nights ago, as I was finishing up, I stood and scratched my back against the metal bracing. I got a nasty, long, scratch that made a bloody welt.

And damn, when I looked in the mirror I realized I am hiding a lot of freaking fat back there. Seriously, I need some good old 80’s style diet pills. I need to pull an Alex P. Keaton (on Family Ties – you remember that episode, right?). I had to ask Carol to put some antibiotic cream on there and I was seriously embarrassed. It’s more or less invisible until you bend just the right way. Someone tell me please, what is the best fat burner? I totally need some.

It’s time to do the South Beach thing again. I’m eating too many french fries lately. And drinking too much wine. But damn, I feel like I have a couple ham hocks over my ass. That just won’t do.

© 2026 Drew Bancroft. All rights reserved. Totally.