Getting to Know You

 My wife and I have been married a long time. We've known each other just a little longer than we've been a couple. We have a great relationship. Go back and read the second sentence again. We "rushed in." Elvis may think us foolish but it worked out pretty well. I love her as much as I ever did and I'm pretty sure she means it when she says she loves me. We have a nice time together. We enjoy one another's company. Even the romance is still strong, nudge nudge wink wink say no more! 

I believe the lesson here is that you don't really need to get to know a person before getting married. Well, maybe that's an oversimplification. I think there has to be attraction, you have to know each other as well as you can without the benefit of years, and you have to get along.

When people have asked me the secret to the success of my marriage, I always give the same answer: our values are aligned. We want the same things. We are committed to the same things. We agree on how or kids should be raised. We worship in the same way. We like a lot of the same things, and more importantly, we believe the same things.

Our values are aligned. What does this mean?

We are committed to one another and we believe in the institution of marriage. We believe we made a commitment that must be honored for life. We didn't take the decision to get married lightly so it stands to reason that a decision to part ways would also be taken seriously.

Our values are aligned when it comes to money, to family, to work, to everything. This is why our marriage works.

This is not to say that we have a perfect marriage. No one does. We have our ups and downs. We fight. We disagree. We get on each other's nerves. I always love my wife. I don't always like her. I'm sure she would say the same thing about me. Maybe she won't be as nice about it as I am not as lovable as I'd like to believe I am.

That being said, Happy Birthday, Abdaliz. I love you now and always.

The New Cool

Spend a little time on social media and it's hard to see how cynicism has become the new cool. I will admit that I am something of a cynic. I was first told this when I was about nineteen years old. I dated a woman in her late twenties (I was mature for my age.) She was intelligent and sophisticated and had a couple of college degrees. I did my best to keep up but when you lack education, as I did at the time, you try to follow along as best you can. (I am still much less educated than I would like to be, but them's the breaks!)

When she called me a cynic, I wasn't a hundred percent sure of what it meant. I know now, and I guess I could say I am a part-time cynic. I spend a lot of time around politics, I read some news on occasion, and I have a Facebook account. How could I not be?

But there is a side of me that wants there to be meaning to everything. There's a part of me that looks for meaning and even tries to create meaning in the most ordinary of things.

But it's so easy to be a cynic. It's practically forced upon us. We're told to hurry, to move along. We're convinced we don't have time to be kind and thoughtful even as we sit on the couch and binge-watch every episode of "Friends" for the third time. Humor, real humor, has been replaced with sarcasm. Good deeds are viewed, you guessed it, cynically.

I think I'll try to become a little less cynical. I'll do my best to see things in a more open and accepting way. I'll try to prove that old girlfriend wrong. Not that's she'll notice. We haven't talked in decades and she'd probably on season whatever of the latest must-see rerun. Oops! There I go again!

Adolfo Jimenez is an author, poet, and blogger. He lives in Hollywood, Florida. He has published ten books, which you can find here.

What If I Don't Like Cake?

Today is my 50th Birthday! Holy crap, when you say it like that. All the cliches apply. I don't feel any different. I look the same as I did yesterday. Everything still works the same, for the most part.

I used to refer to my birthday as inventory day. I would take the day to reflect on the previous 365 days and determine if my life was moving in the right direction. Some people call it a Cake Day. I don't think that's fair to people who don't like cake. I love cake. Don't believe me? I can take my shirt off to prove it. We re-brand everything. This is nothing new, it's just that our re-branding, like everything else, happens faster than it used to. You hardly get used to the new word for something before it becomes the old world for something.

My wife and I have been together 21 years. We realized a couple of days ago, as we were signing documents for work to be done on our house, that it was the 18th anniversary of the day we moved in. It's nice to know that the more things change, the more they stay the same. Being married to the same woman and living in the same house for so long may sound unexciting to some, but I am happy and grateful, and while there have been some low points, we really manage to keep it exciting, fresh, and interesting. We never had a honeymoon, so we decided our life now will be one very long honeymoon with breaks for work and family, etc. Life gave us lemons. We froze them for a while and now we're making margaritas!

Now that I'm at the half-century mark, I am supposed to have new perspectives and wisdom. I don't. My philosophy and worldview did not change overnight. From this point of view, age is really just a number. My knees may disagree.

I got my convertible a few years ago. This year, I got a motorcycle. Who knows what sixty will bring?

Adolfo Jimenez is an author, poet, and blogger. He lives in Hollywood, Florida. He has published ten books, which you can find here.

Staring Down The Barrel

In six days, I will be fifty years old. Damn. It only matters when you think about it. Unfortunately, you think about it all the time. I feel no different than I did yesterday. The same aches and pains have followed me around for years. My fault for living a relatively sedentary life. I do walk a lot and my business keeps me active, but I don't exercise in the traditional sense.

So the years keep coming. Until they don't. Who knows what's next.

Age shows up in strange ways. Like having a coffee with your cheeseburger at McDonald's. And mail seems to be very important to me now. I mean, I check the mailbox on Sundays and national holidays. Yesterday, I got home and I looked and,,, no mail! I was genuinely baffled. I came inside and it turned out my daughter had brought it in. I grounded her. Took away her phone. If she wants to cut off my communication with the outside world, so be it! Two can play at that game.

I find that even though I know I will likely live another 30-plus years, I feel like I have to squeeze in as much as possible. I wish I'd had this feeling when I was twenty. How much more could I have accomplished? God only knows.

I am at once crankier and more laid back. I let things go that used to drive me up the wall, and I am annoyed by things that didn't matter a few short years ago. 

I spent so much of my youth worrying about the world and consuming every scrap of news I could get my hands on that now, when I see the world is burning, I make s'mores.

I am convinced the world is worse than it's ever been, just like my father did. And his father before him, and his father, and so on and so forth.

I am proud of the things I can still do. I miss the things I no longer can do. The ones I remember, anyway.

I am proud to still be married. I am prouder still that I love her more than ever.

I value my time and do all I can to save it and make it count. Then I plop my fat ass down in front of the TV, which is something I didn't used to do.

I am self-aware. This essay proves it.

I have no idea what is going on in the world around me. This essay proves it. (I'm proud of that one.) I let my children live their lives. I only guide when I am invited onto the raft. Otherwise, like everything in this life, I just let them go with the flow.

I guess I should confess that I didn't take my kid's phone away or ground her. But I thought about it.

Adolfo Jimenez is an author, poet, and blogger. He lives in Hollywood, Florida. He has published ten books, which you can find here.

A Contactless Future

 The COVID-19 plandemic and its fallout should have become a distant memory by now, but the government would never let such a useful “crisis” go to waste. They made the mistake of giving us an inch, we took a mile, and now the Delta Variant has been unleashed upon the populace.

As I sit here in the early morning gloom of a rainy South Florida summer day, I am browsing articles, investment opportunities, and the like. I keep finding how Contactless features have been incorporated into everything from groceries to real estate transactions. Even as the pandemic fails, the main symptom, which is the fear of coming into close proximity to other people, keeps getting its lease on life extended.

Add this to cancel culture, critical race theory, political correctness, and the general vitriol we are living with here in Don and Joe’s Great American Experiment, and it’s getting harder to feel optimistic about America’s future.

I am a touchy-feely guy, though I save that mostly for my loved ones. I don’t want to never shake a stranger’s hand. I don’t want to be afraid to hand something, anything, to another human being. I am not an island and I don’t want to be. 

Give me contact or give me death!

Adolfo Jimenez is an author, poet, and blogger. He lives in Hollywood, Florida. He has published ten books, which you can find here.

Death and Distance

It’s about five in the morning Montana time. The sun is out though not yet shining as brightly as I hope it will the rest of the day. I am in bed. I hear the familiar, rhythmic buzz of my phone. A call is coming in. Someone back home on the East Coast. Someone who doesn’t know where I am. Not that it matters. I’ll only be here a week. I hope I keep my sleep pattern just as it is until I return.

It is a family friend calling. My uncle in Cuba passed away in the night. My mother’s brother. My mom is still sleeping. That’s good. She needs her rest with all she’s been through. The friend asks if she should wake mom and tell her the news or would I like to tell her. I think this kind of news should be delivered in person whenever possible.

I sent a message to my cousin in Cuba, offering her my condolences for the death of her father. She called me a few minutes later. We chat and I again offer my sympathies. My wife is awake now and I tell her what has happened while we were sleeping. The family friend calls a few minutes later to let me know she has spoken with my mom. I call her and she is, understandably, upset. I tell her to stay calm and to not drive or stress herself out. She tells me that if the initial shock didn’t kill her, none of this will. Her little brother is dead. She has to tell her big sister, my aunt.

The news of my uncle’s death passed from Cuba to Hialeah, Florida, to West Yellowstone, Montana, back to Hialeah, to my mother, who was right next to the family friend who called me with the news in the first place. In the meantime, I spoke to my cousin, who is about two thousand miles away but only about three hundred miles away from my mother, who will eventually call her sister who is about ten miles away in Pembroke Pines, Florida.

Because my uncle died in Cuba, we will not be able to attend his funeral. We will not get together and share memories and laugh and cry the way one does to cope with the loss. We will talk or text. We may receive pictures but we will not hear the music or the sobs. Our shoulders will remain dry as we will not be able to offer them to comfort a relative. We will each grieve our own grief and cry our own tears. Our pain will be more personal. The loss will not be shared, but divided. Each of us will carry our own piece of it.

Adolfo Jimenez is an author, poet, and blogger. He lives in Hollywood, Florida. He has published ten books, which you can find here.

The People In My Neighborhood

    I've lived in the same house for nearly 19 years. My daughters both took their first steps in this house and although the elder child did live in a different place before we moved here, it was for the first nine months of her life so she doesn't remember a minute of it. This is their home. It always has been, and in many ways it always will be.

    I rode my bike to the grocery store this morning to pick up a baguette and some coffee creamer. I live in south Florida so you can guess which grocery store I went to. There are two kinds of people in Florida: those who shop at Publix, and those who just moved here from somewhere horrible. They'll come around on the grocery thing, maybe, but they'll keep voting like assholes.

    I swung by the bakery to pick up a baguette because that's as European as I get. (Baguette on a bicycle? How Parisian!) I ran into a lady who has worked at this store for fifteen years. She knows us by name and asks about my wife and my daughters. I hadn't seen her for quite some time and she was surprised to know my daughter is away at college. We chatted a little more and she mentioned how she's known my daughter since she was a toddler and my younger daughter since she was still a bun in the oven. 

    The bond my family shares with this lady is real. There is more than the usual hi and bye, these are the people in your neighborhood thing. There is genuine warmth and caring there. That makes my neighborhood special to me.

    My neighbors across the street are closer, more personal friends. We go out together, we drink together, we hang out in the median that divides our street together. If they were to move away, I would miss them dearly. You can't really choose your neighbors anymore than you can choose your family, so they are a winning lottery ticket. The neighbors on either side of my house are another story. I'll save that for another day.

    The truth is that all these people make up my neighborhood. There are many others, some of which I like, others I don't care for, and some I downright hate. I'm sure I'm on each of those lists for other people, too. A neighborhood is a microcosm of the world, much the way a workplace or classroom or line at the grocery store is. There are over 7 billion people in the world. No way we're all going to like one another.

    Still, just because we don't all love each other, doesn't mean we need to hate each other. Although, it is your absolute right to hate people for any reason you see fit. You can hate people because of their race, their orientation, their religion, the way they dress, or any other reason. In fact, I will defend your right to be prejudiced against people. Because I'm smart enough to know that your feelings about people mean absolutely nothing. As long as you are never aggressive or violent, your hate is your problem. Drink up and choke on it enjoy! I choose to live and let live and to love as many people as I can. 

    Love is my default position. When I meet a person, I do so expecting to love that person. Sometimes I never see them again. Other times, they are part of my life for a season or for many years. I don't like everyone, though. In fact, I can honestly say there are more people I love than people I like.

    Have I digressed? Apologies.

    The people in my neighborhood, good or bad, make my neighborhood a place I enjoy living. Just like I tell my wife that the man she loves (me, I hope!) is who he is because of the good, bad, and ugly things he went through before he was lucky enough to find her.

Adolfo Jimenez is an author, poet, and blogger. He lives in Hollywood, Florida. He has published ten books, which you can find here.

Counting Down

In five days, my daughter will be going away to college. I am dying. I knew this day would come. In fact, I always encouraged her to look for schools in other states. I told her being away from home is a legit part of the college - learning - growing up experience. The one time the kid listens to her father!

I am happy for her and I am proud. She applied to one school and was accepted. She is the only one of her graduating class that is going to be attending college away from home. She'll be nearly two thousand miles and two time zones away. I've never lived that far from her or even from my own parents. It's scary and it's exciting. And I'm sad that she won't be here every day. I'm sad that this place, which has been her home since before her first birthday, will seem  a little emptier without her. Okay, a lot emptier. She took her first steps here. She was potty trained here. She is an enormous part of what makes this a home.

So, I'm a little depressed and I am hating the march of time this week. I want my little girl to stay forever, but I know this simply cannot be. She will always be my little girl, even when she is far away. I have to accept it, but I sure as hell don't have to like it.

Adolfo Jimenez is an author, poet, and blogger. He lives in Hollywood, Florida. He has published eight books, which you can find here.

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A Poem Because Why Not

I normally reserve these pages for reflections on writing or my life, but today,
I decided to share a poem from my book, Scorpions for Breakfast, which was
released this week. I hope you enjoy it.

TRIPPING THROUGH THE GARDEN

We go tripping though life

Socks covered in thistles

Bug bites on exposed skin

Sun coming down

Heat coming up

Here comes the rain

Here comes the night

Here comes the snow

Tripping through another day

Every minute a trek

A lost moment

A dandelion

Pistils

Petals

Pedestrians

Petunias

Peonies

And we go tripping through the flowers

We romp through roses

We gather among gardenias

We hibernate in the hibiscus

We ogle at oleander

We trip through the garden

We snort the pollen

We eat the seeds

And kill the future of the garden

We let it rain and watch it grow

Lay in the sun and let it burn

We are the wicked gardeners

Tripping through sacred gardens

Sleeping on the lawn

Tripping on a blade of grass

Tripping after dawn

We are the landscapers

Cutting trees

Killing them to make them pretty

Beauty in death is the only beauty for those who kill

Tripping on beauty after dawn

Tripping on broken limbs

Of trees

Of men

Of women

Of children

Tripping on one another as we dash

To kill the trees

Tripping on the carcases of trees we killed

Tripping on roots

We wait for the flowers to bloom

We wait for the fruit to rot

We wait for the seed to sprout

We wait for the trip to begin

We wish for the trip to end

We are tripping through the garden

We are tripping through the world

We are tripping on each other

Adolfo Jimenez is an author, poet, and blogger. He has published eight books. He lives in Hollywood, Florida with his family.  He published four books in 2019, which you can find here.

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Losing Linnie

We lost a pet this morning. Our guinea pig Linnie died some time during the night. Linnie was a unique little furball. Black with some brown smudges here and their and her hair was all cowlicks so she was always a mess. Another thing about Linnie: She was a boy.

When we got her, about two years ago, we were told she (he) was a girl. About a year later, we confirmed he (she) was a boy. We found this out when we got her (him) a boyfriend. His name is Milton. It turns out Milton and Linnie are not gay. They didn't get along too well at first as they each tried to establish dominance. They worked it out and settled into a bromance that sadly ended this morning.

Linnie became short for Linnard.

My wife and daughters handled Linnie all the time. Linnie loved to be carried by them. Such was his macho heterosexuality that I could never carry him. I am also allergic to animal hair so I didn't try too hard, but I did love feeding the boys carrots and grapey-grapes. They were never shy about yelling for food whenever they heard or saw you go near the kitchen. They were furry little fatties, and they are part of the family.

Now, it's up to Milton to squeak for carrots and grapes. It's up to him to be held and loved. I'm sure he misses his friend.

What is it about an animal that makes them so special? They are with us  for a relatively short time and then they're gone but the mark they leave on our heart is like a permanent scar left by a sudden flash of an event.

We buried Linnie in the yard next to our dog Baxter, who died last year after being with us for over twelve years. I miss that guy, too. There's a new dog now. His name is Max. We rescued him quite accidentally on Thanksgiving. Baxter left huge shoes to fill, but I think Max will hold his own.

I'm going to go lay in bed and cry for a while. Hug those you love. All time is borrowed.

Adolfo Jimenez is an author, poet, and blogger. He lives in Hollywood, Florida. He has published eight books, which you can find here.

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