LOCATION: Anna’s Syfy Interview ~ Universal Orlando, Florida

But I’ve decided to move this post to the head of the line.

I’ve shed some tears lately and I don’t cry easily or often. The last time I can recall this rare occurrence was on January 27th, 2007. Over the month leading up to that date, as a birthday gift to myself, I broke up with my girlfriend which was a year overdo, I packed a duffle bag, sold everything else and let everyone know I decided to move to LA. On Janaury 26th I threw myself an awesome going-away party at Orchid Lounge in New York City and still drunk the next morning, I boarded the 9:00 am Jetblue flight from JFK to Burbank. I was a free man, on a new adventure, setting out to do what I love and do best, act and write.

On the flight, they showed my favorite movie, Rudy.

What a perfect movie to see on this trip into the next stage of my life. And this is when I cried. I pulled my maroon MIT hat down to hide my face and I watched Sean Astin being carried from the Notre Dame field. He achieved such greatness against all odds. I could relate and I cried full of a thousand emotions.

The next time I truly cried was on Valentine’s Day, February 14th, 2010. Just a couple of days ago. And I cried twice.

The first cry you may think was because I am so in love, which I am, and because I got to spend a beautiful day with Anna, which I did.

But it was for a different reason.

My dad’s sick and my mother is having a very hard time with it. The whole family is, really, but my mom gets it the worst because she is with him every day. It’s hard to see someone you’ve loved for so long slowly turn into a different man. And when I called to wish them a Happy Valentine’s Day, it turned out to be a particularly bad day.

What made me cry, though, was when my dad took the phone and he explained to me how he felt in his own words, as best he could. He took his time, finding the best words he could think of, and he talked. And I could hear how hard he was trying. And through his pained speech, I also heard how hard he ALWAYS tried to do his best and be his best for the family.

Throughout everything, his two-time battle with cancer and now the dimensia, my dad has never lost one thing – his sense of humor. As you can see in this recent picture with Anna where he’s trying to bite her! Although he does not speak up as much as he used to for fear of saying something incorrectly, you can tell that when he does talk he still has his awareness and extremely witty sense of humor. Even at my dad’s worst, he is an example of what I aspire to be.

The second time I cried that day was while watching the Olympic men’s mogul competition. Skiing, Seth, Really? Damn right.

Of course I was already on the emotional edge because of my family, but add to that my being in Canada, watching the Canadian Olympic games, engaged to a Canadian and, the cherry on the cake, hearing the inspirational story of Canadian, Alexandre Bilodeau.

Alexandre’s greatest inspiration is his older brother, who has cerebral palsy. The doctors did not expect his brother to walk past the age of 10 and he is still walking at age 28! With a role model like that, Alexandre refused to ever quit and pushed himself to the limit. The result? Alexandre nailed his mogul run and took home the first gold medal Canada has every received while hosting the Olympic games.

And I cried. I cried for Alex’s story, I cried for my dad, and I cried for myself.

And that cleansed the system, which I really needed. It’s time to start writing again.

I’ve got Olympic curling on in the background, too. Something tells me nothing in this sport is going to inspire me nor make me cry. But these days, you never know.

Anna found Daisy in Chinatown, Toronto. She was undernourished, had ear mites and a bad gash on her nose. Anna took her, cleaned her up and made her a part of the family. You’d think she’d recall her rough street walking days and be thankful for every day she gets to lead a life of leisure. Au contraire! Now she acts like show owns this place and everyone in it. And you know what, she pretty much does. Here’s a short list of what she’s done and continues to do:

1) Daisy loves to eat plastic and cellophane until she throws up
Everyone has their vice.

2) Daisy loves to run outside and eat grass until she throws up
Ok, she has two vices. You’re probably wondering why we don’t stop her from going outside. If you saw how much she enjoys the outdoors, you’d let her out, too. I’d rather clean up the puke than see her unhappy.

3) Daisy doesn’t clean herself so well after she poops
This one might be because she’s a few pounds overweight. We’ve put her on a diet, but until that kicks in, we have to cut her bum hair once a week to make things more comfortable for her.

4) Daisy knocked my hard drive over and killed it
This happened when Anna and I first started dating. So I played it cool.

5) Daisy spilled red wine on my laptop and killed it
This happened later in Anna’s and my relationship. I wasn’t as cool.

And for the piece de resistance. Or perhaps I should say the PEEce de resistance…

6) Daisy pees in 6 different parts of our house!
The carpets have been replaced and we’re FINALLY ready for house parties again, but we have to keep a close eye on her. Honestly, we can’t take our eyes off her EVER. If we do, she is sure to pee somewhere again.

Don’t worry, she isn’t sick (we took her to two veterinarians), but it actually would be easier if she WAS sick. That way we’d give her some meds and the problem would go away, done deal. But now we’ve got a behavioral problem which is much harder to deal with.

It started soon after we moved to our new apartment in December, 2008. Daisy had never done anything like this before, but she’s obviously a “pro” because when she started peeing, she started full force. At first only I could smell it, near the workout room in our apartment.

I foolishly suggested the odor was from Anna sweating when she ran on the treadmill.

I was quickly informed by words and the insulted look on Anna’s face that no amount of her exercise could ever produce any type of foul smell. She then told me I was probably smelling my upper lip. We’re very mature in our family.

Soon Anna started to smell it, too, and we figured out it was cat pee. We didn’t know which of the two cats was doing it, so we laid a trap. We put down plastic bags where we found the pee and we set up a camera. Yup. we had to spy on our cats. We felt a little dirty doing that, but it had to be done. And it’s not nearly the dirtiest thing we do.

After one night, we watched the tape back: Daisy come up to the camera, smelled it, knocked it over and then the battery went dead. We’re obviously not pros at this.

The next day, as I was setting up the camera again, the craziest thing happened. Daisy walked in the room, looked at me, smelled the floor, turned and peed on the bag. Right in front of me! No friggin’ shame. Not trying to hide a damn thing. It broke my heart.

The next seven months were filled with plans, schemes and cleaning products.

Here’s some of what we tried, including the costs.

1. Two vet visits. $600.
2. We bought a truckload of Urine Off. It’s a cleaner with enzymes to break down pet urine odors. It usually works, but you have to use a lot of it over time. Approx. $100.
3. We also tried an industrial cleaning service $150.
4. We found out the carpet was too far gone and then had it replaced. $400.
5. We went away on vacation, she peed on the carpet more so we bought more Uring Off. $100.
6. We bought the book, Twisted Whiskers. Notice a resemblance here? $13.50.
   
7. We bought a room divider at Pier 1 to keep her out of the breakfast nook. $200.
8. We bought another room divider at Home Depot to keep her IN the living room when we’re both in there watching TV. It’s really a garden fence, but it’s the only thing that will fit in the space. $30.
9. We bought her bladder medicine and herbal remedies. $75.
10. We bought soothing lavender diffusers. $75.
11. We hired a cat whisperer to adjust her aura and to realign the energy balance in our house. $100.

GRAND TOTAL: $1,843.50

This got me thinking…

Per pound, the Million Dollar Baby was worth $5,882, assuming she weighed in at 170 lbs.

If you add up the money for vet visits, food, litter, toys, etc. and multiply that out over Daisy’s expected lifetime. Then add in all the damage she caused and the cost of the peeing fiasco, you know how much she’s worth per pound?

$5,863!

That’s right folks. Daisy is the Million Dollar Baby!

And she’s worth every penny. Damn you, cockfog!

I grew up with two parents that loved each other immensely. They never divorced and they helped each other through some really difficult times. That helped shape my relationships in a positive way, but it sort of messed me up, too. Lots of high expectations for what a relationship should be… But that’s not the point right now. I’m sure I’ll touch on that more in the future, but for now, just know my parents loved each other and I learned a lot from watching them.

I learned a lot watching my sisters, too. I have two older sisters and they always got into bad relationships. It was the typical situation – they liked the guys way more than the guys liked them. And the guys treated them like shit. You see, my sisters were in constant relationship cockfogs. They either didn’t realize they deserved better, or the mystique of the “cool guy” overwhelmed them, or they just wanted to settle down so badly that they tried to fit a square boyfriend into the round hole of what they truly wanted and deserved. Whatever the reason, I learned from their relationships. I learned how not to treat women.

From my dad, I learned how TO treat women. He was a complete and utter romantic. He would do absolutely anything for my mom from the moment he met her. In other words, he was in a cockfog over my mom.

In the house where I grew up, we had boxes of poems and songs he wrote for my mom. We heard the story of their courtship many times – never getting tired of it.

Dad and mom met in college. Dad was sitting in the back of a lecture hall waiting for the first class of the semester to begin and my mom walked in. Now, my mom actually noticed my dad first, sitting all by himself, and she recognized him as the guy she had a long time crush on. So my mom marched straight to the back of the classroom and plopped herself down in the seat next to my dad. Rows and rows away from anyone else in the class. She quickly realized something… since she had forgotten her glasses that day, the man she thought was her crcush turned out to be someone totally different. Someone she was not nearly as attracted to. But she didn’t have the heart to change seats, so they sat together all semester.

My dad took this as a sign… she was the one.

Semesters came and went and my dad attempted to weasel his way into my mother’s heart. He constantly changed his class schedule to be in all of mom’s classes. He often stopped by my grandmother’s house while my mother was out and wait for her to come home. It got to the point that my grandmother would invite him in and they would talk for hours until my mother arrived. This went on for years until they graduated from college and lost touch.

After college, my mom traveled the world for several months and soon after returning from France, she ran into one of my father’s friends and casually asked, “How’s Jerry?”

This was immediately reported back to my dad and it was another sign for him – game on! He called my mom and asked her out. My mom decided to finally give my dad a shot and they’ve never separated since.

Growing up, I could close my eyes and I always saw myself with someone, married with kids. I knew I was meant to have a family. I knew I’d make a great husband and father, but I could never see who that person was. No solid idea of what I was looking for. I went through years of crazy dates and relationships that lasted much longer than they deserved to. I was fitting many square girls into my round hole, so to speak, until one day I realized that maybe it just won’t happen for me. Yes, I COULD be a great husband and father, but that doesn’t mean I’m GOING to get married. Love at first site exists – it happened for my dad – but statistically it’s impossible that it exists for everyone. And the more I thought about it the more comfortable I felt with the fact that it just may never happen.

It was actually a huge relief. Now it was easier to end relationships when they deserved to be ended. Easier to be single. Who needs to date when you’re okay with being alone?

Then I met Anna.

And it was just like my dad’s story. I saw her and I knew she was someone I had to meet or I would always regret passing the opportunity. I finally asked her out, after a few weeks of scoping the situation, but she wasn’t available. This turned out to be a blessing in disguise because over the next year and a half, she and I became close friends. I got to know her better than anyone I had ever dated. I would do anything for her – I was deep in a I-know-we’re-friends-but-it-would-be-great-if-we-were-more cockfog.

Then one day, something changed for us. Most likely because of the beer and tequila we had over Mexican. We just looked at each other and we knew we wanted to spend our lives together. And from that moment on we were truly inseparable. After one week, I told her over tapas in Santa Barbara that I was going to ask her to marry me one day. And she told me that she would say yes. (This was coming from someone that never wanted to get married.)

One year later I proposed on the Malibu cliffs. And she said yes.

The whirlwind, amazing romance continues still for us. And I’ll write more about it in future blogs, for sure.

I learned a lot by trying to find love, giving up and then falling head over heals… I discovered the cockfog. It’s everywhere.

Now Anna’s in a cockfog for me. It’s typically the only time when a cockfog is good… when it’s evenly shared. I hope everyone gets that lucky.

But until then, enjoy reading the rest of the blog. I promise it will not all be mushy, gushy stuff.