I spent a good portion of the holiday weekend helping my parents paint the inside of their house.

My body is super-sore. Who thought that 10-foot ceilings was a good idea?!

They painted the majority of their house a boring beige color:

And we only got around to painting one bathroom.  Bathrooms are really tough to paint…there’s a lot of stuff to paint around, and it’s a cramped little space.  My mom picked the bathroom paint color based on the shower curtain she got on sale at Bed, Bath & Beyond.  I hate this color:

Eighty percent of the house is that boring beige, and the one bathroom is green.  I kept saying that they should spice it up and add an accent wall–and they finally listened, but still kept it pretty safe.  I call it Sedona red…it’s kinda burnt orange looking in real life:

We painted 2 walls with this orange/red color.

Highlights from the weekend include my mom looking at a wall I just painted beige and joking, “Oh my god, Michael.  This wall needs some touch-ups.  I guess if you want something done right you have to do it yourself.”

She then grabbed a bucket of paint and started touching up the beige wall…the only problem was that she was using the white baseboard paint.  I ended up having to re-paint the wall.

I was reminded the other day of a story that my sister wanted me to forget.  I was about five years old, and my sister was nine.

My parent’s work schedules were odd, and there was a 4-hour window where we were left unsupervised during the summer.

My sister played this little “game” with me, where she said that I was running a restaurant, and the entire kitchen was my diner.  She was running a woman’s clothing boutique, and her entire bedroom was her shop.

I would be discouraged from stepping into her shop…because I had no need for women’s clothing, but she’d stop at my diner every day for lunch.  She’d make me cook for her!

As a little kid, I thought that this game was fun.  Yet in retrospect I realize that I was totally getting played.

Yesterday when I was digging through old photos looking for a father/son photo to post, I came across the picture above.

It’s me, and it looks like there is a cigarette in my mouth. “Hey mom, look at this,” I said as I handed her the photo.

“Oh, that’s a cute one,” she said.

“There’s a cigarette in my mouth,” I said.

“Yeah, you were a wacky kid.”

Wacky?  Wacky as in the type of kid that like to chain smoke?  Or Wacky as in the type of kid that picked random cigarettes off the ground and put them in my mouth?

And who thought, “Hey, little Michael has a cigarette in his mouth!  Let’s snap a picture of that!”

I spent an hour digging through old photos to find one of me and my dad, and I only came up with one or two.  The one above was my favorite because it shows my dad with a lot of hair–something that he’s seriously lacking nowadays.

I cooked breakfast for my family this morning and we sat around and talked.  I was reminded of some pretty funny stories that I’ll have to blog about in the near future.

I bought my dad the three DVD set of the Indiana Jones movies…it was on sale at Target, and it was something that I kinda wanted to watch myself.

If you’re a father and you read my blog, Happy Father’s Day.

My 12-year-old nephew likes Dick’s Sporting Goods, and he had some Christmas/Birthday money to burn and he wanted to buy some football-related paraphernalia.  My sister was being a lazy-ass and didn’t want to drive my nephew to Dick’s, so my nephew said, “If I find it online can I use your credit card?  Do you think their address is Dicks.com?”

Ha!

I said, “Yeah, I think it’s Dicks.com…try it.”

As my lazy-ass sister sprung to her feet and grabbed the mouse.

I was digging around in some boxes looking for something I’ve written in the past, and I came across a few pages of text that I had saved. It was the letter I wrote to my parents in 2000 telling them that I was a homosexual, and their responses.

The letter was pretty generic. It had the normal “just being honest” hackneyed crap. I wanted to share with you my mom and sister’s responses to my letter.

My mom left me a voicemail, and I transcribed it.

Michael. Michael. Are you there? It’s your mom. [This is a voicemail, by the way. She always thinks that I can somehow hear voicemails as they are being recorded.]

Well, we got your letter today. I bet that it was very hard to write. I hope you don’t break out in a bunch of pimples…cause I remember you used to have that happen when you would start school each year…you would be nervous and break out in pimples.

Dad and I talked and he isn’t terribly upset or anything. We would rather you be gay than be a murderer or something like that. You’re your own person and we just want you to be happy.

God made us, and I think he knows whats in your heart more than I do. I am glad that you thought you could share this with us.

I am going to mail a $50 check–it should get there in a day or two. The money is for taking your cousin out to lunch one weekend. She misses you and I’m sure she would like to see you again. She only lives thirty minutes away from your house…you should really go to see her. Don’t you dare cash that check until the day that you are going. I’ll check my bank statements.

Oh! I almost forgot. Go check the internet. I sent you an email letter. I just learned…your dad showed me. Call me and tell me if you got it. I love you.

My mom still calls occasionally to tell me that she’s emailed me. Kind of defeats the purpose.

This is an email my sister sent to me after they received my letter.

Dear Mike,

We got your letter today and the aura of the room is a little tense. Mom didn’t act too surprised. Dad’s eyes got wide when he read it (but don’t tell him that I said that). And I was happy to hear you finally said something.

It seems like everything is going to be fine. Mom may cut down on the God speeches to you–and hopefully to me too because I don’t want to hear them. I may finally be able to get Dad to stop cracking gay jokes around Christian [my nephew]. Dad says that just because he’s his grandfather he has the right to make offensive jokes.

The other day they were watching a show on the food network and the announcer said “gay basket of bread.” And dad and Christian started laughing.

I tried telling Christian that it wasn’t funny. But dad just kept laughing like it was. I am trying to get Christian to start using more PC terms…parenting is tough sometimes.

Suprisingly, mom has been getting very comfortable with e-mail. So in a week or two all of the family in South Dakota should know about your sex life.

Love Julie

Here’s my response to Julie:

Dear Julie,

A gay basket of bread? That is funny. If I were there I would have been making jokes too.

I’d probably be talking about one piece of fruit bread fucking another piece of fruit bread.

Be careful how strict you get on your little PC sonny…he may rebel.

Thanks for the update.

I send my love…my gay basket of love.

Mike

At the NFL Experience on Sunday we stopped at the Home Depot booth and took a photo that was retrievable later on the net.  There were a few booths that offered this service (some Companies like Pepsi even printed you a copy of the picture), and I think that it’s a really good giveaway.  Think about how little this souvenir cost The Home Depot.

Phew!

I’ve returned from the long camping trip with my dad. The place that we camped was nestled into a very cold canyon…each day the sun went down and it got really cold at about 3:30 in the afternoon.

The nights were practically unbearable. I was unable to test my blood-sugar when we were there. When I took my blood-glucose monitor out to test, I received an error that said “TEMPERATURE ERROR: Please see manual and re-test.”

Here are pictures for you to look through. They are mostly boring landscape type photos.

My dad’s birthday is on Sunday, and he asked me to spend the weekend with him camping.  4 days in the middle-of-nowhere.  4 days.

He is bringing his hunting stuff…which means I’ll be spending a lot of time alone.  If I were to hunt with him I’d probably yell, “Run!  He’s going to shoot you!” if any animals came near.

He’s telling me that deer and havalina are in season right now.

Luckily I’m getting ready to start the fourth Harry Potter novel…so I can read during the day time.  And I can hike and take some photographs too.  Expect to see some of the photographs here and on my flickr page.

I won’t be blogging again until early next week.

When I arrived here in Arizona my mom had a diabetes magazine (which she has subscribed to) and a job hunting magazine laid out on my bed. They also planned a special dinner that was meat and sugar free.

I wonder how long I’ll be able to ride out the guest-status. Any guesses?