Supafly.com

During halftime of the Giants/Cowboys game on Sunday, my father-in-law mentioned that he had just bought a chainsaw.

Less than 10 minutes later, we were out of the house and in my front yard cutting ugly branches from my big trees. For years I’ve only used hand saws and branch clippers that looked like big scissors. You feel vintage and slightly classy when you use tools like this, but they are terribly inefficient. I got a rush seeing how fast that chainsaw melted through the branch. At that point, I knew we wouldn’t watch the last half of the game. We had more work to do.

The next 4 hours might have been the best thing that happened to me all week. There are about fifteen Oleander bushes in my backyard that have grown over 40 feet, up into the canopy created by the taller, older pine trees. This dense green made for a lot of privacy, but it made my backyard difficult to keep tidy.

Plus, I’ve always suspected that there was a desert Sasquatch out there waiting to club me with a cactus stump. And he needs to get the hell out of there because I have enough problems.

One by one, we cut down the Oleander trees back to Oleander bushes. We dragged the fallen branches to the curb until we had a stack large enough to hide a military issue Hummer. We finished the evening by slicing up a bougainvillea that’s been dumping dead leaves into my pool. I felt a little guilty tearing down the bougainvillea with it’s pretty pink leaves, but they have no place near a pool.

John came over a couple times this week to pick something up random things from our house. Each time he’s pulled the chainsaw out of the trunk of his rental car and manhandled another overgrown bush. It’s fun because each day I’ve come home from work this week, the first thing I do is hop out of the car and explore my front and back yard to discover what’s changed.

As a kid, I despised the sound of Dad’s roaring chainsaw because it was so loud and violent. (Every one of my siblings can describe my epic hate of the chainsaw.) But over the course of an hour, my hatred changed to gratitude. You can’t despise something that is making your life more manageable. It was great.

This has been a very good week.

I’m in the middle of remodeling my house. I feel like I owe it to the world to report on the untold subplots in the story of upgrading homes and lives. These are the deleted scenes from home remodeling shows. This is the truth:

• I don’t look cool. It’s hard to look at myself in the mirror. For most of my life I’ve prided myself in being a fashionable, well-dressed man. Man at his best. Not anymore! Since I’ll be sloshing around paint and wood stain, I wear my most unfashionable shorts or pants, the ones that I haven’t worn outside of the home in 5 years. I rip the sleeves off of my most faded or awkward shaped T-shirts. These are the staples of my remodeling wardrobe. If I saw some dude dressed like me in public, I’d pity him as a man painfully unaware of his appearance. I now understand why the professional painters who come into the coffee shop each morning wear respectable white pants and shorts. It gives dignity to the untidy trade. It keeps your spirits up.
• People ask me a lot of irritating questions. When your life is uneventful, you start to meddle in lives of people who have more drama. I know this because I’ll have ordinary months in life, I corner someone with more action get the scoop. Since all of my friends, neighbors, and co-workers know my house is under construction, I get pegged with about 10 questions a day. Every day. I might be done with my remodeling by now if I didn’t have to stop and answer questions about why I’m not done yet.
• I spend all my money at Lowes. If you were to make a highlight reel of the last six months of my life, you would see lots of boring footage of me looking for things on the isles of Lowes. Just me standing there silent for three minutes, scanning the wall for the right electrical outlet. Then you’d see more footage, except this time I’m swiping my credit card again and again and again. Here’s your warning: over the course of a house remodel, you’ll make 100s of trips to Lowes and spend a mind-blowing amount of money. It might make you feel better if you invest in stock of the closest hardware store before you begin remodeling.
• I won’t be around to enjoy it. Dad encouraged me early in the construction by saying, “When this is all done, you can enjoy it for years.” I wish! Although I enjoy working on my home, I’ve postponed the true pleasure of living in my home for at least another decade. I’m not settling in this house. So any work I do here is for someone else to enjoy. I’m a contractor hired by the future home owner. So if you don’t enjoy the trades of home remodeling, your only motivation will be financial gain. And life always manages to suck when you are chasing money.
• I feel like my life is spinning out of control. I cannot overstate this. The home is where you are sheltered from the dramas of the world throws at you. When your house is in disarray, it only adds the drama. If you live in the house you’re remodeling, you must have an endless source of mental and emotional fortitude. You have to get up in the morning and be okay with the fact that there is sawdust underneath your cereal bowl as your pour milk over your Cheerios.

I am lucky because I’m married to an awesome woman. We’re on the same team when it comes to overcoming the obstacles in life. If you and your spouse are in a rocky point in your relationship, fixing your home will break your relationship. Get your priorities straight and given your marriage an extreme makeover first.

Oddly enough, I have not felt compelled to justify buying a fake tree. I made it through a 7-hour party last week without one word about the not-real tree in the corner of my living room.

The satisfaction of having none of the real tree chores gives me supreme confidence. By getting that fake tree, I saved myself 8 hours of work this December alone. Next year, I’ll save another 8. By then, I’ll have broken even financially. And I’ll keep putting up that fake tree until I have kids that need a good Christmas memory.

While Candyce was at Mass on Sunday I watched an episode of MTV Cribs dedicated to 50 Cent’s house outside of Hartford, Connecticut. (I’m pretty sure he bought this from Mike Tyson’s ex-wife.) I should start by explaining that this estate is massive: 17.6 acres, 48,515 square feet, 19 bedrooms, 19 full and 16 half bathrooms. MASSIVE!

Does 50’s house make him not gangster?

If I were in high school living with Mom and Dad, I might be jealous of somebody with a house that big. It’s the ultimate stage of glamor and success. But anybody who owns a house watched that episode with a different perspective:

1. Maintenance. I know 50 isn’t pushing a vacuum around a house that’s half the size of a Target store. That means he has to hire people to maintain the inside and outside of his house. Think of the chores: mow the lawn, spray for bugs, maintain the pools, remove dead tree branches after a storm, repair cracks in the driveway, change light bulbs, etc. The list goes on and on.

   Since 50 doesn’t want to manage armies of workers, my guess is he got smart and hired full-time estate manager dude. At the end of the day, 50 has to sit down with this guy in the kitchen to find out what’s going down around the house. I’ve never seen this meeting in a rap video. Gangsters aren’t supposed to know about the flowers being planted in the pots next to the front door. That kind of stuff is just supposed to happen.

   

   17.6 acres of manual labor.

2. Relationship drama. My house is just under 3,000 square feet, so it would take 12 houses just like mine to match the size of 50 Cent’s house. Even with it’s diminutive size, Candyce and I get in at least one fight each week day because we’re trying to communicate when we’re in separate rooms. After 30 seconds of playing shout tag, we end up in the same room exasperated and angry:
   

   What were you saying? I answered you didn’t you hear me?!

   It’s gotten a little better each month since we’ve been married, but I can’t lie and say that we have this whole thing worked out. We get mad a lot.

   Now, if 50’s girlfriend is at the house, how are they supposed to talk to each other? If she makes a “quick trip” to the kitchen 300 paces away, how is 50 supposed to find her when she gets lost? It’s a funny scene to imagine 50 and his hotty girlfriend trying to find one another, almost like a hip hop version of Marco Polo or hide-and-go-seek. What if half way through this game 50 stumbled upon a groupie from 3 nights ago who got lost on her way to get a get a blanket from the closet? Wouldn’t that be embarrassing.

   Let’s presume 50 is monogamous. If he and Hotty want to keep the relationship sweet, the most reasonable solution is for both of them to carry walkie-talkies everywhere they go. When 50 struts to the game room to get a lighter for his cigar, he’s got a walkie-talkie in one hand. When she steps into the boudoir to slip into something more comfortable, she’ll come back to bed carrying a walk-talkie. That’s just not sexy. No gangster points here.

3. Losing Things. When I lived in a 1000 square foot apartment after college, I never lost things. I lose things ALL THE TIME now. And it’s not because I’m losing my mind; there is just a lot of space to devour my stuff. Poor 50 Cent. If he loses his keys in his 50k square foot home, he won’t make that 10 O’clock meeting in the city. He’d be smart to chain down his TV remotes. Because once they’re gone, they’re gone! He’s stuck watching the same channel because he’s too tired to make the 40 foot roundtrip to the TV and back. No gangster points there.
4. Bumps in the night. Anybody who owns a home knows what it’s like to hear a bump in the night. Even if you have a security system, you hear something like that and assume that somebody is breaking into your house. With a modest sized home, you can pick up your baseball bat, do a couple laps around the house, and be back in bed in under 2 minutes. It could take 50 Cent 45 minutes to scope out the joint. He might even have to stop half way through the rounds just to make coffee to stay alert.Now that I think of it, I bet 50 doesn’t even hear most of the bumps in the night. Again, if you consider how large the house is, it’s the equivalent of me waking up at night because I heard my neighbor knock over a vase 3 houses down the street. So in 50’s palatal home, people could come and go as they please. There might be members of Eminem’s D12 setting up camp in a remote corner of the west wing. Really, Kanye West could break in and film a music video while 50 is fast asleep. To give Kanye the gangster points he deserves, you’ll have to take ‘em away from 50.

I guess 50 Cent has realized his house is not that gangster, which is why it is for sale for a cool $18,500,000. I doubt 50 will get that much money for it, but he only paid a modest $4,100,000 for it back in 2003, so whatever he gets for it will give him a hefty profit.

Now that’s gangster.

Traveling for Bored Travelers. I’ve traveled so much over the past decade that the idea of “traveling” is not exciting on it’s own. You might be able to impress a 20-year-old intern with tall tales of glamorous business travel, but any frequent traveler will tell you that flying is isn’t much more glamorous than riding a city bus across town.

Even if you fly first class, you still have to go through the same drudgery as everyone else before and after a flight: checking bags downstairs, passing through security with no shoes and no belt, waiting for delayed flight, occupying your time before takeoff, etc. This bland reality of traveling has forced me into various experiments to amuse myself.

For instance, I got back this morning from a quick overnight trip to Ontario, California. The only thing I brought with me were my cars keys and my cell phone. No luggage, no toiletries, no computer. I left the house as if I were driving to the coffee shop for an espresso. It was a little weird wearing the same clothes two days in a row, and my mouth was raunchy after not brushing last night or this morning. But other than that, it was a no-hassle way to travel. If I fly anywhere just for a night, I’ll probably do it again.

Welcome San Bernadino Residents. It was exciting to see all the people who traveled from the far corners of the Inland Empire to come to the event. I remember in high school how exciting it was to meet teenagers from other towns, so I can imagine how exciting it was to be at the event last night. You had 250 new best friends. How much fun is that?

Second generation youth leaders. Last night a dozen or so of us went out for a late night dinner. It was bizarre and exciting to realize that most of the adults at the table actually came to events I spoke at when they were in high school. Now they’re involved at leaders in their churches and community.

Coziness. It’s been a chilly afternoon for Phoenix, so I bought some Christmas coffee to commemorate the event. The house was already feeling Christmasy because Candyce decorated the place when I was gone. Once the fire was blazing in the fireplace, the house was cozy enough to the shoot photos for a Christmas catalogue.

Tivo is awesome because it’s like renting DVDs but not paying for them. This afternoon we watched Elf (funny), Sweet Home Alabama (alright), and Bringing Down the House (dumb). And we watched a Suns game. After such a difficult week at work and trip out of town, today was perfect day to rest my body and relax my mind.