Just a thought. But the dude with the XXL one-pack, ordering the plain egg white omelette and raisin bran muffin, might think twice about telling the dude with the six-pack that bacon is unhealthy. I’m just saying.

Don’t get me wrong. I’m not saying you have to look a certain way or possess a certain something to know what you’re talking about. Not at all. [Digression: The one-time Miami Dolphins kicking coach, never actually kicked a ball because he was bound to a wheelchair due to cerebral palsy. His kickers were All-Pros.] What I’m saying is you have to know what you’re talking about, to know what you’re talking about. Too often, folks are ready to go off half-cocked and shout advice or declare a position having done no reading or research from credible sources. Or even for one second carefully mulled over the information in front of them. Information floats in the air, penetrates their ears, gets passed around like one of those funny hand-rolled cigarattes and it becomes “common knowledge”. Eventually, everyone knows you’re not supposed to do this or that, or that thing over there causes cancer or take this and you’ll get all the girls. Whatever, man.

In my humble opinion, if you’re going to share your info, at least have tested it in the world or on yourself. Has the maple syrup and lemon juice diet helped you get a body like Jessica Biel? If it hasn’t, and you thought or were told it would, you have to question the diet. Did flipping single family homes make you yacht, private plane and trips to the French Riviera rich? Or did it leave you with a negative net worth? Either way, do your research. Experiment. Before you share.

The ironic thing is had my friend in line been a Paleo Pusher, he would have attacked my meal from the butter-loaded bagel angle. He would have told me that Paleolithic man would never eat bread and we are not built to do so. He would have said, bagels (wheat, gluten, et. al.) are a slow death and butter only hastens the inevitability. If I was in the mood, which I wasn’t with the bacon dude this morning, I might have asked Mr. P. Pusher, “Are you sure Paleo man never never EVER ate bread? Are you sure? I mean do we even know what Paleo man was let alone what he ate? Is butter really all that bad for you?”

Hopefully, Mr. P. Pusher would have based his viewpoint on something he read and experimented with instead of hearing it from the guy who heard it from the guy at some other guy’s son’s bar mitzvah. Hopefully too he’d be open to an opposing point of view and open to testing his presently held belief. Had the bacon dude asked he would have learned, I’ve been through the internal bacon battle and back. I’ve done the research and the experimentation on myself. I have eaten it and not. Praised it and scorned it. And after the long drawn tug of war, what I’ve concluded is, life is just better with bacon!

Now, my battle is with bagels (grains, wheat, whatever…). Butter-loaded bagels. With mounting evidence against continuing my relationship with my beloved, I have to consider the possibility she is no good for me. But, I will not just except what the dude, who knows the dude, who knows the bar mitzvah dude says. I’m doing the research and the experimentation before I make any judgment or completely break it off. Until such time, if it ever comes, we will go on the occassional date.

There’s a simple solution to all this holiday stress. Just tell me what you want! Kids have no problem writing or telling their wish list. So why can’t we adults do the same? And don’t say, “Oh, you don’t have to get me anything” or “Whatever you get is fine”. Can you spell bull-ish? Remember the Hide-Your- House-Key-In-A-Rock I got for you or the Never Ending Candle Bowl? You hated those gifts. So just tell me what you want and it will make both our lives simpler. I know there’s only a few days left ’til the big day, but there’s still time.

Even though I stress out about getting my peeps gifts, I don’t stress about what I will get. I could not possibly care less. If I see everyone around me smiling and happy and stuffed from sweet potato pie, then I’m happy. I get things you can’t put a value on, every day. (Sometimes I forget but I eventually remember. Thanks fam.) So when I say, “You don’t have to get me anything” or “Whatever you get me is fine”, I really truly mean it. You’ve already given me so much. Like many of the single dads I talk to, we have an appreciation for the little things and just want those things to remain intact. Being with our family is the perfect gift.

But… (did you see it coming?)

We single dads are a caring lot and know you might be stressing out about getting us a gift, despite our most convincing arguments we have all we want. So, I’ve decided to put together a short list of items that ANY single dad would want. Rest assured, most of us would be more than happy to get one just of these items and not necessarily on the big day. So feel free, family and friends, to pool your resources and buy his gift after the big day when everything is properly priced at deep discounts. The single dad in your life will feel less guilty accepting his gift. To the list:

1. Olympic weightlifting shoes or…

source: Rogue Fitness

There is no way any self-respecting father wouldn’t appreciate the proper footwear designed to assist him in lifting heavy items. Sure, he can get by doing that stuff barefoot or in his old sneaks from college, but I’m sure he would appreciate the hard soled support Olympic weightlifting shoes provide. And given is low-key nature, he isn’t too particular about which kind you get him, he’d be appreciative in any circumstance but man those Nike Romaleos look mighty fine.

2. a Stud-Bar or…

source: CapnRat

A pullup up bar would be awesome. One designed to work with 8 foot cielings would be ideal. One which allows kipping would be super ideal. Most single dads, even with an insane amount of assistance from his family, have very little spare time. And getting to the gym to work on those kid carrying shoulders is difficult given his time restrictions. What better way for him to keep his youthful figure than the single most effective (and cost effective) workout tool in existence. Trust me, he will love the thing. And so will his girls, um, I mean his kids. They’ll get a kick out of saying how buff their dear ‘ole dad is.

3. an Amazon Kindle or…

source: humedini

Most single dads I know are avid readers with a full library of books on every topic known to man. Most single dads I know are also gadget hounds. What better device to give him than the Amazon Kindle book reader. No longer will he have to drag around shopping bags full of books just “in case” he would like to read something on the fly. These e-readers fit right into most large coat pockets. Although he’ll miss the comfort holding a book in his hands gives him, he’ll get over it quickly.

4. a digital camera or…
Remember, dads like gadgets. So why not? How else is he going to capture those precious moments with the kids.

5. a garage door or…
Sometimes, the old one just needs replacing. Craigslist has a few used.

6. three months worth of maid services.

source: cybertoad

The single dad has a lot on his plate. He has the kids, he has the job or two, he has to keep in shape and tend to his, meager though it may be, social life and maybe his club or charity duties. The one thing which will fall by the wayside is tending to the old homestead. Laundry piles up, dishes pile up, squirrels move into the belfry, and his house just needs a scrubbing. Let’s face it. He isn’t the neatest guy to begin with amplifying the problem. He gets behind on the chores and this winds up being the kiss of death. He can never get ahead of the game. What better gift to give the guy in this situation but some much needed help. A small crew of cleaning dynamos to set him on track so perhaps he can catch up a little. And he wouldn’t need much help. Just a few visits will set him straight.

Like I said, anything from this list would warm the cockles of ANY single dad. Especially if the items were purchased during the blowout sales after the big day. (Remember his guilt.) However, no list of items, no matter how exhaustive, can replace the feeling the single dad has when spending time with his children and family. So feel free to give him exactly what he wants – the perfect holiday gift.

Washing the kids' clothes.

My dryer broke down a few weeks back and I’m so backed up on washing clothes. Why haven’t I fixed the dryer yet? Well, it isn’t that I haven’t tried. It simply needs one small part to be replaced. And I’ll be damned if I’m going to replace the thing with a new dryer just for one small $30 part. (Although I’ve set a new washer and dryer in my sights for a couple of years out.) I haven’t replaced the part because the manufacturers made the faulty part in question nearly impossible to reach without having the hand size of a small child or taking the entire machine apart. I will fix it eventually. In the meantime I’ve been trekking to the local laundromat.

At first I hated it. I thought it akin to having to take the city bus to work, another activity I’m not a fan of. But after several trips, I’ve come to enjoy it a little. There something about the hum of the machines, the smell of fabric softener and bleach and the spinning of the clothes that is both relaxing and hypnotic. It’s like a short mental retreat now. I’ll take my coffee, a book, and plan on enjoying an hour or two of therapy disguised as washing, drying and folding.

Maria... working; photo courtesy: Guerrilla Fitness

Suzanne Somers has a goal. She wants to be sexy and sultry and still looking like she’s in her 40′s at the ripe old age of 110. But her path to get there is somewhat unusual.

Suzanne’s path, featured in Newsweek magazine with a cover that read, “Crazy Talk: Oprah, Wacky Cures and You”, was quite amusing. The article chronicled Oprah’s guests, Suzanne among them, and their questionable health and fitness advice. I think what the article correctly points out is these folks’ mere appearance on Oprah’s show lend them instant credibility. It’s a testament to Oprah’s influence. An influence surpassed by very few.

In particular the article talks about Suzanne and her, to put it mildly, alternative approach to staying youthful including inserting hormones directly into her vagina. The article clearly paints Suzanne and many other celebrity and pseudo-health care professional guests of Oprah as a little wacky to say the least.

What’s clearly evident, and the article only confirms this, is that we are all looking for answers. But there is something peculiar about the human condition where we will shun the simple for the complex. Seems to me, Suzanne and Oprah’s typical guest and Oprah fans are either touting or looking for a magic pill. Don’t get me wrong. I’m not picking on Oprah and her followers. They reflect the thoughts and desires of most of us – we want the easy way out. When it comes to our bodies and our longevity, this is especially true. For women who want to take a few years off their appearance, Oprah will have some dude come on her show willing to sew, with a needle and thread, someones face tighter. But I’ll let you go read the article.

There are plenty of healthy and youthful looking people in the world. And the vast majority of them have followed some similar path to getting there. What is the common denominator?

Work.

It’s pretty much that simple. Like Suzanne, I want to live to 110 years old. I want to stay young and sexy too. In fact, what I really want is the body of my youth – the six-pack abs, the buns of steel, the speed of a gazelle and the endurance of well, a 21-year-old. But I’m convinced getting to that ripe old age, and looking good while I do it, will not be easy. I believe it will take some work. In fact, most of us who have been successful at anything have worked for it. But I’m willing to do it. I’m aware my goal may be lofty given where I was then versus where I am now. I rarely work out and hate to diet and I have these things lovingly called “handles” around my waistline. Not to mention I’m older than the number on my college football jersey (#37), entering what actuarial scientists call, “middle-age”. But I think it can be done. All it will take is work. There is no secret ingredient. It’s just work. Simple, but not easy, work.

How will I work toward my goal of perpetual young-boy health and sexiness? Here is my formula distilled into four steps.

Move. Eat. Rest. Repeat.

This stuff is nothing new. And the “work” involved does not include looking for a magic pill. This ain’t rocket science and it doesn’t take 60 supplements a day or eating nothing but maple syrup and lettuce or some other cock-eyed diet.

Move, Eat, Rest, Repeat is so simple yet few will do it. How many of us are willing to push iron ala squatting many pounds greater than our bodyweight, repeatedly? How many of us voluntarily run in shitty weather fast and far enough that our lungs start feeling like they’re on fire? How many of us are willing to eat the foods that are good for us but boring? Or get even six hours sleep let alone eight? But this is the exact formula that nearly everyone who is healthy and fit has followed.  The particulars (How do you move? What do you eat? How much do you rest? How often to do you repeat?) are almost beside the point.

Don’t get me wrong. Like I said earlier, I’ve been avoiding the work for a while. But some recent news (which I will get to in another post) made me realize I was not only failing me. I was failing The Babies. I have failed to instill in them, Move, Eat, Rest, Repeat and it’s affected their health as well.

No more. I am on a mission. I know the work that needs to be done. It’s past time to do it.

I have been really trying to get into this metaphysical thing. You know. The idea tha we are all connected. The idea there is a reality beyond what is perceptible to the our tangible senses. The idea we need only ask for what it is we want and we will receive it. Sometimes it’s called the Philosophy of Success or Quantum Metaphysics. Sometimes it’s called religion. I simply think of it as something greater than me.

So, I reread The Secret. The first time it didn’t take. Apparently I missed a step, or two. (Hardy, har, har. I crack me up.) In rereading the book, one thing jumped out at me I had forgotten annoyed me the first time around. It’s the basic premise of The (so-called) Law of Attraction. This law states everything in your life, you’ve attracted. Bascially, you asked for it.  Consciously or unconsciously. The universe is going to give you what you ask for whether or not you know you’ve asked for it. Another tenet of this law is it doesn’t distinguish “don’t” or “not” or “no” and other words of negation. So according to The Secret, the universe eliminates certain words from the English language and only listens to the others. “I don’t want a bad haircut” becomes “I want a bad haircut”.

Really? Horse-kaka! While I believe in the basic premise of Ask, Believe and Receive I don’t buy the part about everything we ask for we get and everything we’ve gotten we’ve asked for. In the book one of the contributors talks about how he always lines up the great parking spaces because he asks the universe for great parking spaces.  By deduction, he is saying if you are pessimistic about getting a great parking spot you will get a lousy parking spot.

Well today, when I was parking in a downtown Newark, NJ parking garage, I was cursing the architects and engineers  who built this thing because I just knew I wasn’t going to get a good spot. Thus by The (so-called) Law of Attraction, I should have gotten a lousy parking spot. Well, I did not. I got the best spot in the entire garage. Right by the entrance to the building I was going into. Sometimes, you just get what you get.

This one aspect of The Law of Attraction - everything you have asked for you attract and everything you attracted, you’ve asked for - is a bunch of bullshit (Oops, no cursing here. I mean B.S. or bull-ish). Trust me. There is a bunch of stuff going on in my life that I did NOT ask for. But it came along with some other stuff I DID ask for.

I asked the universe for there to be a black/brown/woman President of the United States in my lifetime. It gave it to me. But I did not ask for a near depression, the world-wide freezing of the banking/lending system and two wars in foreign lands against an elusive enemy to provide the impetus for this president’s election.

I asked for a relationship filled with love, passion and fun with a woman who was nurturing, energetic, gorgeous and shared my interests. The universe answered. In her, the universe brought me someone who gave me and was all those things. She was and is very easy to love. But damn! She is flawed, as we all are. Alas, the universe also gave me someone impossible to be in a relationship with. At least the kind I envision.

I asked the universe for my weekend-only barber to be available during the week because it was more convenient for me. The universe delivered. My barber is now available during the week. But I didn’t ask the universe for my barber to lose his regular, benefit-paying, unionized job with DHL to make it all possible. Or for him to take up barbering full-time only to change to another shop 30 miles from my house… because it was more convenient for him.

What The Secret misses is there is a ying-and-yang to this asking the universe for what you want mumbo jumbo. You cannot have hot without cold. You cannot have high without low. Good without evil. Happy without sad. Coke without Sprite. Love without hate. Life without death. The universe as far as I see it demands balance. The universe also demands randomness. Sometimes, stuff just happens and it’s out of your control. Sometimes you get what you didn’t ask for, good and bad. So, to say I asked, or anyone asks, for B.S. in their life is, well, B.S. I did not ask for some of the things in my life. I did not ask for lemons, but I damn sure got ‘em.

For those of you who’ve read this far please don’t think I’m poo-pooing the entirety of Law of Attraction. I’m not. I just think about it differently. Do I think you/we are at the mercy of the universe? No. We can influence the outcomes through our thoughts and actions. We just cannot determine outcomes. But to even influence outcomes we need to build on Ask, Believe, Receive. At least three steps should be added. It should be:

1. Ask
2. Believe
3. Work Your Ass Off
4. Persist At Working Your Ass Off
5. Receive
6. When You Get Lemons (’cause you will get lemons), Make Lemonade

I’ve gotten my fair share of lemons lately. I won’t tell you how long lately is. It’s been a while. When it’s all said and done though, I’m not deterred. The next chapter of my life is about change, change for the better. It’s about going after what I want. The love of my family, my babies, JEM, my friends; wealth in both material and spiritual form; health both in body and mind and ultimately happiness for me and those I touch. It’s about making the life I want and making some sweet sweet lemonade along the way!

However, when I really think about it, my regard for privacy has not served me the way I expected or wanted. In some ways it has hurt me. To exercise privacy requires the active withholding of some information. The upside is you prevent people from judging your every nook and cranny. Get out of there! This is why diaries used to have locks. But there is a downside to being private. Inevitably, the private person allows room for others to implant or supplement a false reality about you, your feelings, your abilities and your intentions where there is a lack of information. While many times this may have no consequence on your life, in many ways I’ve found it to be detrimental in my life. Especially in my personal relationships.

I’ve been called mysterious, sneaky, someone with an agenda, up to something and the like just because I did not wish to disclose every aspect of my life. This couldn’t be further from the truth. I am not mysterious or sneaky or anything else. I’m just private. My thoughts are mine, my ideas are mine, my feelings are mine. Mine! Mine! Mine! I do not wish to share it all. What I do share I feel is enough of a representation of me that you can get to know the “who” of who I am. With the things that I don’t share, I am just simply more comfortable having an internal dialogue with myself about those things. I don’t want you to know. Mind your business!

But here’s the thing. I know I’m fighting a losing battle. Privacy in this world is becoming elusive if not yet non-existent. We are living in a world moving toward being an open-book society.  Diaries don’t have locks anymore. People blog about their kids and their personal lives online (eh-hem). I know the intimate details of Paris Hilton’s sex life because reality-TV is so big. You’re seen as particularly suspicious if you don’t have a Facebook page. God forbid you don’t answer your cell phone within the first Jonas Brothers ringtone. People expect access to you at all times. Not to mention the government has established laws that allow them (and you) to rifle through my cyber garbage to find out who I texted, who I called, who I emailed, what I bought, what I viewed, where I traveled, who I was with and what that thing really was that was growing on my back from my formerly private medical records. With two, sometimes just one piece of information you can, sometimes for a small fee, find out almost everything you need to know about a person. Some of it true, some of it not.

Privacy as we once knew it is dead!

Today, I went back and reread part of Thomas Friedman’s book, The World Is Flat 3.0. Friedman writes in a section called “Flattener #9: In-Forming”,

“There is another side to in-forming that people are going to have to get used to, and that is other people’s ability to in-form themselves about you from a very early age. Search engines flatten the world by eliminating all the valleys and peaks, all the walls and rocks, that people used to hide inside of, atop, behind, or under in order to mask their reputations or parts of their past. In a flat world, you can’t run, you can’t hide, and smaller and smaller rocks are turned over. Live your life honestly, because whatever you do, whatever mistakes you make, will be searchable one day.”

This new reality that Friedman speaks of plus the fact that I have had enough situations where being private allowed people to draw false conclusions about me are two of the reasons that have lead me to start Big Piece of Chicken. In a searchable world, I’d rather promote the truth about me and reveal my own skeletons than to have someone else do it for me. Or worse yet, get my facts wrong. Really, I am still that private person wanting to tell you to mind your business. But I realize I live in an open-book world and privacy is met with suspicion.

But since the blog launched I have struggled with how un-private I can and should be. I have contemplated this question with myself. I was also affected by an unfortunate event that recently turned ugly in a personal relationship due to the blog. I have solicited the advice of E.Payne on the subject. I have read and contemplated Heather B. Armstrong’s views on revealing personal information. And I have reread Friedman’s book today. With all, I have come up with the following. Below is a doodle I did in my local ‘Bucks.

The Iceberg of Me

Basically it’s like this.

If I just give you tip of the iceberg stuff, you’ll be bored and I’ll be bored. Who cares. So what. Who cares what kind of toothpaste I used today. (Crest Pro-Health) I can give you more than that, just under the surface stuff, like my views on life. But you’ll get bored eventually and I’ll run out of things to say. I’m not going to tell you the things I wouldn’t tell my therapist. And I’m definitely not going to tell you the things that materialize from the Abyss of My Soul. That’s a place I want to pretend doesn’t exist.

But I think there is this middle space where I can be open-book and not feel like I’m giving away the farm. Although I am not comfortable in this area and still don’t know quite how to do it, I will try to operate there and at least in the other two top tiers of the “Iceberg of Me” both on this blog and in my personal life.

Don’t worry. If you’re reading this and I hold some dark secret of yours, I won’t be telling. But I may reveal some of my own. Let’s see if this more revealing me serves me better than the one who is so private.