Lessons Learned 2018

As 2018 draws to a close and 2019 rears its ugly head beautiful visage, it’s high time that I reflect on the many personal lessons I learned over the past twelve months. In honor of the upcoming New Year’s Eve countdown, I will start at lesson 10 and work my way down to lesson 1, which means when you finish reading the final lesson you need to throw confetti in the air and awkwardly kiss the person standing next to you. So without further ado, let the countdown begin…

10) Amazon Prime and Netflix are conspiring against me – It may sound paranoiac, but it’s clearly true. You would think between the two most popular streaming services, you would be able to view any movie you want to without having to pay extra, seeing as how you are already paying a monthly fee to subscribe to these platforms. Yet 90% of the time if I have a hankering for a specific film, I end up having to pay extra on Prime to watch it. Where the conspiracy comes in is the seemingly random (but clearly not) comings and goings of available movies on these separate services. On more than one occasion over the past year I’ve spent money renting or buying a film on Prime that magically appears on Netflix days later. Yes, Jeff Bezos and Reed Hastings are secretly watching me and doing everything they can to drive me insane.

9) Cats don’t like portion control – Our cat, Muffin, enjoys food. In fact, she enjoys it so much she will bully our other cat, Ping, out of the way in order to get to it. After almost a year of this behavior we started to notice Muffin getting wider and Ping getting narrower, so we decided to take action. Rather than leaving a large amount of food out at all times, we started putting a small amount of food out several times a day and feeding the cats in separate rooms. Muffin does not like this new procedure at all and has taken to incessant meowing whenever I walk within ten feet of her food dish. As an aspiring feline linguist I can tell you her meowing roughly translates to: “Hey moron, now that you’re in the kitchen are you going to feed me already??? I’ve been waiting at least nine minutes since the last time you fed me and I still gots nothing! Maybe you need a claw to the eye you simpering buffoon!” But I haven’t caved yet and the protective eyewear has been helpful.

8) Bluetooth serves a real purpose besides making people look pretentious – Nothing makes me roll my eyes faster than seeing someone walking down the street seemingly talking to themselves, before I notice they have a small electronic device dangling on the side of their face. I always wonder if these folks secretly want to be air traffic controllers but are just too lazy to get the proper training. But then one day, a couple of months ago, I needed to be on a phone meeting at the same time I had to pick my kids up from school. “Gee I wonder if there is a way I can take this call without having to hold my phone up to my ear while driving,” I thought. So I reluctantly borrowed my wife’s Bluetooth device and my eyes were opened to a whole new reality, when I realized that the advantage of this technology is that it’s convenient! Who knew? And it didn’t even bother me that everyone who drove by while I was using the Bluetooth looked at me like I was pretentious.

7) I love bibimbap! – No, I didn’t just have a seizure and hit random keys while I was typing—“bibimbap” is an actual word. (FYI – the last part of the word is pronounced “bop,” not “bap.”) It is the name of a common Korean dish, which I tried for the first time in 2018. My wife, who is Korean by birth, but was adopted by an American family when she was one, has been exploring her ancestral roots, including the food of her homeland. As it turns out, there is a Korean restaurant less than a mile from our house, which she has been frequenting and giving rave reviews. In particular, she was singing the praises of a dish called “bibimbap.” Eventually my curiosity was piqued enough for me to join her on one of her excursions and when I tasted the weirdly named entree, my mind was blown. The visually stunning dish consisted of sizzling vegetables and tofu (don’t worry carnivores, they make meat-centric bibimbap, too) on a bed of rice with a fried egg strategically placed on top. While it seemed like an odd combination of foods, causing me to insert my fork with a bit of trepidation, it turned out to be outrageously delicious. Yes, bibimbap looks great, tastes great, and is a lot of fun to say! 

6) If you miss David Bowie, check out Arctic Monkeys – Or at least check out their song Tranquility Base Hotel & Casino, which sounds like they are channeling David Bowie. While I had vaguely heard of this band, I knew nothing about them until earlier this year when a young coworker and I were chatting about music and he suggested I check out the aforementioned song. I did and was glad to do so, because I very much enjoyed the ethereal, Bowie-esque sound to the tune. As a confirmed music curmudgeon who prefers stuff from the old days, I rarely go out of my way to listen to new artists, but in this case, it was the right move. Besides, how fun is it to say “Arctic Monkeys?” Almost as fun as saying “bibimbap!” (And if I ever saw an arctic monkey eating bibimbap, it would make my day.)

5) My 12-year old son has a crazy amount of knowledge about European sports cars – I’m not a car guy and never have been. If a cool looking car drives by me, the chances are excellent I will not know the make or model and would only be able to describe it with words like “blue” or “fast.” Yet in the last couple of months my older son has been constantly talking about Ferraris and Lamborghinis and Bugattis (which I had never even heard of until he mentioned it.) How in the world did he know about these cars when his dad couldn’t tell you the difference between a Toyota and a Schwinn? Video games, of course. Turns out he plays an online game where you can earn “money” to “buy” these various vehicles. Now he thinks he might one day buy a Bugatti in real life, but I looked up the price and I’m fairly sure if he attempted such a purchase he’d go “bankrupt.”

4) My 9-year-old son knows the word “DYSENTERY” – While I am rarely surprised anymore by my younger son’s extensive vocabulary, I was taken aback when he played the word “DYSENTERY” during a game of Bananagrams. I became aware that he played this word when I heard him giggling, so I looked away from my own words to see what he had played. I was initially very impressed when I saw he had played a 9-letter word, but was a bit less proud when I noticed the words he connected to it were “FARTED” and “TOILET.” Apparently he was playing a themed version of Bananagrams. 

3) The kid who played the lead in A Christmas Story went on to play Ming-Ming in Elf – My wife turned me on to this interesting factoid. It turns out that Peter Billingsley, who played the lead in arguably the most beloved Christmas movie of the 1980s, also played the elf who managed Santa’s workshop in arguably the most beloved Christmas movie of the 2000s. I’ve seen both movies many times but would never have made that connection without the guidance of my loving spouse. See, marriage really does pay off in the end!

2) The best way to unclog a toilet is through unmitigated rage – One of my sons (who shall remain nameless) has a tendency to clog our toilets. Several times a month he comes out of the bathroom and announces that the toilet is backed up, yet again. This usually causes mild irritation on my part (is the kid using a tree’s worth of toilet paper?) but I plunge away and 90% of the time clear the clog on the first try. Sometimes it takes two or three attempts, but I still finish the job without having to break much of a sweat. That is until about a month ago. Our nameless son came into the living room and made his predictable announcement, so I rolled up my sleeves, entered the bathroom and commenced plunging. Once…twice…three times—no progress. I ended up wrestling with the toilet off and on all night and even got out the auger that we had purchased years earlier, but never used before. (Turns out operating an auger is equal parts grueling and disgusting, and, in my case, completely unsuccessful.) The clog persisted into the next day when I purchased a toilet plunger (apparently I was just using a generic plunger—who knew?) specially built to tackle such clogs. New tool in hand, I continued to plunge away and still had no luck. Conversations about hiring a plumber started to occur that evening and deep down in my soul, a simmering rage began to develop, as my manhood was challenged. I slept poorly that night, contemplating having to spend $100 an hour to hire someone for a job I should be able to do on my own. The next morning, I woke up muttering to myself, grabbed the toilet plunger, and had at the clog with a furor hitherto unseen in the Schwartzberg household. Hot anger coursing through my veins, I thrust the plunger repeatedly into the bowl like a raving madman…and amazingly, the clog cleared! I ripped off my shirt and started flexing my biceps, while grunting at the toilet, as though I were the featured performer at Wrestlemania. As I calmed down I realized that I defeated the clog, not with a plunger, or an auger, or a toilet plunger, but with unmitigated rage. I recommend it highly for all your plumbing needs.

1) If I don’t blog monthly there won’t be rioting in the streets – When I started this blog in 2012, I originally thought I would write an entry weekly. After all, I had written a weekly column for the Arizona Republic for the better part of four years, so why couldn’t I continue to write weekly for my blog? Well, it turns out the answer to that question is that I don’t have a deadline and nobody is paying me, which were pretty significant motivators during my Republic days. So my weekly blog soon turned to biweekly, which soon turned to monthly. When I got to monthly, I thought I’d found the right pace, and I kept it up pretty consistently for a few years. But this year, the monthly blog somehow got away from me, and I went without an entry in February, September, and November. When I first skipped a month I thought, “Oh crap, what’s going to happen? Will I get angry letters from readers? Will people picket outside my house? Will I find a dead hedgehog in my mailbox?” But none of those things happened and life kept on clicking along. The same lack of outrage occurred when I skipped months later on in the year and I finally realized that I don’t have to put pressure on myself to write monthly. Indeed, I should only blog when I have something to say. So in 2019, I may have one blog entry or I may have 50. And I won’t stress out about the frequency of my entries. That’s right—my New Year’s resolution is to do less, not more!

Dobby the House Cat: 2003 - 2017

When my wife and I first met Dobby in the spring of 2003, he was going by the name Rhumba. He was a six-week old orange tabby cat living in a small enclosure at the Arizona Animal Welfare League in Phoenix. When we first saw him he was playing in his own litterbox and repeatedly hitting himself in the head. He was a tiny, furry, adorable, klutzy kitten and perfect for the Schwartzberg household. We renamed him Dobby (after the house elf of Harry Potter fame) and brought him home to meet our black cat, Squeakers, who was then 11 years old.

Squeakers did not particularly get along with Dobby in the beginning, as she was used to being the only pet in the household for a few years. Also, in cat years, Squeakers was old enough to be Dobby’s grandma, so she just wanted to quietly go about her business without being bothered. Dobby, on the other hand was a frenetic fur-ball of energy who always wanted to play. He was constantly running too fast for his own good, which made him slide across our laminate floor while he desperately tried to gain traction and inevitably knocked into a wall or door.

As a kitten, Dobby got into every nook and cranny in the house, and would often relax inside one of my shoes. He also had an odd penchant for computer hacking and would jump up on my keyboard when I stepped out of the room, whereupon my return I would see ominous messages on my screen like “Are you sure you want to delete Windows?” (It was at this point that I began shutting down my computer if I knew I’d be away from it for more than a minute.)

Dobby demanded attention—especially from those who did not want to give it to him. My mother never liked house pets, although she had tolerated Squeakers because of that cat’s very calm demeanor. When my mom came out to Arizona for a visit not long after we got Dobby she was terrified of him, because of his rambunctious ways. She did her best to ignore Dobby and we tried our best to keep him at bay, but one morning I simply wasn’t fast enough. I was sitting at my computer (making sure it wasn’t getting cat-hacked) when I heard the unmistakable sound of Dobby sprinting across our floor. I looked up to see him making a beeline for my mom, who was sitting at the kitchen table reading the newspaper. She was sitting in such a way that the newspaper was fully blocking her view of the oncoming feline. I jumped up from my chair to try to stop him, but it was too late. In one swift motion Dobby leapt across the kitchen table and swatted the newspaper out of my mom’s hands. My mom screamed, “He’s attacking me! He’s attacking me!” although Dobby didn’t touch her beyond forcibly moving the newspaper from her grip. He never did anything like that before or after and I’m sure it was simply his way of saying to my mom, “I will NOT be ignored!”

Everything I just described happened prior to my wife and I having human children. But in the fall of 2006, when our first son was born, things changed a bit for the cats. Suddenly the amount of attention the cats got decreased significantly, as did their access to certain parts of the house at certain hours of the day. It was around this time that Squeakers and Dobby finally started getting along, or more accurately, conspiring.

One day, a couple of months after the baby was born, I was walking down the hallway when I encountered Squeakers standing in front of the bathroom, meowing. When I locked eyes with her, she walked into the bathroom, looking over her shoulder, as though I should follow, which I did. When I was fully in the bathroom I noticed the door began closing and when I turned around I saw, to my astonishment, Dobby on his hind legs closing the door shut with his front legs. As I watched, slack-jawed, Dobby fully closed the door and the two cats just looked up at me as though to say, “Now that we’ve trapped you in the bathroom, you must give us attention.” I made sure to pet them both a lot before exiting that room slowly.

Sadly, in the spring of 2007, at the age of 15, Squeakers passed away, making Dobby the household’s sole pet. While clearly out of sorts for a while, Dobby eventually adjusted well to being a solo cat and spent most of his time hunting for pipe cleaners and scorpions. Fortunately, pipe cleaners are more abundant in our house and Dobby loved nothing more than batting one around for 5 to 10 minutes before picking it up in his mouth and dropping it into his water dish. If he was feeling particularly crafty he would first drop it in the water dish and then pick it back up and drop it in his food dish. There were lots of messes to clean up.

As for hunting scorpions, this was luckily a very infrequent service that Dobby would provide. A few times over the years he would spot one crawling around and would mess with it until one of us noticed and searched frantically for a blunt object (generally a hammer) with which to smash the creature to bits. Dobby always looked disappointed after the scorpion’s execution and would shoot us a look as if to say, “Hey, man, you wrecked my toy.” But then he would find a pipe cleaner and all would be okay again.

In the summer of 2016, after almost ten years of being a one-cat household, we got a second cat, named Ping. Although not a kitten, at three years old, Ping was (and is) a youthful cat. Dobby, who was 13 at the time and set in his ways, was not amused by the new addition. The cats avoided each other for days and when they did start to interact, it was mostly hissing and swatting. Eventually they tolerated each other and Dobby, once the young upstart, now played the role of the curmudgeonly elder. He wore this role well.

The end, of course, is not fun to talk about, but in May of 2017 it was time for Dobby to join Squeakers and all the other great cats that came before him. In his prime, Dobby was a big, muscular, mischievous cat and that is how I will always remember him—proudly swatting newspapers, playing with pipe cleaners and defending the household against scorpions.

He was well-loved and will be well-missed.