Elvis Lives! (In the Suburbs)

On Saturday morning, I am woken up by Elvis and bagpipes. I lean over to see if my alarm clock is stuck between radio stations, soon realizing that I hadn’t set an alarm. It is Saturday. Saturday equals sleep for me.

Perplexed, I get out of bed and peek through my curtains. And there he is, in all his glory: Elvis – clad in a white bedazzled, studded shirt with the collar flipped up, and matching white bellbottom pants with a belt that you could see from space. Yes indeed, Elvis is alive and he is crooning, “You ain’t nothin’ but a hound dog” at my window.

The bagpipes are about twenty feet away from Elvis (not far enough). I am having flashbacks of my childhood: my mother drilling our Scottish heritage into my head by means of endless recordings of her favorite pipers and my father trying to instill in me what “real” music should sound like by playing LPs of Elvis, playing along with his guitar. I watch the pipers, and in my head, I go through the motions of Scottish country dancing – ugh. I turn my focus back to Elvis, and I swear one of my legs starts to wiggle, but it may just be pre-caffeine jitters.

I have never thought to imagine the King of Rock ‘n Roll and a band of twelve pipers go head-to-head for the spotlight on a suburban street in May. Nor what they are here for in the first place. I just moved to the suburbs after living in the city my entire life. In the city, Elvis might make an appearance, but only in the form of an over-confident, slightly inebriated fan, after closing time at the karaoke bar. But pipers? Not so much. I’m at a loss, so I walk into my den, where my community calendar is pinned up on a corkboard on the back panel of my workstation hutch. I flip through the calendar as I rub the sleep out of my eyes.

The May Day Parade! Upon realizing this, I am perhaps a little over zealous, but I have never really lived in a community before – the only parades I’ve gone to are more like protests than anything else. Wrapping my duvet cover around my shoulders, and with slippers on my feet, I visit the coffee maker for my essential caffeine kick (which did help my leg stop swaying) and then head for the deck.

One of the beauties of living in suburbia is that I have a rooftop deck – not a tiny Juliette balcony that looks out to a concrete alley between city blocks that I can only fit on if I lean up against the wall. No, this deck is huge and amazing and now that I can fit more than a body on my deck, I have completely spoiled both this deck and myself with stunning, quality patio furniture. But what feels like the greatest thing about this deck today is that it has a perfect view of the entire parade.

The parade lasts for a good hour and a half. Elvis and the piping band are followed by heaps of different community groups – from kids’ sports teams and school bands to War Veterans and vintage cars to Boy Scouts and Girl Guides. When all that is left is a few lonesome streamers and candy wrappers, I get up from my porch swing, head inside to my couch to catch up on the sleep that Elvis interrupted, with a smile on my face and an old song in my head.

On the Day I was Going to be Late for Work and My Furniture Helped Me

It has happened to all of us. The alarm goes off, you look at the clock, you see the time and somewhere in your semi-conscious state of half waking you make the decision to simply ignore it, roll over and drift back to sleep. You finally jerk yourself out of your slumber at that irritating point in which you are juuust too late to ever make it on time despite your best efforts, but you try anyway. In an unpleasant blur of tooth brushing and pulling on pants in the dark, you manage to scramble out of your apartment and onto the streets where a walk to the bus provides that final seam which will surely seal your lateness.

Allow me to take a moment and tell you a tale about when I was going to be late for work and my furniture helped me. Not only did I end up not being late, but I also looked extra spiffy and put together.

I normally wake up for work at 7 in the morning. If I wake up at 7 in the morning, I have 45 minutes to get ready, and maybe even enjoy the newspaper over a cup of coffee (though more than likely it will be a cartoon over a bowl of Froot Loops).

Oftentimes I see that ‘7:00’ glowing bright red on my nightstand and refuse to believe that the time has truly come for me to leave my warm cocoon of blankets and sheets and face the cold bathroom floor and the harsh buzz of my electric toothbrush. I see that bright ‘7:00’ flashing in my face and, instead of rising, I simply turn off the alarm and fall back asleep. Generally half an hour to 45 minutes later, I wrench the blankets off of my body and tear through the house like a madwoman trying to compress my 45 minute morning into five.

However, there was something different about this day; something unusual about my morning routine. You see, I had recently fully furnished my apartment with purchases from the reasonably priced and wonderfully easy to navigate online furniture retailer Cymax. I woke up late, like any other day when I wake up late; however this time, squishing my routine into five minutes was much easier than before. Instead of being sprawled on the counter or in some random location, my keys were in the top drawer of my brand new accent table which I had placed conveniently next to my front door. In addition to this, I bought a brand new kitchen cart which not only provided me with a handy place to store my Froot Loops but also a way to wheel around my bowl of cereal so that I could sneak bites while I was rushing to the bathroom from the bedroom to the kitchen and back. Finally, my coat, instead of being thrown haphazardly over a chair, was perched nicely atop a lovely mahogany coat rack, right at the door, ready for me to wear.

I couldn’t believe it, but what with all of my new purchases, my 45 minutes morning routine was easily condensed into five fast minutes! I was shocked and amazed! Especially when my brand new armoire helped me pull my pants up, or when my spanking new night table gently combed my hair while I put my contacts in.

…is that normal?

Snooze Bars and Taking Thread

Christmas past, my mother was reminiscing with my grandmother about how she used to be upset with how frequently her son was getting his face stitched up, 5 times in all to be exact. While I’m not exactly DeNiro in Mary Shelley’s Frankenstein, a number of high-sticks, elbows and pucks over the years of competitive hockey have meant 14 or so loops over 4 different sessions. The other time was not so macho glamorous I’m afraid.

As a youth, like many young boys, I had an early morning paper route. I was a reliable paper boy for the most part; you could rely on your paper being on your doorstep every morning, and you could rely on it being dry no matter the weather. However, you couldn’t rely on it being there with any timed consistency as some mornings I’d be out there on my metal-basketed BMX at 6 am and other days I’d only be fetching the papers out of the drop box at 6:40.

Long story short, as a result of a small and cluttered bedroom, my all-important alarm clock was most nights simply resting on the mattress next to me. All too frequently, I would simply have to aim a short slap in the direction of the annoyance to purchase another 10 minutes of slumber without having to become even slightly cognizant. 3 or 4 slaps later, my father would be in the room rousing me and rushing me out the door.

Eventually, my father came up with the idea that locating the alarm on my study desk (which paired with a dresser and bed to make up my entire room) would force me out of the bed and accordingly bring me round and get me out the door on time. It seemed logical enough.

The searing torment of the cacophony that did not cease with my frantic pounding of the mattress around me was indescribable. In a semi-conscious panic, I shot out into the darkness towards the source of the malevolence. Whether I tripped over one of the many items on my floor, or whether my groggy legs failed me, I’ll never know. The underside of my chin bounced off the edge of the desk full-force to the tune of four stitches and many disappointed subscribers.

As a result, the fibrous ridge of skin under my chin is a constant reminder how I really could’ve used a nightstand that fateful morning. A means of keeping the alarm clock just slight out of easy reach so I would have had to step out of la-la land long enough to get a grasp on exactly what I was doing. A bedside table would have taken away the need for the cross-room solution and its chaotic and bloody consequences.

Preventive measures are yours to be had at nightstandselect.com, a division of Cymax Stores Online and a recommended means of ensuring peace of mind at your bedside. They offer a wide selection of night stands for any bedroom, understanding that choosing a bedside table needs to be based on both style and function considering the value it has to the start of your day and its end.

For years I told people a skate had come up and got me under the chin.