Cheers

On Friday, I went to a party. On Friday, I had two beers.

That brings my alcohol total for the year up to…two beers.

Actually, I can't remember the last time I had a beer. I think it might have been December of 2004. Maybe January '05.

I haven't given up drinking. I just haven't been in situations that lent themselves to alcohol consumption.

The party on Friday was such an occasion. It was a 50th birthday party for a friend. We were on stage together 20 years ago, and then his wife and I were part of an improv troupe that I left three years ago. We have one of those friendships that can hibernate for decades, then pick up right where we left off.

This was the first party I had been to in some time that wasn't a) hosted by my employer, or b) hosted by a fromage-y rodent. It was a whole lot of fun, talking to a bunch of theater people, catching up, laughing, meeting new people.

One guy I met looked familiar, but neither of us knew where we knew the other from. We both liked to play pool, though, and our host had a table in the basement.

We were halfway through our second game when I heard a familiar voice calling out: "Honey? Are you down there?"

"Yes," we both called out.

-----------------

In February of 2002, the entertainment reporter at the newsroom where I was once a producer told me about an improvisational comedy company that had just formed. She suggested I audition for the group. She knew I had done stand-up, and been in another improv group back in the late '80's, but left it when I got the job in news.*

But now I was out of news, and had my evenings free. My wife encouraged me; she thought I needed to get out of the house a bit**

Kim, the woman running the group was a dynamic, dark-haired lady who gave up a lucrative corporate job to pursue a career in the arts. I had her roaring with laughter five minutes into the audition.

Improv is a strange beast. Neither comedy club nor theater, there's not a lot of places it exists. But Lord, it's what I love best. I didn't mind that we didn't play out much. I was happy just rehearsing. When I was performing, either in rehearsal or on stage, I felt there was nothing that could be thrown at me that I couldn't handle.

That wasn't the case at home. My wife was drinking more and more. Every night was a bottle of wine. Every weekend morning began with the pipe. She drank herself sick; I would call and make excuses.

And we would fight. I would threaten. Empty threats and empty bottles were common in my house.

But the comedy was good. We started getting good reviews. We began booking regular gigs in coffeehouses and nightclubs. A local theater wanted us to be a regular feature. We weren't making money, but we were covering expenses.

And we were friends. We would hang out together afterwards. Kim began to notice that I was a little more withdrawn. I had been with the group for about a year at that point.

One night, after rehearsal, we all began to discuss the upcoming invasion of Iraq. My colleagues were all for it; I was not. We argued for quite a while, and one by one, everyone went home, except for Kim and me. And the conversation turned from an argument to me spilling my guts about my wife. She was a sympathetic ear. She was, at the time, the only person I had told about what was going on.

After that, our rehearsals always ended with us sitting around and talking.

One night, when I hugged her goodnight, I kissed her on the cheek. She kissed me on the cheek. I kissed her again…

And we kissed. Such a kiss. Her mouth was soft and inviting, her body melted into mine. It was a moment of tenderness and passion that I had not had in some time, and have not had since.

Had we been in her house, we may have ended up in bed. But we weren't at her house. We were in the street. Standing between two parked cars.

We both realized we couldn't do this. But we kissed again.

We tried to keep our relationship professional. But more than one night ended up with our lips together, our arms around each other.

Eventually, for the sake of my marriage, I decided to leave the group.

------

We were halfway through our second game when I heard a familiar voice calling out: "Honey? Are you down there?"

"Yes," we both called out.

Down the stairs came Kim. I was playing pool with her new boyfriend. The one she's moving in with.

Life is a strange mixture of comedy and pathos. It's also the cumulative result of the decisions we make, with a heavy dose of opportunity and resources thrown in.

Had we been in her house the first time we kissed, we may have had sex. Or we may not. We had plenty of opportunities to make love, have sex, or whatever else you want to call it but we didn't.

Where does the line between fidelity and infidelity get drawn? My best guess is somewhere between Jimmy Carter's lusting in his heart, and Bill Clinton's intern affairs.

But in the end it doesn't matter whether I was faithful or not. Even if we had ended up together, it would have only been briefly. The only difference would have been how the marraige ended, and had we been together at the time, the explosion would have torn us apart anyway.

I made a joke out of my gaffe. I'm good at improv. When I'm performing, there's nothing you can throw at me that I can't handle.

We finished the game. I lost.

I had two beers on Friday.

Yeharr

*It's hard to get gigs at clubs when you work 'til midnight Monday through Friday.
**Because, it turned out, it made it easier for her to drink and get stoned that way.

RV There Yet?

Took the kids to a sneak preview of RV, the new Robin Williams family flick.

I laughed. A lot.

That's all.

RV is as much fun as you would expect a Robin Williams fish-out-of-water movie would be. It's also utterly inconsequential.

This is Williams stepping onto the same path that Chevy Chase, Billy Crystal, Steve Martin, Tim Allen, and Eddie Murphy have travelled.

It's the next step in the Hollywood aging process: First, you're a hot-shit, hot shot comedian, and in the space of a few decades you go from hip and irreverent to bad hips and irrelevant. From countercultural comedian to father-figure actor.*

They're all five years from 'All-Star Tribute' TV special status.

In this installment, Williams plays Bob Munro, an executive VP at a globalized soft-drink company who's lost touch with his family. His boss, a germophpobic sociopath (played exactly like you'd think Will Arnett would play him, because he does) forces Bob to give up his family vacation to Hawaii to help him take over a soda company located in Boulder Colorado. The boss plays up the fact that he's hired a geekly little Harvard MBA that's being groomed to take his place.

His home life's not much better, what with his teen-age daughter rarely talking to him except in insulting terms, his pre-teen son heavy into lifting weights and establishing his gangsta street cred, and his long-suffering wife who just wants him to communicate.

But rather than communicate, Bob decides to rent an RV to take his family to Boulder. He sells it as a camping adventure, without telling them about the meeting.

The grumpy family goes along. They meet a wholesome family (headed by Jeff Daniels, as a salt-of-the-earth Texan). Along the way, they realize that they actually do care about each other, and that family is the most important thing, while utterly destroying a $75,000 motor home.**

I successfully predicted every single thing that happened in the film. You can too, if you watch the trailer for it. Do I need to tell you that the Colorado soft-drink company is run by two hippies? Do I need to tell you that the sons of the two families fall in love with the daughters of the opposite families? Do I need to tell you that the yee-haw Texans are actually far smarter than you are originally led to believe?

Didn't think so.

But if you set your mind in neutral and just watch the slapstick action, it's actually a lot of fun. Williams is far more restrained than he could be in this flick, which adds to the humor. I think he's realizing that less CAN be more.

Bottom line: this is standard fare, but well paced, and the characters are all pretty well fleshed out. It's obvious that a lot of the plot was left on the edit room floor to make room for the slapstick, but that's ok. People don't go to these sorts of movies for engaging story lines...just enough of a narrative to move from one mishap to another.

If you've had a hard week, and you just want to relax with your kids while having a good laugh and cramming popcorn into your mouth, go see it.

You'll laugh. That's all.


Yeharr

*One thing that bothers me about all of these flicks: the father figure is almost invariably portrayed as an ultra-successful, seven-figure-salary sort of guy. Why is that? Why don't they try doing movies about middle-class families?
**I guess it's a good thing he's ultra-successful after all.

Arg. Arg.

No, that's not a pirate noise.

That's the sound of frustration.

I was supposed to sign the lease on my new apartment today. The rental agent called me this week and said "Good news! Your application was accepted. However, the owner is selling the house."

Nice. Well, chances are, that's not going to be that big of a deal. The only problem would be if the new owner wanted to live there. Then I would have to clear out in 60 days. If the new owner was just looking for rental income (similar to the current owner), they would have to honor the lease.

So that took a little of the shine off the place. But it was still a good house, in a good neighborhood. The owner's asking price was more than twice the taxed assessed value of the place, so my guess was that the only thing that would happen is that I would have a 'For Sale' sign on my front lawn. No biggie.

On Saturday, I was supposed to sign my lease for our new apartment. My appointment time was at 2. I get there, and he's with a different client. I sit in the waiting room, and he eventually brings out the lease. The lease says "May 1." I had said "May 15." He says he'll have to talk to the landlord.

Back into his office he goes. He comes back out and says "I fought tooth and nail for you, and you can move in on the 15th." He hands me another paper. "And here's the pet addendum. We need an additional $500 deposit."

I work with salespeople every day. I know how they operate. But even if I didn't, there wasn't much of a mistake here. "Fought tooth and nail" was the first alarm. When a salesman says that, they're trying to get you to believe they're on your side. When a salesman wants you to believe he's on on your side, it means he really isn't on your side. I'm ok with the fact that his job is to make as much money for himself and his client as he can. But when he tries to play me, that says something about his ethics.

And, I don't have a problem with a landlord wanting extra for pets. It's his or her right to ask that. Dropping it on my lap at signing is bullshit.

Arg.

So, I've got my security deposit back. But I'm still without a place to move. I have until June 1st, but I really wanted a place starting the 15th, so that I can take two weeks to move and clean.

I'm not worried. I'm sure I'll find a place. I'm merely frustrated.

A second Arg goes out to STBEW. Earlier this week she said she's planning a trip with her AA sponsor to Philadelphia. Her sponsor has a sister in the area, and she was going to take her own two kids (who are about the same age as mine) for a long weekend visit.

I've only met her sponsor briefly a couple of time. She seems nice enough. She's a single mom with two kids. She just had a bunch of repairs done on a van she just acquired, so it's in good shape. But still, my initial reaction was no, and that's what I told her.

But wait a minnit. Why was I saying no? It was because of unreasonable fears. They are her kids every bit as much as they are mine. A trip to the birthplace of the nation would be fun and educational for them. And I would have four nights and three days without kids or ex-wife. I could watch shows I want to watch. Do things I want to do.

Perhaps even (gasp!) go on a date!

So the next day, I call STBEW, and admit that I was being unreasonable. She had every right to take the kids there, and that it was a good idea, and that I should have said so when she first brought the subject up.

That was on Thursday. Friday night I come home after working two jobs. The kids had the week off, so STBEW was watching them at my place. As she's getting ready to go, she casually remarks "...and my sponsor just got her drivers' license, so everything's set for the trip."

dingdingdingdingdingding

That was the sound of alarm bells. Waitaminnit. "She just got her license? You're driving to Philadelphia, one of the least driver-friendly cities on this continent with a woman who's just started driving?"

"No, she's been driving for a while."

"You're going to Philadelphia with a woman who's been driving illegally?"

"No...she had her learners permit."

The conversation went on for a while following our old format--I ask a question, and she gives a vague answer, an incomplete answer, or an accusation. From what I can glean, her sponsor has had a learners permit for fifteen years, or maybe not. STBEW is not a bad driver, but she's not very good in pressure situations. And she couldn't read a map to find her way out of a bathroom. I expressed my concerns for the safety of our children.

She called me a hippocite. Her reasonings are very instructive.

I am a hippocrite because Lt. Trouble drives 90 mph. If I'm ok with him doing that, then I should be ok with her taking the kids to Philly.

By the way, I'm not ok with him doing 90. But he's doing 90 in a car that he scupulously maintains, on mostly flat, straight desert roads that exist three time zones away and he's fucking 24 and a cop and what can I do about it anyway!!!

I can't control what happens to Lt. Trouble. However, I do have much more control over what happens to the two kids upstairs watching cartoons in my bedroom. Now I must figure out how to exercise that control.

Arg.

It's amazing how quickly my life can turn into a circus.

Yeharr

I'm not dead.

I'm sensing that people think things aren't all that good in my neck of the woods.

That's not really the case.

Yeah, I was more than a little bit upset about the way things are going at work, but that's only part of my life. I choose to look at the good stuff instead.

Like my kids. My son has decided to perform "Who's on First?" as part of his comedy club performance. His biggest problem so far is deciding whether he wants to play Costello, who gets more laughs, or Abbot, who is the boss. Both aspects appeal to him.

My daughter is going through her closet, and removing the clothes that are too small for her. She's deciding which of her friends will get which of her clothes, because they are all fashionable, if too small for her. At her last physical, her doctor told us she has the perfect proportions for a 10-year-old girl. The thing is, she's eight.

Other bits of happy news: The Salad Bar Witch has signalled surrender. When I went to get a salad for lunch today, the old three-compartment containers were gone, replaced by the quart-sized plastic previously reserved for the olive-bar patrons. I briefly considered filling it with olives, but

1. That's a bit too contrarian for my tastes
2. I don't like olives all that much, and
   
3. The witch wasn't around, and what fun would it be if she didn't see me do it?

These events are as much a part of my life as crappy things happening at work. So why stress out? I choose to be happy.

Finally: Once again more than one blogger of note has commented on the same subject at around the same time. This time, the topic is strippers. So, I thought I'd share my limited experience with this subject.

______________________________________________________

About 20 years ago, my friend Steve and I decided to hit a club. It's not something we normally did. In fact, if we weren't completely bored out of our skulls, we probably wouldn't have done it.

In some ways, the boredom was better. It didn't cost as much.

We sat right at the walkway. The table was built right onto it. There was a little two-inch barrier to keep the spilled beer off the walkway, but the dancers would regularly step over it and walk along the bottles and glasses. The girls weren't incredibly ugly, nor heartstoppingly lovely. They were just there. But the best part was the guy sitting next to me. He looked quite normal most of the time. But when one of the girls would walk by, he would sit rigid in his chair, his hands under the table, his mouth opening and closing. Sometimes he would push up under the table, like he was playing an upside-down piano. Really, he looked and moved sort of like Ray Charles did while he was playing--except he was white, he could see, and there was no piano. Steve and I were quite amused. We even thought about tipping him instead of the dancers. For years, whenever we were together, one of us would invariably imitate the guy.

Steve was also one of the guys who took me to a club for my bachelor party. I didn't want to go. Oh, I wanted a party, but not at a strip club.

I was outvoted. It was tradition, I was drunkenly informed.

So we went to a club. Steve and I looked for the upside-down piano guy, but alas, he was not around. Instead we watched nekkid girls. Which was fine. They were buying.

Then they decided to buy me a private dance.

Woo-hoo. Hot dawg. Golly. A private dance.

I was taken into a small alcove, within view of one of the club 'associates.' The walls and floor were covered in brown carpet. There was a cigarette machine. There was a broom closet. There was a chair. There was a nekkid girl. There was me.

The nekkid girl 'splained the rules: I don't touch her. She don't touch me. Got it.

I sat, gave her my best smile and thought: let's get this over.

Shimmy shimmy. Shake shake. The song ends after about 45 secons.

"Great!" I say, rising out of the chair. "Thanks!"

"No, that wasn't enough," the girl tells me. "You get a full song. They'll play another right now."

I sit. My plastic smile facing her plastic tits. I can manage this for one song...

"OK, we have a few announcements to get through here..." says the DJ, and so I get to hear about all of the girls with plastic tits who will be appearing in the coming days and weeks while I sit inches away from a nekkid girl I had no desire to touch even if I was allowed, whose conversational skills were limited to two-to-four syllable responses, with the first syllable invariably being "Ummm..."

A few days later, the song begins, and she dances. Shake shake shimmy shimmy. She displays one part of her body, then another. I smile and nod appreciatively. Yes, yes. That's nice. Those are nice, too.

The song is mercifully short, and I thank her and wish her the best in her chosen career and hightail it for the relative safety of my table, where they were all jealous because I got to spend so much time with this girl.

Yes, my friends andI are dorks. At least we didn't play Risk that night.

The coda to this story is that five years after my bachelor party, my department hires another commercial producer/director. She's a very nice young woman. Smart, creative, funny. She is a classically trained pianist.

She also payed her way through college as a stripper.

A few months into her employment, we talked a bit about her previous job. She wasn't ashamed of it, but it wasn't really something she talked about with most people. I mentioned the upside-down piano guy from a decade previous.

"Oh, you mean Mikey!" she said.

Apparently, Mikey was a regular at the clubs. Turns out he was a highly-paid, highly-skilled engineer who worked at a local Fortune 100 company.

Mikey also liked feet. Whenever a girl with the appropriate footwear walked buy, Mikey would run his hands under the table, following the path of the foot he so desired. Of course, if one of the girls wore the wrong sort of footwear, Mikey would turn his back on the girl and not even look at her.

One night, my friend let Mikey slide a stocking off her leg, and he just about died in pleasure. He also gave my friend a $100 tip.

I haven't been to a club since my bachelor party. I don't miss it. I like women's bodies, but if I can't or don't want to touch it, what's the attraction? It's like ordering dinner, and then just staring at it.

Yeharr

Moving Forward

Sometimes things happen.

If you read my previous post, you know I was without transportation at the end of last week. I discovered that I would be without my car late Thursday afternoon, while at work, a 20 minute highway drive from home.

I had also just recieved a phone call from a sales exec, who needed something delivered to a client.

My job requires a bit of work with clients outside our office, so there's a vehicle available to my department. I have, in the past, taken that vehicle home--I have had to go on early morning events at businesses close to my house, and it just made things easier.

Sounds logical, right?

On Thursday night, I went to my manager, and explained the situation. I said that my van was not ready. I told him that I would take our van, drop the item off at a client's business, then go home with the vehicle, and bring it back the next morning.

He sighed, then said OK.

Friday morning I had a panic attack. I thought someone had broken into the van. Even though there was nothing in the van worth stealing (I had cleaned it out Thursday night), I just had this unreasonable fear. I looked out the window, and there was nothing wrong with the van that I could see.

Of course, I could only see one side.

When I got dressed and went out to go to work, I saw that someone had smashed the drivers's side window.

I don't wish the panic I had on anyone.

I called my boss, who also panicked. Only his panic had denial written all over it. He went to his boss, and told him what happened. But he left out one part.

The part where he told me it was ok to do this.

And I let him.

It actually took two conversations with people outside of my business to get me to realize I didn't do anything wrong. By that time, I had spent much of the day in a downward spiral of dread and panic.

What would happen to me? My kids? My life?

At the end of the day, my manager called me into his office.

My manager--Al--has been my friend far longer than he has been my manager. Twenty-eight months ago, my appendix burst. While I was in the hospital, my house was foreclosed. My wife was deep into drug and alcohol addiction, and was smoking and drinking away most of our money. Twenty-seven months ago, Al was one of a handful of people who helped me move over a weekend that saw a foot of snow fall during zero degree temperatures. He spent a weekend carrying stuff for me in freezing temperatures while I mainly stood around and watched.

He took the manager's position sort of out of default. The increase in salary was nice, but it required a lot of sacrifice...mostly, spending a large amount of time with the division manager, who would yell at him because our department wasn't making money, then turn around and give our department's services away for free to entice clients to use us.

His job is a friction point. He is grease. He lives his working life in fear of getting fired. Al is married with three kids.

Al told me that at the beginning of the day, I was going to be fired. He spent the entire day working with his manager, and with the corporate personnel office, working the employee handbook, reasoning with people.

Now, he told me, I was not going to be fired.

I was only going to be suspended for two days.

I was fully aware that Al's motives were at least partly self-serving. He was covering his ass. He let me use the van. If they tried to fire me, I would tell them Al had given me permission.

But Al was helping me out by doing that. And it's not his fault that we work in such a fucked-up environment. In many companies, the reaction would be "That's why we have insurance," and we would have all gone on with our lives.

Two days without pay. And I will be paying $735 for my van. And I'm moving again in a month.

I weighed all these things as I looked at the paper I was to sign.

"I'll sign it," I told him. "But between you and me: You gave me permission."

He nodded.

I'll be working his ass of when I move next month.

Yeharr

Sensors and Sensibility

My old van isn't old enough.

It was made in 1996. And, in my state at least, every vehicle made since then needs to get plugged into a computer when its state inspection is due.

My van has a check engine light on. The computer tells my mechanic that there's three sensors that need replacing. Also, one brake pad needs replacing, I need a new turn signal, and one of the little license plate lightbulbs is out.

The sensors themselves run about ten dollars each. The brake pad's about forty. The inspection is twenty-one dollars.

The entire cost of my state inspection will run me upwards of seven hundred and fifty dollars.

That little license plate lightbulb must be damned expensive.

No. It's not the bulb. Most of the cost will be the labor to dig inside the engine and drive train to get to the sensors. "Well, at least my van will run better," I say.

No, it won't, my mechanic tells me. It's already running about as well as a ten-year old van with 180 thousand miles on it can run.

"But it will be safer with these repairs," I suggest.

That's not the case, either. Well, yes, the brake pad will make it safer. And the fixed turn signal, too. But not the replaced sensors.

It seems most of the car is working fine, except the damned sensors. And the sensors need to be working in order to pass inspection.

"But the van's fine," I say.

Yes, it is, says my mechanic. But the sensors don't know that.

"But you know it," I say. "isn't that enough?"

Apparently, it isn't. Not for the state.

The state doesn't trust the mechanics. It only trusts the sensors.

There are garages on the northside of town that will, for forty bucks, slap an inspection sticker on your car, whether there's a check engine light on on your dashboard or not. I know of a few people who go there for inspections. Apparently, these guys do a brisk trade in these stickers.

The cars that will most likely have faulty sensors are the older cars on the road. These cars are driven, generally speaking, by people who can't afford newer cars. Many of them will have a check enginge light on, and the problem is not with the car, but with the sensor. The cost to replace these sensors is damned prohibitive, so many of them will get inspection stickers illegally. I'm sure a large percentage of these mechanics will slap a sticker on any car at all, regardless of its roadworthiness. There might actually be a problem with the car that will make it unsafe, but will these traffickers in inspection stickers make these repairs? Will they even know that the repairs are needed? Will they even look? If the car's going to pass inspection regardless, why even bother to inspect? This will increase the number of unsafe cars on the road, not decrease it.

I chose not to use one of these mechanics

So my mechanic has to work for two and a half days to replace sensors that will tell the state what he already knows, which will cost me about six hundred bucks more than it should to get it inspected.

This will ensure my safety.

Except for this: there's a tensioner pulley on my serpentine belt that's misaligned and should be replaced, or the belt might come off. And one of the brake line's got a bulge in it, and I should replace that brake line as well, because it's going to burst soon and I'll start losing brake fluid.

These are repairs that I need to make my van safe. But I won't be doing them.

I can't afford to have my mechanic do them now, because I'm spending seven hundred and fifty dollars to replace sensors, so that it will pass inspection. The things my mechanic sees don't need to be done to get that sticker.

I didn't go to one of those northide garages because I wanted to make sure the vehicle that transports my children is safe.

It's probably doing the opposite.

Next April I will emerge from bankruptcy. That's going to mean my paycheck will be about 35% bigger. I will be buying a new car*. At least, that's the plan.

But if, for some reason, this doesn't happen, and I'm forced to get my van inspected again, I think I'll be heading to the northside.

Yeharr
*Well, it will be new to me.

Defending Kamchatka

We just finished a jigsaw puzzle. It was a 500 piece montage of Santa Claus images picked up for fifty cents at a rummage sale. The kids and I worked on it for the better part of a week. It would have been faster if I had just done it myself, but that wasn't the point.

The last jigsaw puzzle I worked on was probably twenty years ago. STBEW didn't like jigsaw puzzles, so I didn't do them. I also didn't play Scrabble, Trivial Pursuit, or Boggle during the past two decades, because STBEW didn't like them either. She liked playing backgammon. The woman could roll doubles in her sleep.

But this post isn't about her.

While we were working on the puzzle, my 10-year-old son said he wants me to go buy Risk. He wants to play Risk. To my surprise, I said no.

It's not because I don't think he should play this game. And it's not because I can't afford to go out and buy this game.

It's because I don't want to play Risk.

I've played the game before. Probably every male between the ages of 50 and 20 can regale you with tales of all-night, sometimes all-weekend long classic battles with factions joining and fracturing, improbable victories, strokes of luck, valiant defenses, and last-gasp heroics.

I can't.

Here's my story of Risk:

I get my armies. I place my armies. I lose my armies. I watch TV or read while the rest of my friends carry on with all-night, sometimes all-weekend long classic battles with factions joining and yada yada yada.

It never mattered who I played with, or where I placed my armies.* Within twenty minutes, I was relegated to defending Kamchatka with three green blocks.**

And then I'm out.

So, I said no. If my son wants to play world domination games, he can. But I don't want to.

It's a revelation to me. It's ok to say I don't want to do something just because I don't want to.

I want to work on jigsaw puzzles.

And as I sat there, twising a piece in my hand, searching for the place it fit, I realized that working on a jigsaw puzzle was as close to the opposite of Risk as you can get with a table-related activity.

And that's what I liked about it. No competition. No time limits. No strategy. Just find the patterns--eventually they reveal themselves to you.

Let other people fight over world dominion. I'm through defending Kamchatka. I'm happy enough getting all the pieces to fit.

A big part of life is deciding which games you will play.

Pick me up, love!
Pick me up, love.
Hey, how long, how long, how long
Everyday
Everyday, ah

Pick me up, oh, from the bottom
Up to the top, love, everyday
Pay no mind to taunts or advances
I take my chances on everyday

Left to right
Up and down, love
I push up love, love everyday
Jump in the mud, oh
Get your hands dirty with
Love it up on everyday

All you need is
All you want is
All you need is love.
All you need is
What you want is
All you need is love.

Everyday
Everyday
Oh, Everyday...

Pick me up, love, from the bottom
Up onto the top, love, everyday
Pay no mind to taunts or advances
I'm gonna take my chances on everyday

Left to right
Up and up and inside out right
Good love fight for everyday
Jump in the mud, mud
Get your hands filthy, love
Give it up, love
Everyday

All you need is
All you want is
All you need is love.
All you need is
What you want is
All you need is love.
Oh...

What you’ve got
Lay it down on me
What you’ve got
Lay it down on me

All you need is
All you want is
All you need is love.
All you need is
What you want is
All you need is love.

Everyday
Everyday
Oh, Everyday...

Pick me up love
Lift me up love
Pick me up love
Everday...

Up from the bottom, everyday
Up to the top love, everyday
Pick me up love
Lift me up love
Pick me up love
Everyday

Yeharr

*And yes, I've tried the Australia gambit.

**It doesn't matter what color I started with, by this point in the game, it's always down to three green blocks.