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Cooking for oneself is an important skill that every lonely boy must master. Living alone doesn't mean you can't eat good food. Actually, it does. Because there's no sense in spending the time to make good food when it's just yourself. But you don't have to eat all fast food all the time. You need to develop the skill of cooking slop. Yes, slop. The delicious, yet kind of disgusting, easy-to-make meal that will feed you for days and that gives you the warm sensation of having prepared a nice bowl full of slop for dinner. Today, let's make pasta slop. Specifically, some sloppy ziti.

When we make some sloppy ziti, we're going to have to adapt the recipe, which is usually used for family meals, and adapt it for the purposes of a pathetic, lonely, middle-aged man eating slop alone in his kitchen. The first adaptation we have to make is with the pasta itself. Most recipes say to use ziti. But you don't have to use ziti. You have to use the pasta that comes in a tall box, not a long box. So no spaghetti, no fettuccine, but as long as it comes in a tall box, whether it's the little tubes, the little spirals, the little bow ties, it doesn't really matter. It'll all work.

Second, you're going to see recipes talk about how to make the sauce and how long to simmer it and what spices to use. You don't need that for slop. Buy a jar of Newman's Own marinara sauce. It's the one with the handsome man's face on it. Get one of those and you're good to go.

Next you're going to see a recipe that's going to talk about all sorts of different cheeses. You need shredded cheese, you need shredded Parmesan, you need grated Asiago, you need Pecorino Romano. No. You need one 16 ounce little ball of the sliced mozzarella that's sometimes on sale at Publix for half price. And you need a bag of Italian blend cheese The regular size bag, not the big one. And then you'll need some spices. I use black pepper and red pepper flakes. Those are your ingredients.

So here's how we make this slop. First cook the pasta: boil the water, put the pasta in it, cook it, stir it exactly once. Then just leave it until your timer goes off. Drain the pasta. Put the pasta in a big bowl. At this point, turn on the oven: 400 degrees.

While the pasta sits in the big bowl, dump the whole jar of pasta sauce on it. Stir. Take half of the sliced mozzarella and just tear it up in little chunks and toss it in the bowl. Stir. Take half the bag of cheese, dump it in the bowl. Stir. Add some pepper and red pepper flakes, however much you'd like. Stir. Then take your jar, spray bottle of pan, spray up the nine by 11 pan, which is the big one. It's the big rectangular one that you might use for brownies. Today we're gonna use it for pasta slop. Spray it up with a little pan. Dump the pasta in it.

Now it’s time to make the top of the slop. Take the rest of the sliced mozzarella and layer it on top. It's not gonna cover all the pasta. So you take the extra last half of the bag of cheese, and you fill in all the gaps. No pasta left uncovered. Everything should be covered in cheese. That's how you get it good and sloppy. And you're not going to use that cheese for anything else, so just use the whole damn bag. By this time hopefully your oven has warmed up. Open up the oven, toss the ziti in, 30 minutes.

While it's baking, clean up your mess and put on some music. Maybe Andrew Bird or War on Drugs.

When it's done, let it cool a bit before plating. No sides needed – you've got cheese, pasta, and a hydro flask with a popsicle-flavored liquid IV. That's all a man needs.

Leftover hack: Cold pasta slop is delicious. Eat it straight out of the pan. Why waste time heating it up?

And that's it. Simple little thing. Takes about 20 minutes of prep. Not even. Most of the time is spent waiting for the water to boil. And the rest of the time you're just whistling along with Andrew Bird. And you end up with a nice big tray of sloppy ziti.

Time to nom that slop up.

A plate of sloppy ziti

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I went on a cruise. By myself, of course.

I signed up for three excursions. Two were canceled.

I got a mani-pedi and a facial for the first time. Manicure was overrated, but the pedicure? Your boy is all about that foot treatment now.

Food was okay. Like the good college dining hall. But they gatekeep the soda. Why must I be punished because others did not purchase a drink package? I don’t think I had a between-meal soda the entire trip because I didn’t want to have to wait at the bar. Once the line was so long at the bar, I drank water instead. Plain water. At a meal. Like a chump.

I wanted to go on a cruise because I’d never been on one. Now I’ve been on one. I’ll stick with camping.

Cruise Gallery

So I'm driving with my grandfather and my sister and Duffy, even though my grandfather died before Duffy was born. We're driving through the streets of Atlanta, or the suburbs outside of Atlanta. I don't know why. I can remember in my the dream thinking maybe I should be driving and not Grandpa. He kept changing lanes without signaling and cutting people off and people were honking at him.

He asked about a road that had a gate on half the road blocking you from turning left. As he was looking at that, he drove off the side of the road, and we flew into open space, just spinning in the air. I could feel in the dream the gravity go away as the minivan floated in the air. But then somehow the minivan loops around, boomerangs back onto the road and rolls down the side of the hill and ends up at the bottom of the hill with people watching as we get out of the car.

I remember yelling at my sister to call the police and then a man, a man from the Kids in the Hall, comes up and steals our newspaper. We ask him for help, he runs away, across the street. I see him running, I see him pass people that he could be asking for help, I see him pass a phone booth that he could use to call the police. He keeps running towards a building in the far distance and in the dream I yell, “Mark McKinney is a coward!”

And of course, because with #ThePark, you act out your dreams sometimes, I woke up to myself screaming at the top of my lungs, “Mark McKinney is a coward!”

I doubt I have endeared myself to my neighbors on this cruise. Maybe I should get a little magnet for my cruise ship door that says, “I scream random things at night. Don't worry about it, it's just #ThePark.” Or maybe something like, “If you hear me shoutin’, don’t worry nothing ‘bout it.” I could be making this part of the whole wacky cruise ship door vibe.

Apologies to Mark McKinney.

Every other stupid website does this, so I get to do it too. Here it is, my highly anticipated 2024 list of my favorite things.

Favorite thing number one, crackers for dinner. You don't have anything for dinner? You don't want to cook? You got a box of Triscuits in the cupboard? Well, now you got yourself a dinner. You could have it with cheese, you could have it with summer sausage, or you could have the gentleman's dinner: Sit on the couch, watching sporting events you don't really care about, and just eat half a box of Triscuits and call it a night. It's the way to live.

Favorite thing number two, remembering to take all your drugs. Man, does it feel good when you're getting ready for bed and you realize that you actually remembered to take all of your pills. The three in the morning are easy, and so are the three at night, but it's easy to forget the two you're supposed to take at work. And even better is when you also take your vitamin, your fish oil pills, your probiotic, and your B vitamins, but that only happens once every 13 weeks.

Favorite thing number three, people liking old posts. Feels good, man. You know that someone's thinking about you, googling you, scrolling through your stupid posts, smashing that like button, plotting their revenge, watching you through binoculars. timing you, noticing your patterns, shadowing your every move throughout, pinpointing moments of vulnerability. It's the ultimate compliment.

Favorite thing number four, the Plaud AI voice recorder. If I had a nickel for every time I've been tricked by a seductive internet ad, I would probably not have that much money because I usually spend a lot more than a nickel on those t. Things like expensive single blade razors that don't really work very well. Expensive orthopedic dress shoes that aren't really very comfortable and shoelaces break. Expensive cat toys that the cats don't even like. But there's one thing that redeems my gullible internet shopping addiction, and that is the Plaud AI voice recorder thing, which I'm using right now to dictate this stupid blog post. You might be wary of something that has AI in the name, advertises on Instagram, and is a subscription service. Those are all huge red flags. But let me tell you something, people, this thing actually works. It's the size of a credit card, it records your voice, it transcribes it with AI, you copy and paste it into an email. It's fantastic. I can ramble incoherently and have it organized into more comprehensible thoughts. It's good stuff.

Favorite thing number five, attaching a hook to your bedroom ceiling. Not only is it great for hanging a Parkinson's boxing bag, it really adds to the confusing vibe of the house. Imagine this scenario: you ring the doorbell and I actually decide to answer it. You ask to use the bathroom. You walk through the foyer, with a Bob's Big Boy piggy bank and a pissing boy liqueur bottle. You enter the family room, where none of the clocks work. Then you make it to the bathroom, but you are creeped out by the framed 8x10 glossy of Ed McMahon staring at you. So you ask to use the real bathroom, which means you have to walk through my bedroom where you see a hook in the ceiling with a bungee cord hanging from it. I ask if you'd like to see my attic. You leave and never return. The hook hanging from the ceiling in the bedroom has done its job.

Favorite thing number six, magnets. If you go somewhere, you should get a magnet for your fridge. You should also buy an extra magnet and send it to me so I can put it on my fridge. I added fourteen magnets to my fridge this year. I regret buying a fridge with a glass door because I've lost so much magnet space. Imagine how many magnets I could have had I not been tricked into buying it. Maybe I should just buy a second fridge just for magnets.

My seventh and final favorite thing of 2024, little ceramic shaving bowl. Sometimes you get seduced into buying a single blade razor online and then you need to qualify for free shipping so you buy something else from the site and that something else is a little ceramic bowl for you to whip up a frothy shave. The razor is an overpriced dud made for people who do jawline exercises and not for those of use with adorable baby cheeks. But the little ceramic shaving bowl? Life changing. I feel like Cary Grant when I shave. And I suppose you don't even need a ceramic shaving bowl; any bowl will do. Just take your shaving brush and whip up that froth. It will change you.

I fell out of bed. Don't believe the rumors that I fell on the floor and bumped my head. Those are lies. Slanders. I fell out about halfway, just enough to wrench my back as my body twisted half in, half out of the bed. Now how could I, a man who has successfully slept for 12,000 nights at least, suddenly fall out of the bed? It actually has to do with #ThePark, and it’s one of the things that scares me the most about the disease.

To grossly and probably inaccurately oversimplify things, The Park is a miscommunication between the brain and body in a wide variety of ways. One of those is something I call vivid dreaming. I'm not sure if that's actually what it's called, but that's what I call it. It's where your brain, and again this is just my sort of googling-not-even-using-an-AI-search-enginge understanding of it, doesn't tell your body that you're asleep, so your body acts out your dreams because it thinks you're still awake.

This is a problem when dreams become violent or physical. Last night, I was having a dream where a pompous British man was accosting me, so I decided to kick him, as one does when accosted by a rude Briton. Apparently, it was some sort of Xtreme Chun-Li/Chuck Norris/Lorenzo Lamas massive roundhouse kick. My body, not realizing that I was dreaming, also kicked, a kick so hard, it kicked myself out of bed.

Normally, I use a 25-pound king-sized weighted blanket, which I think helps when these situations happen. It's tough to kick through 25 pounds of blanket. But last night I decided to wash my blanket, and it wasn't quite dry when I went to bed. So I slept without the blanket and suffered the consequences. Always sleep with your weighted blanket, folks. Always.

This goes back to one of my great fears of The Park: that through the disease, I'll end up hurting someone. I wonder what would happen if there were someone around me when one of these fits happens. What could happen if I'm in a hotel or traveling without access to a weighted blanket to restrain me? What would happen if I'm camping alone in the woods?

Even something as simple as sleep can end up hurting me or someone else because of this illness. I’m pretty sure I’ve kicked the boys in my sleep, but they bite/scratch me when I'm sleeping, so I think that evens out.

These vivid dreams are the one symptom of The Park that I faithfully keep track of. I don’t know how often I actually have these dreams (does the weighted blanket keep me from waking up and realizing what’s happening?), but I always write about this in my little journal whenever it happens because I think it's one of the scarier things about Parkinson's. It's the sort of Nightmare on Elm Street version of the illness. Your dreams coming to haunt you, to hurt you, and to hurt those who might be around you when you're sleeping.

It's a nightmare, but unlike a horror movie, there are no half-naked co-eds partying with you. Unlike a horror movie, there is no killing the villain. There's no sending Jason off into space (however he got there, I don't know. I assume he was exiled). There's nothing like that. This won't go away. This can't be stopped. There is no cure. No treatment other than piling heavier and heavier weighed blankets on me, pressing me into submission like a sleepy Giles Corey. This is my fate for the rest of my life: to go to bed each night wondering if I'll punt the lil goblin across the room while I'm sleeping.

Cat on a bed

Chair on the beach

I don’ know how many I’ve killed. On purpose, by accident, through neglect, through stupidity and incompetence. It must be in the dozens by now. Every year it seems I find a new victim. Someone new could take the old one's place. Every year it's a different plant, and every year it dies.

It started with the Mexican Firebush. I planted it in the back corner of my yard. I don't know if I can still have a picture of it. It was so long ago. My Facebook days. A dark time. I planted it because it looked colorful. It had a neat name, Firebush. And a Mexican plant in Arizona seemed appropriate. It went where a tree was supposed to go. It was supposed to be a tree planted there according to my HOA rules, but a tree got in the way of the pool, so the previous owners removed it, in blatant disregard of suburban norms. But I had to plant something there, it couldn't remain empty, so I planted a Mexican firebush. I watched it die, I watched it wither, I planted something new, it probably died, I planted something new, then I moved away. I wonder what's in the back corner of that lot in Anthem, Arizona. Probably a dead plant.

After the Mexican Fire Bush, it became potted plants. There was a hurricane coming, but I wasn't aware of it. I hadn't been watching the news. I didn't know anything about the prep. I just thought it was getting a little windy out. So I went to the hardware store to pick something up. People were buying cases of water, plastic wrap, things of that nature. I saw they had planters on sale, so I bought some planters. I bought some plants, just some flowers, just ordinary things, some dirt to put them in. And I planted them. They lasted a while. But then, as they always do, they wither and die. I replanted them. The same thing happened again. I left those planters there when I moved. I wonder if they're still there in that rental house. If so, I hope the new tenants have done more with them than I ever could.

plant

And then I came to Georgia. When I bought the house there were two stone planters in front of my door, flower beds in front of the party patio, and there were holes in the ground where plants or trees probably had already been planted but died and been uprooted. I did nothing with the flower beds, at first. I planted some plants in the front, they died. I planted some poinsettias one winter, they lasted but they died, as they are not meant to last in this world. They are only meant for holiday festivities.

poinsettas

This year I planted some bulbs in the planters. One side of them grew, although I think it was just weeds, looked like onions, maybe leeks, perhaps a shallot of some sort.

This year I also bought planters for the flowerbeds. I had tried planting stuff in them before, again going to bulbs, but the soil is so tough. Nothing would grow there but weeds, so I bought planters, I planted flowers, then the storms came and they filled up with water and now it's just mud and weeds and the occasional plant that has survived.

Then there were the tree holes. I used to trip in them all the time when I mowed my lawn. One time I got so mad, I went straight to Lowe's to buy some dirt to fill the holes. Then I saw they had some plants on sale, $9.99, for little shrub things that were supposed to grow to be about six feet tall. So I planted them. I could make a nice little barrier between me and my dirtbag neighbors. They didn't grow. They didn't grow at all. For two years they just sat there, the same size, never really getting rooted, never really becoming part of the landscape. Three of them I tore out last year. The last one survived until just today when I noticed it was half dead. I yanked it out of the ground with my bare hands. So much for a tree, more like a stick piled in dirt. A symbol of my failure, my sad incompetence. My inability to cultivate life.

Despite my failures, when I look at my backyard, I want more. I'd like a fruit tree, a citrus, something I can make a cherry limeade with. I guess a cherry tree and a lime tree. I want to actually watch life grow in my yard, and not have to toss it in a pile behind the party patio every summer. A growing heap of failure and death.

When I was first diagnosed with #The Park, I wasn't given very much information. My neurologist diagnosed me, said I could get a hole drilled in my head, told me to watch a YouTube video about it and sent me on my way. That was the most he ever spoke to me in a year of seeing him.

When I finally got a neurologist who isn't a chump, I got all sorts of information about support groups, Parkinson's boxing, charity walks, and the problem with constipation. But there's one thing they didn't talk about: socks.

You see, Parkinson's can cause some muscle stiffness or rigidity. For me, it's on the right side of my body. My leg doesn't really bend right. I was never very flexible before, but now, especially in the morning when my meds haven't kicked in, I'm very, very stiff along the right side of my body. That means that putting on socks can be challenging. There are some mornings when putting on my socks takes me longer than every other aspect of getting dressed.

So I did what any honest, red-blooded American consumer would do: I bought something on Amazon that looked like it might help. I bought a sock machine. Not really a machine, it's more just a plastic thing with a rope attached to it. It helps you yank on socks. I'm not sure if I'm using it correctly, but whatever, it helps.

Puttin’ on the Socks

With most of my socks, it's pretty good, depending on the quality of the sock. It's definitely reduced the amount of time I spend getting dressed in the morning and reduces the fear I have that eventually I'm going to fall over trying to hop into my socks and be left dead to be devoured by my cats. Not Duffy. Duffy would never. He doesn't have enough front teeth left. But the lil goblin? The lil goblin will devour me like he devours lizards and frogs and anything else he can catch on the non-party patio.

I went into the tube today. My new neurologist wanted me to get an MRI to see if there was anything wrong(er) with my brain. She said it probably should have been done a year ago when I was first diagnosed. But my old neurologist was a chump, I've been waiting and worrying the last couple weeks about my date with the tube.

Everyone I know told me to be worried about the tube. They asked if I'm claustrophobic. I'm not claustrophobic, I don't think. But I do feel anxious in weird situations. For instance, when I can't fidget and move around, I get very uncomfortable and feel pressed on and trapped. Like when I'm standing in a line for concessions at a movie theater and I can't go anywhere because I'm in a line and I need to get my popcorn, but there's a group of like three people in front of me and they're ordering each transaction separately. So like each one's getting a popcorn and a Coke, and a popcorn and a Coke, and a popcorn and a Coke. When they could just do it all in one transaction, and Venmo or Cash App each other later. You're holding up the line! I want my treats, so I can't leave, and I feel what I think claustrophobia must feel like. Even though I'm not actually in an enclosed space, it feels like I am because the line is an arbitrary space which I cannot leave because I want my treats.

And one time I went to a fancy man salon (Sports Clips) and they gave me a hot towel treatment at the end. When the lady put the towel around my face, I felt like I was trapped. It was awful. I hated it. I was squirming. It was like being waterboarded, but gently with a hot towel. And so that was my big worry. That my head would be in the tube and that they would put something so close to my face that I'd feel the way I do when I have a hot towel on my face. That I would panic and freak out and have to squeeze the little ball that calls the nurse to shut it down. But I was a big boy and didn't freak out at all.

They put me in the tube. They put some earplugs in me. They put padding alongside my head so I couldn't really move my head, which was good because it stopped me from fidgeting and made my head feel supported. Like I was being cradled in someone's arms. It was comforting. Relaxing. The low, rhythmic whirring of the machine was like a chill vibes rave. I wanted to get a pacifier and start shuffling. But then the noise started.

No one ever told me is how loud it was. And the earplugs weren't very good. Had I known how loud it was going to be, I could have brought my earplugs that I wear when I go to a soccer game and I have to sit close to the fan section, the supporter section, whatever they call it, where it's just people yelling and banging drums and playing various windpipe instruments for 90 minutes straight. I think those earplugs would have done better.

But after 10 minutes it was all over. My appointment was at 9 o'clock. I was out by 9:17. The results were in by 9:37. The doctor who examined my MRI said my brain is “unremarkable.” Cutting. I feel attacked. I'm glad the tube didn't reveal anything bad, but they could have said something nice about my brain. Maybe that I have a nice lobe. Or a robust ganglia or something. I don't know. Unremarkable? How dare you. Could an unremarkable brain draw a clock, identify a camel, a score a 29/30 on the Montreal Cognitive Assessment? I don't think so. Put some respect on my brain, doc.

Step 1

Make sure you order the generic brands. Name brand drugs are too memorable. Miraplex, Lexapro. Those are easy to remember. Corporate names. You need to get Promexapol. You need to get Askillogram. You need to get words that even your premium AI voice transcription service can't decipher.

Step 2

Order from Amazon Pharmacy. Yes, Amazon is evil. But man, is their pharmacy good. You don't have to stand in line. You don't have to abide by the ridiculous hours of the local pharmacy. Who goes to the grocery store after 9 a.m.? That's insane. You have to go between 6 and 7. Everyone knows this. But the pharmacies do not abide by these rules. And they should be punished for it. Enter Amazon. Where I live, right now we're in the middle of a tropical storm. Roads are flooded. Schools are closed. Trees are falling down. But I still got my meds today. I guess exploitative capitalism works, once in a while.

Step 3

Keep your pills in a drawer. Duffy likes it when you open the drawer because he gets to rub his face on it. So you have to open the drawer for him when you take your pills in the morning and in the evening. Do not keep your pills in the medicine cabinet. Duffy can't jump up on the counter because of his leg surgeries, so he can't rub his face on the medicine cabinet. To open the medicine cabinet is to taunt Duffy with his own infirmity. That's mean. So keep them in a drawer, which means you can't read the side of the label. Which wouldn't help anyway, because see Step 1.

Step 4

Get silly with it. Come up with goofy euphemisms for your ailments. Do you have major depressive disorder? Then that's the SADS. Do you have tremors? Those are the SHAKES. Do you have a neurological disorder that causes rigidity in one side of your body? That's the STIFFS. Alliteration makes it even more fun. We're having a good time. We're laughing. Then you write those words on the top of your pill bottles. So instead of saying, “Oh, I have to take my escilitogram because I can't cope with the stress of my existence,” you say, “Oh, time to take my pill for the SADS.” It's fun. You get a chuckle to yourself instead of thinking about how your drugs only mask the symptoms and really your body and mind are still deteriorating with no hope of ever getting better.

Step 5

When traveling, just take all your pills and dump them in one bottle. You'll figure it out. Just try to guess which is the pill you're supposed to take once a day that keeps you up all night and which is the pill you're supposed to take three times a day that makes you dizzy if you don't take it with food. Take it with food. You're on vacation. You're diseased. Who cares? Have fun. Get the cup at Disney that lets you refill your soda and just drink soda. Enjoy life while you still can. As long as you take the right number of pills, The meds will work themselves out eventually.