Two Cheeseburgers and Some Car Karaoke

 

I put on about ten pounds between Christmas and Thanksgiving. Go me...

I'm not the only one who struggles with their waistline during the holiday season. It's cold so you're less inclined to run around outside, egg nog is super yummy and there is sooooo much good food everywhere you look. I get it. Eating is fun and Christmas is the most wonderful time of the year for good food.

So yeah. I got pudgier over Christmas but thanks to a bit more discipline, the weight has started coming off over the past week. Still, my inner fat kid likes what he likes and tonight, he wanted a cheeseburger worse than anything. 

I'm getting better at combatting cravings. It helps that I live a good way outside of town, which means a round trip to a burger joint takes at least a half hour and it means getting out of my sweats or jammies into regular clothes. Spending the time and effort it takes to go get food is less and less appealing, especially now that the roads are icy.

Still, I'm only human. Tonight, the cravings became too intense and I buckled.

I drove in silence, anticipation building. The last fast food trip I made was to Jack in the Box and it was disappointing. Too expensive for what I got and it didn't taste all that good. The trip before that was to McDonald's and it was disgusting. So I decided to hit up Dairy Queen hoping to have a better experience and better-tasting food. I went through the drive-thru, got the 2-double-cheeseburgers-for-$7 deal then drove over to a parking lot by the baseball fields to eat.

I was not disappointed this time. My DQ cheeseburgers were way above average, or maybe they were able to fool my taste buds into believing they were above average. By the time I was finished, I was fat and happy.

I decided to take the long way home.  It's been a while since I had my car radio on, and I was in the mood for some tunes. I turned it on and was totally stoked to hear that I had left a Tom Petty greatest hits album in my CD player. I rolled the window down in spite of the near-freezing weather and just started wailing along with Tom and his Heartbreakers. 

Now, there is an art to picking the right car karaoke soundtrack. You need something infectious, with sticky hooks, easy-to-remember lyrics and fun-to-sing melodies. It also helps if the singer you're singing along with isn't overly intimidating in skill or range. Singing along with Enuff Z'Nuff's Donnie Vie is a blast. Singing along with the mighty Rob Halford? Not so much.

Genre doesn't matter so much. Queens' "Fat-Bottom Girls" is as fun to sing as "Weezer's "The Good Life." "Electric Crown" by Testament is as much fun to sing as "I Am a Man of Constant Sorrow" off the O Brother, Where Art Thou soundtrack. I enjoy car karaoke-ing to Steel Panther as much as I enjoy car karaoke-ing to Cheap Trick. 

But as far as car sing-along material is concerned, Tom Petty and the Heartbreakers - Greatest Hits is a Hall-of-Fame collection. So. Many. Great. Fucking. Songs. A partial tracklist includes "Refugee," "Don't Do Me Like That," "I Won't Back Down," "Runnin' Down a Dream" and "Mary Jane's Last Dance." That's a helluva car karaoke setlist. All sung by a voice that's not intimidating to follow along with.

As I drove along the backroads, singing along with Tom Petty and my burger dinner settling, I felt a warm sensation. Not indigestion but contentment. I was, in that moment, happy.  Driving, eating and singing are up there with playing guitar and going to the movies as my favorite things in life. 

It's kinda shocking how little it takes to make me happy. That's not a negative. Unfortunately, there are far too many times when I forget to savor little moments. Just sitting in the presence of my favorite people, making fun of shitty old sci-fi movies with friends, a colorful sunset. These are all little things that make me happy to still be drawing breath. 

This is a lesson to me to live in the moment more. To stop being elsewhere mentally, pining for things I want in my life that I don't have or people who have left my universe long ago. To be present as often as possible. To pay attention to the moments you find yourself in. Because moments that make life worth living are gone in a flash and if you aren't mentally present, you won't get all the good stuff that you could out of those moments. May we all be present in our lives. Also, thank the Maker for cheeseburgers and Tom Petty!!!