Retaliation

My Facebook status read:

Hey WonderWife™, that thing with the glitter....? Nicely played. I hate you for it, but nicely played. 

Earlier that day, WonderWife™ and I had what we’ll call a domestic squabble. It was a very rare occurrence for us, a couple that prides themselves on how little they fight. (A stark contrast to my parents, who I lovingly refer to as “The Costanzas”…but that’s another post for another time.) The fracas wasn’t anything out of the ordinary. At the core of it, a difference of opinion. It was the kind of row that all married couples have at some point in their relationship. But there was some anger. And by some, I mean a lot. Pointed directly at me. By her. All day I could feel her silently seething in my direction, the quiet aftermath of the initial battle.

I shrewdly decided to keep my distance. Thankfully, it was a divide and conquer sort of day where each of us took a kid to a separate birthday party. As a result, there wasn’t a lot of interaction between us. WW™ took Sprout to a party in the morning while I escorted the Bean to an afternoon affair.

In the evening, I went to my study to immerse myself in various forms of social media and tubes of You. There on my desk, directly in front of my laptop were two works of art from my daughter. The kids’ love of arts and crafts had been growing steadily and the walls of my office had become plastered with their various drawings and paintings. They would leave them for me on my desk or on the chair. But upon closer inspection, these pieces were different. They were absolutely the work of my little girl, but she had worked in a new medium. Glitter. Every square inch of the artwork was coated in a thick layer of sparkly art class glitter.

I abhor glitter with the white-hot intensity of a thousand suns.

I used to have a cat that loved me and was incredibly territorial. During my single days, if a woman started spending too much time with me and getting comfortable in my apartment the cat would leave a present on her pillow. And by present, I mean poop. (The cat did this the most to the woman who would become WonderWife™. Later the two of them strongly bonded.) In this moment, I couldn't help but to think of that cat.  WonderWife™ was exactly like her.

I carefully removed the glitter bombs from the room as carefully as Jeremy Renner in The Hurt Locker, knowing that one false move would mean debris, which would mean sometime in the near future I would be walking around with glitter embarrassingly attached to my face. All the while, WonderWife™ smiled a devilish smile. The message couldn’t have been any clearer if I had woken up next to a horse head.

I was pissed at WonderWife’s™ retaliation but I also applauded her cleverness. This is why I love her.

Pain in the Chest

I’m dying, I thought to myself as I woke up. It was my fifth day living with an unidentified pain that resided in my chest near my heart. As I rolled over, my arm felt numb. This is it, I nearly said out loud, this is the beginning of my end. For a few minutes, I was too groggy to realize that I had been lying on my arm, thus the pins and needle sensation. Thankfully, WonderWife™ wasn’t making toast for breakfast because that might have sent me into a tailspin. So I wasn’t having a heart attack, but I didn’t have an answer for the ache in my chest.

I’m not a hypochondriac. I rarely get sick. I didn’t want to go to the doctor. I wanted to hide in the back of my closet. This was impractical, unrealistic and foolish. I needed to act. People in this world depended on me and loved me. But I was scared. Scared of what this pain might mean. Scared of what the doctor could tell me. I forced myself not to look anything up on the internet.

Before I could talk myself out of it, I told WonderWife™ about the pain knowing that once I blurted the truth to her, I couldn’t run away from it. She wouldn’t let me.

“I need to go to the doctor,” I told WW™ quietly over breakfast. “There’s something wrong with me. I know it. I’m scared. I’m dying.”

She rubbed my shoulder and reassured me in a way that said, “you’re going to be fine” and “you’re a freaking lunatic.” I wished she would have said, “You’re not dying you just can’t think of anything better to do.” But that’s a foolish pipe dream.

At this point I did what any rational non-rational person would do and made an appointment with the my GP. After I carefully laid out my symptoms, the doc seemed rather nonplussed about my condition. I didn’t take this as a sign of encouragement, because the man might be the most blasé person I’ve ever encountered. He did tell me that it was unlikely I was dying, but so that I might someday be able to get back to sleep he would run a few tests.

I was escorted to a small, seemingly little-used back room of the office where, sitting amongst boxes of files haphazardly strewn about, was a treadmill. Electrodes were glued all over my body and I tried not to think about how they would feel later being pulled off of my fuzzy chest. I ran on the treadmill while the doctor and a nurse cranked it faster and higher all the while reading beeps and lines of the machine that was connected to me. Or they could have been playing Angry Birds. I’m not really sure because I was busy huffing it on the treadmill, silently pleading for them to stop the machine before I passed out.

As predicted, none of the things a doctor wouldn’t want to see on the test were there. Everything was fine. Sure I had blown through my deductible in one visit, but I now had peace of mind. For now. I’m getting older. It’s really just a matter of time before something else happens.

Losing a Pet

Two weeks ago, I awoke in the middle of the night to the unpleasant sensation of being pissed on by my cat. Initially, I thought he might have been exacting some sort of feline revenge on me because I’m usually the one who ends up shooing him out of rooms where he’s not supposed to be. Yet anyone familiar with cat behavior knows that a lot of the time something like this isn’t an act of aggression but a signal that something is wrong. Something was indeed wrong—the un-fixable kind of wrong.

Three years ago we adopted a stray kitten who grew big and fluffy and burrowed his way into our hearts. We dubbed him Ginko. In Ginko, WonderWife™ found a cat who adored all things fabric and would magically appear whenever she was working on a quilt to lay amongst the scraps on her sewing table. Sprout found a pet who wouldn’t run away from her attempts at affection, like our other, more nervous cat. The Bean found a best friend. The bond between Ginko and the Bean was palpable and touching. The cat followed the boy around the house during the day and happily rested on his bed as the Bean drifted off to sleep. Ginko would often howl outside of the Bean’s door at night, wanting to be closer to his friend.

WonderWife™ and I are burdened with the heavy knowledge that tomorrow will be Ginko’s last. As of my writing this, we haven’t yet broken the news to the kids. I imagine it’s going to be very hard for them to understand. Despite outward appearances, we have a very sick cat and based on what the vet tells us, the only humane decision is the most difficult one. Not only must we grieve, but we must guide our children through their first experience losing someone they love.

WonderWife™recently told me she had been looking forward to Ginko growing older, when his wild kitten-like nature would calm and he’d become a true lap cat. I was looking forward to watching my son grow up with his favorite pet. But that isn’t going to happen, because sadly sometimes pets get sick. And sometimes pets die young.

By the time you’re reading this Ginko will be gone and the Geek Boy family will be drowning our sorrows in giant bowls of ice cream.  I’d give a lot if tomorrow morning I could wake up to him pissing on me.

RIP Ginky Malinky, rapscallion cat. You will be missed.

Not Funny

It's time for my sabbatical to end. I didn't plan on taking such an extended leave of absence from the blog, but after the craziness and chaos of the year I found that once I shut off my brain it was hard to turn it back on. Thus began the longest break I've taken since this thing began. To be honest, it felt good to check out for a while. I've made no secret of the extensive amount of traveling I did in 2011, which all in all amounted to 2½ months combined. It was important to me that I spend the holidays re-connecting with my family. And while my time off was filled with laughter, bonding and a metric ton of presents, the unimaginable happened.

WonderWife™ always says that marriage is a repeat. After 11 years together, she's heard my schtick many times over. Even my A material causes groans and eye rolls from her. (Though let's be honest, my A material is really at best a B.) So am forced to endure her scorn, criticism or just plain apathy at my attempts at humor. But that was okay because there was my son, my clone, who had an appreciation for his corny dad.

Perhaps it was all of the time he spent with me during my time off or maybe it was the highs and lows of the dual adrenaline rushes of Hanukkah and his birthday that led him to this moment, but somewhere during the end of the year the Bean grew weary of my humor.

During a phone conversation I made some joke. It doesn’t really matter what it was, just know that it was of the cheesy variety and squarely aimed at his 6 year old sensibility. But upon hearing it the Bean paused and said, “That’s not funny, Dad.”

And that was it. My son now joins my wife, my friends and my co-workers in the list of people who endure, but don’t enjoy, my bad jokes.

Sigh.

At least there’s still the girl.

The Diaper Genie

There is an empty spot in the corner of the house where the Diaper Genie used to be. Walking past this now vacant spot never fails to evoke a small cheer from me. I hated that freaking Diaper Genie.

The Genie may have been designed for ease, but it quickly became a dirty, stinky symbol of one of the worst parts of early parenting. There isn’t a single person alive who likes changing diapers, mother or father. But unlike my own father, who had the great fortune of being a parent in the 70’s where dads were held to a different social standard and therefore has never changed a diaper in his life, my wife and I were equal partners in this parenting thing. Meaning, we both had to deal with a lot of shit.

In addition to diaper changes, it was my job to replace the bag inside the Genie. Somehow, like my kids, it seemed in constant need of changing. I couldn’t take my diaper-fueled aggression out on my children, so I channeled it towards the Genie. Over the years I grew to loathe it. Yet there it sat in the corner of my house, mocking me.

I wanted to destroy it, Office Space style. Or have Andrew W.K. blow it up in some spectacular fashion. But I didn’t have access to explosives and I thought it might have freaked out the kids to see their daddy bashing it in the backyard with a baseball bat. I was close to being rid of the damn thing too. But Sprout, like in every other phase in her life, was steadfast in her stubbornness and refused to poop on the potty.

The day finally arrived not with a bang, but with the polite urging of my wife to finally be rid of it. Even though we had agreed that the Genie’s services were no longer required, there it sat. My wife grew tired of waiting for me to devise a clever plan to demolish the thing and hinted that it might disappear on it’s own. But this was my funeral to give. So I opted for a simple and unceremonial burial in the trash bin. On trash day, I gleefully wheeled it out to the curb and waited for the green truck to arrive.

Usually the kids run to the window to gaze upon the garbage truck as it collects our refuse, like a couple of cats staring down a squirrel on the tree in the yard. However, that day when the truck came to collect I stood along side them, watching and happily waving goodbye to the Genie forever.

Shattering Stereotypes

As my hair stylist draped the smock over me she asked, “So what are we doing today?”

“Cut it short,” I said. “Super short.”

“Really?” She replied. “Is WonderWife™ going to be okay with that?”

I stared at her incredulously. “She doesn’t run her hair choices by me before she gets a hair cut.”

I was truly shocked at the question. This is a woman who’s been cutting my hear for nearly 12 years. I see her more often than some of my friends. She also cuts WW™’s hair. She’s known me before I met my wife. She knows us as a couple. She knows about our relationship. Yet for some reason, she has the misguided perception that I need to get permission on my choice of hair style.

The next morning the kids were getting dressed. Sprout decided on a flower print top with a paisley pattern skirt. Now I’m no fashionista, but even I knew that this was a horrible, garish combo. Yet WonderWife™ and I encourage our kids to dress how they like, even if the outfits are disastrous.

I had plans to take the kids to the aquarium that day. “You know this is going to reflect on me,” I said to WW™.

“What? No it won’t.”

“I’ll be out in the world with two kids by myself. Everyone who sees Sprout’s outfit is going to think that I dressed her.”

“Oh,” said WonderWife™. “Yeah I guess you’re right.”

It’s amazing in this time of dad’s being more involved than ever that the notion of the hen-pecked husband or clueless father still runs rampant today. It’s a stereotype that I work hard to shatter.

So where does this come from? As much as I hate to bag on my beloved television, a lot of this primitive thinking is spoon fed from the magic box. Modern Family is a great show, but Phil Dumphy is an idiot—the prototypical clueless dad who leans on his wife for everything. Commercials are even worse. How about the Yoplait ad where the woman is on the phone talking to her friend about eating Boston Cream Pies while the husband stares into the fridge, directly past the many yogurt containers clearly marked Boston Cream Pie that are stacked up on the shelf at his eye level while attempting to look for the sweets his wife is describing?

This kind of dad discrimination has to stop. Women, look around you. Us guys are not as clueless and inadequate as we’re made out to be. I do not need to ask my wife’s permission to hang out with friends, see a movie, buy clothes or get my hair cut. When I make plans I will often confer with my wife to make sure I haven’t forgotten some errant birthday party. But that is consideration, not permission.

It’s true that WonderWife™ runs the household. It’s true that I may, at times, ask here where the toilet paper is when I know exactly where we keep it. But that’s laziness, not ineptitude. When it comes to the things that matter in our lives, I’m an equal partner. I’m really good at being a husband and father. I am not clueless and I am not a stereotype.

And besides, my wife really likes my hair super short.

The Reason Why There Is A Piece Of Glitter On My Face

WonderWife™ was out running an errand. The kids were finally down for their rest time. At long last quiet had descended upon the house.  I was mere moments into seizing the first opportunity I had all day to gorge myself at the trough of Facebook and Twitter when a scream rang out from the Bean’s room.

I burst through the Bean’s bedroom door like Whatshisface Baldwin in Backdraft, to find him sitting on his bed, wet and surrounded by shards of glass.  The Bean had thought that vigorously shaking a snow globe next to a wall was a good idea and naturally, it broke.  I inspected him for cuts and seeing that there were none proceeded to the calm-the-kid-down stage so I could inspect the damage.  My worst fears had been realized.  The bed had been compromised.  The shimmering contents that had once been held captive safely inside the glass orb had now been released into the world, like spirits from the Arc.  Glitter was everywhere--all over the Bean's bed, cascading down the wall and plastered against half of the Bean's face and hair. 

I cannot stand glitter. If glitter were a food, it would be cilantro. Yet my parental duties to clean up the glass and glitter fiasco outweighed my loathing of the stuff. So I did what needed to be done.  I rolled up my sleeves and got to work making the Bean's bed once again sleep-able, knowing that this was to be far from the last time that I would be seeing the evil shimmery bastards.

Painting Toes Pink

The Daily Show tipped me off to a story that’s been bubbling up across the media this week. Clothing store J Crew recently featured an ad that showed a mother and son where the son’s toenails were painted pink. Apparently the idea of a nail polish on a boy was cause for concern, but it was the color of the toes in question that seemed to send people into a tizzy.

Psychologists and other “experts” came out of the woodwork and spoke with places like Fox News (natch) about a world that is “abandoning the trappings of gender identity.” A spokeswoman for some traditional values organization fears that the ad “features blatant propaganda celebrating transgendered children.”

As the father of a boy who on occasion likes to paint his toes and fingers pink, I’d like to say one thing to these people:

FUCK YOU!

Just because your narrow ideas of gender identity are old fashioned doesn’t mean you have the right to suggest that my kid is anything but a perfectly happy, well-adjusted little boy. How dare you take a young mind that is open and without prejudice and try to teach him that a color is off limits because somebody along the line decided that it was “for girls” or that he can’t express himself by putting that color on his nails. Fuck you for implying that my son will have identity issues and fuck you for insinuating that I’m a bad parent because of it.

I thought we were beyond this. I grew up in the age of Free to Be You and Me and was taught that boys and girls shouldn’t be defined solely by their gender. It was okay for William to have a doll if that’s what he wanted just like it was okay for me to play kitchen with my sister. And because of the time I spent play cooking, I became a tornado in the kitchen who makes a mean red sauce. There’s nothing girly about marinara.

A color is a color, not a gender. Pink is red and white mixed together, not a lifestyle. A little nail polish isn’t going to change the way somebody is wired. Yes boys and girls are different, but it’s not because of colors or princesses or sports.

I’d like to invite these small minded so called specialists to spend some quality time with my son who does many “boy” things, like run around like a maniac and pretend to shoot guns and play superheroes and video games…all while wearing bright pink nail polish.

You simple minded, scared, homophobic assholes can raise your kids however you want. But you shut your damn mouths when you talk about mine.

Bookends

In the morning, I heard a thunk as I got into my car. I looked over to see that a young boy in the space next to mine had slammed his car door into the side panel of my car. I sat there, mouth agape, waiting for the mother in the front seat to acknowledge what her offspring had done. When she didn’t respond to what had happened, I thought that maybe he was unaware of what had happened. But seeing as her door was still touching my car when she turned around, I realized that she was simply ignoring the situation

I backed out of my space enough to inspect the damage, while the mom continued to get her kids out of her car. There was a little nick in the paint on my car door where it had been hit, but seeing as it was near a dented fender, the result of a rare bad parking job by yours truly, and adjacent to the place where my car was keyed in the middle of the night by some unknown assailant—and because the caffeine had not yet kicked in—I decided to quietly let this one go.

In the evening, I arrived home to witness my exasperated wife struggling to get the stubborn Sprout to clean up her toys. I told her I’d take over and patted her on the shoulder, tapping in like it was Wrestlemania. She left to do whatever it is that she does with her free time and I was left to perform the bathing ritual. Approximately 3 minutes later, both kids had completely broken down and were screaming, crying and demanding their mother. The hysterics continued while I tried to get them to brush their teeth, bathe and get into their pajamas. By the end of the ordeal, both kids were yelling at me not to talk to them. The Bean had disinvited me to his birthday party and both kids refused to give me a hug or a kiss. Neither would say “goodnight” to me. They were so upset with me, WonderWife™ was forced to return to the scene in order to get them to bed.

Sleep Study

It seemed like an ordinary hotel room. It was small and simple, adorned with the basics—a bed with crisp white linens, dresser, TV. I lay in the unfamiliar bed, my struggle to sleep complicated by the series of wires that were attached to various parts of my body and connected to a machine that would monitor my vitals. I couldn't help but notice the faint glow of the video camera mounted to the ceiling of the room, an unsettling reminder that somebody would be watching my every nocturnal movement. As the clock slowly ticked, I knew that I was very far away from sleep.

I was doing this as a last ditch attempt to save my marriage. Okay, that may be a bit drastic. But I need to find a solution to my problem for myself and the woman who shares my bed...most of the time.

You see, I snore.

Loudly. Obnoxiously. Incessantly.

I awaken every morning groggy, confused. I feel heavy, as if a wet blanket is holding me down. I always look next to me to see if my wife is still sleeping, or if my sonic bellowing has chased her from the bedroom to the couch. Those mornings leave me feeling guilty and helpless. WonderWife™ seems to take this all in stride, but often says that if we had the means, we would have separate bedrooms. This, along with the fact that I am prone to wake myself up with my snoring, bothers me to my core. Her attitude is great, but I’m secretly afraid that another 10 years of her being constantly chased out of her bedroom will start to cause untold damage on our relationship.

This is why long after the sun went down one night, I drove to a medical building in order to be hooked up to medical equipment machinery and sleep in a foreign room while being watched all night. The sleep study will show if I have sleep apnea—a potentially dangerous condition where one stops breathing periodically during sleep. I'm not a medically trained professional, but I'm confident that not being able to breathe rates pretty high on the list of things that are bad for you.

If I have apnea there are a few treatments available—none of them pleasant. They include wearing some sort of oxygen mask every night or a surgery where they would slice my soft palate and remove a part of my uvula, which not only has the distinction of being incredibly painful but has only a 50-50 chance of working. If I don’t have apnea, these options are still available to me, but not covered by insurance, meaning it would probably be cheaper for me to buy that extra bedroom for my house than it would to pay for any treatments out of pocket.

The sleep study is a last ditch attempt to find a snoring solution. Not to be too glass is half empty, but I’m confident that I don’t have apnea. A sleep study years ago showed that I didn’t have apnea. I don't think much has changed.

I slept fitfully through that night and woke up groggy and confused as usual when the technician rousted me at 5am to remove the wires from my body. It will be about two weeks before I learn if there’s anything that can be done to give everyone in my house more peaceful sleep. At this point, I’m willing to try just about anything.

The Defiant Fours

Dear Bean,

May I speak bluntly for a moment?

What the fuck is up with you? Lately you have become unwieldy, unpredictable and insolent. Let’s just put it right out there, you’ve been kind of a jerk. You refuse to listen. You talk back. You pick fights with everyone, including your sister and the cats. I thought this was the kind of behavior we’d see in your teenage years, not at 4 1/2.

And that’s another thing, nobody told me this was a tough age. Everyone runs screaming in terror from the terrible twos. That is until we find out that it's a complete myth and the threes are really the age to fear. But nobody said anything about the defiant fours. Your behavior these days makes the threes seem like your infant years. Is this how all four year-olds are like, or have you been lulling me into a false sense of security for the past few years by pretending to be a mellow kid? Am I to believe that this whole docile thing was all just an act? You're a sweet kid a lot of the time, but go you bad quicker than a yellow banana in a hot kitchen.

Listen buddy, I need you to lighten up like right now. You’re making your mom and me look like assholes when we’re in public because we’re forced to constantly use that tone. You know what I’m talking about—that really exasperated and pissed off tone. The one that I promised myself I would use only when really necessary. You know, mommy and daddy don’t sound like that all of the time. Back when we used to not be exhausted, we were actually pleasant people to be around. So I while I know it’s cool to be rebellious, can we try to curb the attitude? At least until you’re old enough to drive when I can lord the car keys over you.

Sincerely,
Dad

The Last Smoke

It had been a very long time since I last smoked a cigarette. Over a decade in fact. I was never much of a huge smoker--a half a pack of day at my worst--but I loved it. I loved the ritual. The smell of the tobacco just before the flame torches it. I loved how the hot smoke would mix in my mouth on cold days. I loved how it afforded me a small break from the world. But I also knew that it was not good for me and that I needed to stop. So not more than a year out of college, I found myself sitting across the table from a cute girl, on a blind date orchestrated by my sister, talking about smoking. Or rather, my intent to someday quit smoking.

"Why don’t you quit right now?" she asked.

Because I was more interested in trying to impress a girl that I wanted to sleep with than anything else, I slid my pack of cigarettes across the table. And that was it. I never did get the girl into my bed, but I never went back to smoking either.

After that twitchy first smoke-free month was behind me, I actually found it pretty easy to quit. My willpower was strong. It also helped that California had just banned smoking in bars, so a layer of temptation had been removed in a stroke of perfect timing.

While I didn't crave it all of the time, every once in a while I would miss smoking. Sometimes I would walk past somebody smoking and I would get a hit of tobacco that just smelled good to me.

It had been a very long time since I'd even thought of smoking a cigarette when I found myself craving one while I was alone on a road trip. There was some song lyric about smoking and it hit me. I found myself pulling into a gas station and before I really knew what I was doing, I had bought a pack. I automatically tapped the pack, unwrapped the cellophane and tapped out a cigarette, just like I used to. The whole thing felt weird that it was so familiar.

The cigarette felt heavier than I remembered. Thicker. I put one end in my mouth and held the flame to the other. I listened for the crackle of the paper and tobacco catching, inhaled, and immediately fell into a massive choking fit While the actions of lighting a cigarette might have felt familiar, my body was not used to the toxic smoke and was not happy. I tried to take another drag, but my lungs were rejecting everything about it. This was not the pleasurable experience I once had. This was torture.

I crushed out the cigarette and threw the rest of the pack away. I didn't like the coughing. I didn't like the smoke. I didn't like anything about the cigarette. As much as I used to love smoking, it was clear at that moment as it had been when I first quit that I am no longer a smoker. Sometimes the body is smarter than the mind and my body knows that my smoking days are very much behind me.

Apolitical

Like an atheist who questions the existence of God, I have grown cynical about our political system. I have never been very politically minded, preferring to keep myself in a safe bubble of pop culture over reading a paper or watching the news—endeavors that usually make me all too depressed. But things changed during the 2008 election. For the first time, I became politically aware and informed. I was deeply invested in the outcome. I was passionate. I read papers and watched the news. I was swept up in a feeling that we were on the precipice of something great. That it was possible to raise our voices and be heard. That election meant something to me, as it did to a lot of people on both sides.

In a year’s time this feeling has not only diminished, but what is left is a sense of helplessness and heartbreak. I’ve come to realize that despite grandiose promises, we are incapable of altering the political machine. Our political system is like a mutating virus that has shielded itself against anything that could dismantle or change it. Yes, a year ago expectations were extraordinarily high and there was a colossal mess to be cleaned up. But even with those lofty expectations tempered, I am unable to be optimistic that three years from now anything will be that different from how it is now.

I have grown weary of the game of politics, of the pundits who pass along opinion as fact and of the public who is all too eager to swallow it without question. I am tired of our lackadaisical attitude towards the truth and the childish name-calling and finger-pointing that has become political debate. I am angry that my father can’t get insurance because four years ago he beat cancer. I’m saddened by my friends’ constant fights with their insurance companies. I am troubled for those without heath benefits at all. I ache for those who cannot be married. I worry for my children and my grandchildren, whose futures were mortgaged to fix problems that shouldn’t have happened in the first place. I am aghast that no steps are being taken to save the planet on which we live.

To me the problems we face don’t feel like partisan issues, they are human issues. They are big and they need to be fixed. Yet our elected officials don’t seem to be working with our interests at heart. There is only gridlock and infighting. Those who stand to make a profit now have the loudest voices and the most sway. I don’t believe that politicians are evil, just greedy. Despite what they want us to believe, they don’t live in the same world that we do. They are shielded in a bubble of their own and are not affected by their own actions.

“I’ve said it before and I’ll say it again, democracy simply doesn’t work.” - Kent Brockman, The Simpsons

I don’t like feeling this way. By nature I am not a cynical person. But I’ve come to believe that government will not fix things. Yet, we have created a system that will not allow us to operate without it.

The end result of my becoming invested in politics, even for a short time, has been disappointment and pessimism. This has led me to once again become apolitical. I want proof that the system works before I will believe in it again. Until then, I’ll be in my bubble, where at least I know I am safe.

Saab: Fail

I'm usually not one to root for people to fail, but hearing about this article made me smile. I spent a few tumultuous years as a Saab owner and never has a product and the service around a product filled me with such contempt for a company.

It tickles me that every month a few people find their way to my blog using the keywords "Saabs suck". I feel bad that others are having their own car troubles, but I'm glad to know that I'm not alone.

So farewell Saab! I'm sorry for the people who are losing their jobs as a result of your failure, but I'm not sorry to see you go.

The Horrible Dream

It was a truly awful dream.

I was in the kitchen of my parent’s house, the house of my youth. My in-laws were there and had just delivered some horrible news—WonderWife™ had just passed away in her sleep. I felt anguish. There were screams and cries. Pain and confusion. I thought of the kids, who were asleep upstairs. A random thought entered my mind—what of work the next day? Of course I wouldn’t be expected to go. But what of work the day after that?

“What am I going to do?” I asked my mother in law. “I’m all alone.” I realized that she was going through anguish of her own, but she was putting on a brave face for me.

“We’re here,” she said calmly.

“You’re here now,” I screamed through tears. “But you’ll leave soon.”

I called an old co-worker of mine, somebody with whom I used to be very close. I broke the news and cried. There was silence on the other end.

“I’m sorry to have dumped all of this on you,” I said to her.

I woke up with a poke in the shoulder from WonderWife™. “It’s five after 7,” she said. “The kids are awake. Time to get up.”

I pulled myself out of bed, thankful to be home with my wife by my side. I gave her a hug and told her she was never allowed to leave me.

_______________________

Normally my dreams fade quickly, but this one stayed with me through my morning routine. It didn't take me long to realize that this was not a dream about WonderWife™, it was a stress dream. Sadly, I am no stranger to stress dreams. In them, something bad always happens—ranging from benign things such as missing a flight to tragedies like a loved one dying. WonderWife™ keeps asking me why I'm always killing her off in my dreams.

It's easy to spot this one as a stress dream because work crept into it—twice. I thought of work immediately after hearing the bad news and later, I called an old colleague for support.

The mind works in mysterious ways and why my stress manifests itself in my dreams is beyond me. Funny thing is that I don't currently feel a great deal of stress in my life. At least no more than usual. But I know that this won't be the last stress dream I have. They will appear sporadically in the middle of the night, haunt my mornings and linger throughout the day until I am through whatever stressful patch I am in.

Morning Sanctuary

Every single morning I peel myself out of bed and quickly stumble towards the bathroom looking like Peter Boyle in Young Frankenstein. The bed's gravity is strong and if I don't get out of it's pull quickly, I will snap back to the mattress and return to slumber, thus shirking my parental responsibilities, rendering myself late for work and my son late for school and pissing off my wife, who already has enough to do without me doubling her workload. Still every single morning waking up is a fight. This has been especially true lately since WonderWife™ cajoled me into waking up earlier.

Working late as I do, I don't get to spend enough quality time with my kids. For a while, my time with them seemed to consist entirely of me barking orders at them like a drill sergeant: Brush your teeth! Get dressed! Flush the toilet! Put on your pajamas! For the love of jeebus flush the toilet! This began to take its toll on my relationship with my kids. So WonderWife™ kindly suggested that I get my ass out of bed a little earlier to allow for some playtime in the mornings. Of course she was right, she's always right. But that doesn't make waking up any easier.

In the morning, the bathroom becomes my sanctuary where I transform from sleepy zombie into a human being. I focus my thoughts and get ready for the day. Because once I step through the bedroom door, it's showtime. Daddy must be "on" for two kids who wake up filled with enthusiasm and energy reserved only for the young. But in the bathroom, I can ease into the day like a car warming up on a cold winter morning. I don't have to talk. I don't have to think. I can just let the warm shower force me awake.

Yet lately my solitude has been disrupted. While I'm in the shower the bathroom door will slowly creek open followed by one or two sets of feet. One or both of my kids will pad in and greet me with a big, bright, "Hi Daddy!" Rack up another concession to parenting. My serene morning has dissolved and showtime has begun early.

Post Op

One side of the couch had become well worn. Nestled within the indent on the cushions was the prone body of young boy who, after just having being rendered tonsil-less, kept vigil in front of the TV hoping that the pain would subside. Lightening McQueen and Curious George kept him company. He wanted nobody else. His mom sat by his side during the week. His dad replaced her on the weekend. He hardly acknowledged their existence. They both encouraged the young boy to drink water. Or juice. Or chocolate milk. Anything. But even the allure of sugar was not strong enough to overcome the pain that came with moving the liquid past his throat. There were many tears and many sleepless nights. This was, without a doubt, the worst thing that had ever happened to the boy in his young life.

It all started so well. His father had bought him a book. It was a pleasant little story about a girl losing her tonsils. She received a snow cone maker, presents and copious amounts of ice cream. Her relentless optimism was contagious. The book not only soothed the boy, but it made him excited. His face lit up with joy when he learned that soon he too would be having an operation. This excitement remained while he was in the hospital waiting room. It was present when he drank his “happy juice”. It lingered until the minute when he woke up after the surgery, fuzzy and disoriented from the drugs that had put him to sleep. It was at that exact moment that the torture had begun.

To say it wasn’t easy would be underselling the next ten days. The narcotic prescribed to keep the boy’s pain at bay had a foul taste and combined with the fact that swallowing felt like a dagger of fire that was being doused with a bucket of razorblades, administering it was an impossible task. At some point the boy must have realized that the promise of all the ice cream you could eat was an empty one. The will to eat anything had vanished along with his tonsils. If he was mad at his parents, it did not show. His dad managed to coax him to eat a few bites of Jell-O, which was just enough to stave off dehydration. But even this was a struggle.

Realistically, the boy’s parents knew that his agony would end, and so too would end their servitude to a boy who was to weak and in too much pain to be anything more than an immobile fixture on the couch. But those ten days felt epic in length. Dark circles formed under all of their eyes. The boy’s mother spent most nights on the trundle bed in the boy’s room, sleeping fitfully.

Finally, the tenth day arrived and as promised, the boy was almost back to his usual state. Now came the task of de-programming the child, who had started to grow accustomed to a life of all the TV and all of the sweets one could consume. Slowly, steadily, he began to spend less time on the couch. And the recently vacated indent in the cushions started to return to normal.

Here's Why I Don't Have a New Post Today

Three days at Comic Con. Wonderful, crazy, hectic, tiring days. I get home Saturday night at 8pm, with hopes of spending the rest of the evening with WonderWife™, who I missed while mingling with my fellow nerds in San Diego. But this was not to be. Sprout had been sick earlier in the day with a stomach flu and the Bean had been giving her hints that he was next.

I barely had time to unpack and settle into bed to spin my geeky tales of the past few days to an indifferent WW™ when a cry came out from the Bean's room. I'll spare you the details, but know that his bed needed to be stripped and changed.

Thus begun a night where neither WW™ or I got much sleep. After a few more incidents, the Bean refused to go back to his bedroom and only wanted to sleep on the floor of the den, refusing even a pillow or a blanket. It was much too late and he was much too sick to fight with him. Lying there, sleeping fitfully, he looked like a puppy. I "slept" on the couch next to him, which was only big enough to hold two thirds of my body. Neither of us logged in many hours in dreamland that night.

By the time dawn broke, WonderWife™ informed me that she too had succumbed to the dreaded stomach flu. The day's plans were scrapped so she could sleep. I tried very hard to keep two recovering kids happy and alive while not falling asleep myself.

So there will be no new post today. I'm tired.

Bacon Vodka

When I got home from work, there was a package waiting for me on the kitchen table. It was adorned with a sticker that said there was alcohol inside. Naturally, this piqued my attention.

Inside was a bottle of this:

This is a bottle of Bakon--bacon vodka. Yes that's right, bacon vodka.

I love bacon. But let’s face it, saying you love bacon is like saying you love chocolate. There aren’t a lot of people who are going to disagree with you. I also love vodka. It’s my booze of choice. It’s my parents’ booze of choice. This is most likely because of the Russian blood that flows through our veins. So what’s not to love about bacon infused vodka?

I knew there was only one person who would have sent this to me—my mother-in-law. She not only knows my obsessions, but she indulges them, much like her daughter. She’s quite a lady. (I’m not just saying that cause she reads my blog.)

Immediately after tucking in the Bean, I splashed some over ice into a cocktail shaker, shook liberally and poured it into a glass.

I took a sip.

A half hour later, WonderWife™ came home. I was in the other room, in my usual evening location—eating dinner in front of the TV.

WW’s™ voice called from the kitchen, “Did you try it?”

“Uh huh,” I said through a mouth full of food.

“Is this it in this glass?”

“Uh huh.”

“Uh, it smells terrible.”

“Uh huh.”

“Ew. It tastes horrible.”

“Uh huh.”

She was quiet for a moment.

“Ugh, the aftertaste!”

“Uh huh.”

So... I’ve got a nearly full bottle of bacon vodka, anyone have ideas about what I should do with it?

The Natural Defense Mechanism

Nature has provided many animals with defenses against their enemies. Skunks spray. Snakes bite. Jellyfish sting. But how do you discipline a kid who has a natural defense mechanism?

We are in the thick of it now. The Bean has rounded the corner and is racing towards three and a half. The pendulum that is his mood swings back and forth so much that I’m getting whiplash. He’s constantly testing the boundaries, which is his prerogative as a pre-schooler. But it’s also my prerogative to get angry when he breaks the rules.

All of the parenting advice heaped upon us poor saps with pre-schoolers says you gotta lay down the law, and stuff your ears with cotton so you can shut out the tantrums when you do. For us, this is proving to be a bit difficult. It all starts off fairly normally. The Bean’s eyes get damp and the hysterics begin. Once the screams start, he will no longer listen to reason. At this point, most parents will send the kid to their room to chill out. But we can’t do that because the Bean leaks like an old roof in a rainstorm when he gets upset. The wetting of his pants causes the Bean to get more upset, completely obscuring the reason for sending to his room in the first place. The kid isn’t going to calm down after he’s peed himself. We are confident that this emptying of the bladder is involuntary, but the fact remains that we cannot let him finish out a crying jag on his own without going through multiple pairs of pants and underwear, paper towels and sometimes bed sheets. Disciplining the Bean is like hucking a water balloon. At some point, the thing is going to break, soaking everything in its path.

We’re pretty much stumped at this point. We’re living with a raging toddler who has the bladder of an excitable puppy. However I don’t think swatting him on the nose with a rolled up newspaper is going to do the trick.