It was, at least for me, an awful weekend. Just terrible. One of those weekends that all parents probably have every once in a while, where you feel like there are just too many people cooped up inside in a house that is just a little bit too small filled with just a little bit too many toys.
It sort of started earlier in the week with the story of Hurricane Joaquin and the Inferiority of US Forecast Modeling. On Wednesday afternoon the storm track was going literally right over my house. Right over my house! Pretty much everyone but the Europeans were predicting the storm would make landfall somewhere between the Carolinas and New Jersey. Trish bought soup and water, New Jersey fretted about a repeat of Super Storm Sandy, and Jim Cantore pinched his nipples in delight as we all wondered just where the rapidly strengthening storm would go.
Then on Thursday the storm track was a little further to the East, a little off the coast but still dangerous. But on Friday we were all breathing a sigh of relief as the new storm track took it out to sea. Turns out the European model was right. I read a news story in the New York Times suggesting the model is better because the Europeans possess more computers and have better storm initial input files - I think it simply may be because they use the metric system. As for me, the National Hurricane Center has failed me for the last time....The Government used to be good at predicting the weather, it was the one thing they could do well. Now, I am not so sure.
Either way, the storm was threatening enough to cancel a whole raft of planned activities. My parents cancelled a major cousins re-union in Sandbridge, and the Newport News Fall Festival was scrapped. We lost power at work and they were going to shut it down over the weekend to fix it so coming in on the weekend to work on some stuff was impossible.
That left me with the charming prospect of sitting around with the house with the kids all weekend.
And that sounded pretty good, at first. Two weeks ago I was away from home whitewater rafting on the Upper Gauley. Last weekend we were in Staunton to celebrate my wife's grandparents' 50th wedding anniversary. 50 years! Another congratulations to them, by the way.
But the weekend went awry. The kids were kind of...bonkers. Elizabeth wanted to build forts from furniture and blankets all weekend. She didn't listen particularly well. Rosalyn was her normal active self, taking naps at odd times (or no naps at all!), trying to get into all sorts of things she isn't supposed to get into. I cooked and cleaned and then cooked again and then cleaned again and then cooked again. And then cleaned again. Our dishwasher is broken, needs replacing, and I refuse to take the easy way and go further into debt to get it replaced. We did go to Church today, but Church....eh, it doesn't do it for me. I go. But it just doesn't do it for me these days. Chelsea lost. Virginia Tech lost. Alles ist kaput.
By Sunday night, my nerves were frayed.
But then Elizabeth, she builds a huge pile of stuffed animals on the living room floor, burrows into them, and then pops out of the top, her arms stretched overhead and a huge smile on her face.
"Daddy," she said. "Do you know what that is like?"
"No," I said.
"It's like I snuck into a birthday cake, and then just before the candles were blown out I popped out of the top!"
My mouth dropped open. "Where did you think of that?" I asked.
"It came from my brain."
I'm sure. I don't think it's my fault. The only two things I have watched where strippers pop out of cakes in recent years is one episode of Cheers where Diane pops out of Sam's cake and then that scene in Under Siege where the girl pops out of a cake. How they smuggled her onto the ship I will never know.
But Cheers is something we watch at night and Under Siege....I saw it once, ages ago, before Elizabeth was born, and that was enough. So I am not sure where she got that idea from. It's not something that one really thinks of on their own, I would think. I am sure there is a fairly innocent explanation....either that, or she has been learning more than I bargained for at public school. Those liberals artsy fartsies and their Common Core.
Anyways. It almost made the weekend worth it. It's a funny story, one of those cute things that kids say.
But now that the kids are finally all asleep I am looking forward to the vanilla pudding I made for myself that I secretly laced with rum.
Rum. Rhymes with yum.
Rum.
Showing posts with label Superdad. Show all posts
Showing posts with label Superdad. Show all posts
Sunday, October 4, 2015
Wednesday, June 17, 2015
Lacrimosa
So we are at the beach, my immediate family, my parents, and I; there is a screened in porch attached to the side of the beach house my parents have rented for all of us. In this screened in porch this evening an impromptu game of Dodgeball develops where I am pitted against my wife and my oldest daughter Elizabeth.
It's 2 against 1, close quarters, good old fashioned Dodgeball, played with 4 lightweight rubber playground balls. I am holding two balls and keeping my family at bay; Elizabeth attacks to my left, my wife to the right. I take a shot my oldest daughter and miss, and I turn my attention to my wife to try to ward off her attack with the remaining ball. This is the moment when my daughter unleashes a sharp throw and she connects ever so well.
She hits me right in the groonies.
Like I said, lightweight playground balls so it doesn't hurt TOO bad, but it's still enough to drop me to me knees for a moment, and as I am falling my wife fires and hits me right in the side head with force. BLAM! That is the sound of a hollow playground ball a bouncin' off my noggin.
In a moment, I have gone from tall Dodgeball warrior to a man curled up in a fetal position on the ground, trying to ward off the continuing blows, a mere shell of who he once was. Meanwhile in the distance I hear my youngest daughter, merely 17 months old, laughing with the simple glee of a young child.
That is love, no?
Yeah, I suppose that it is.
It's 2 against 1, close quarters, good old fashioned Dodgeball, played with 4 lightweight rubber playground balls. I am holding two balls and keeping my family at bay; Elizabeth attacks to my left, my wife to the right. I take a shot my oldest daughter and miss, and I turn my attention to my wife to try to ward off her attack with the remaining ball. This is the moment when my daughter unleashes a sharp throw and she connects ever so well.
She hits me right in the groonies.
Like I said, lightweight playground balls so it doesn't hurt TOO bad, but it's still enough to drop me to me knees for a moment, and as I am falling my wife fires and hits me right in the side head with force. BLAM! That is the sound of a hollow playground ball a bouncin' off my noggin.
In a moment, I have gone from tall Dodgeball warrior to a man curled up in a fetal position on the ground, trying to ward off the continuing blows, a mere shell of who he once was. Meanwhile in the distance I hear my youngest daughter, merely 17 months old, laughing with the simple glee of a young child.
That is love, no?
Yeah, I suppose that it is.
Monday, September 22, 2014
Fatherhood
This is either a great picture of modern day fatherhood or the next billboard for Rev. Stuckley's Abstinence Only Crusade:
Okay, so what's going on here:
That is me and my youngest, Rosalyn, at the Buffalo Wild Wings in Newport News, VA. With one hand I am trying to eat my spicy garlic buffalo wings, with the other hand I am trying to hold Rosalyn and tear off pieces of Naan bread for her to eat to keep her from crying (she had only napped for 1 hour 20 minutes all day and was very tired -- for this reason she refused to sit in her high chair and thus I am trying to balance her in my lap in addition to everything else). I had to be very careful to make sure none of the spicy garlic sauce got onto the Naan bread, which wasn't too spicy but probably bad enough to make her rather uncomfortable.
Rosalyn and Elizabeth are great, wonderful, usually very well behaved and easy kids. Yet I often remark, as we hustle and bustle our two kids (only two!) from one place to another and soothe, feed, cajole, support, and teach them, that our mere presence in such and such a place is probably one of the best advertisements for birth control there can be. Perhaps tonight the young people at the table next to us, whose buzz was seriously harshed while my daughter cried out in indignation to the fuss fuss gods, will take the extra time to wrap it up or block it up or do whatever the hell it is that young people do these days with it to keep it from happening while it is being done.
I live to serve.
Okay, so what's going on here:
That is me and my youngest, Rosalyn, at the Buffalo Wild Wings in Newport News, VA. With one hand I am trying to eat my spicy garlic buffalo wings, with the other hand I am trying to hold Rosalyn and tear off pieces of Naan bread for her to eat to keep her from crying (she had only napped for 1 hour 20 minutes all day and was very tired -- for this reason she refused to sit in her high chair and thus I am trying to balance her in my lap in addition to everything else). I had to be very careful to make sure none of the spicy garlic sauce got onto the Naan bread, which wasn't too spicy but probably bad enough to make her rather uncomfortable.
Rosalyn and Elizabeth are great, wonderful, usually very well behaved and easy kids. Yet I often remark, as we hustle and bustle our two kids (only two!) from one place to another and soothe, feed, cajole, support, and teach them, that our mere presence in such and such a place is probably one of the best advertisements for birth control there can be. Perhaps tonight the young people at the table next to us, whose buzz was seriously harshed while my daughter cried out in indignation to the fuss fuss gods, will take the extra time to wrap it up or block it up or do whatever the hell it is that young people do these days with it to keep it from happening while it is being done.
I live to serve.
Friday, November 16, 2012
In Which Superdad Meets His Match
It may be a frightening thing to contemplate, and it's not something I think I have talked about much on the interwebs, but I am actually a Father.
That's right. This guy:
the same guy who wrote this:
But if, say, Anne Hathaway met me at the 46th street gate with a dozen warm doughnuts (again, not of fund raiser quality), well, then we could talk. No guarantees. If she was naked, or even mostly naked, that may help sway my decision, but still won't necessarily carry the day in Mr.Cuccinelli's favor.
and this:
"Couldn't help but notice you were enjoying the jazz!! I really liked the part where the trumpeter went 'skiddly bap bap do bap di dap dap dibbledy dibbledy doowhap POW POW POW BWAAA! Yeah man, those cats sure can jive. You gotta smoke?"
and this:
Amelie sat down on the edge of the bed and pulled her bathrobe tightly around her body, trying to keep out the autumn chill that touched her soul like a distant longing. She listened in the darkness to her husband snoring loudly with smug contentment. She sighed. It wasn't that James was a bad guy, but it was just so embarrassing to be with a man who was so worried about giving away Coke's "secret formula" when he was drunk at a party; so worried that he made everyone sign non-disclosure agreements on the back of napkins written in block letters with a sharpie.
is a dad. A Father. Ein Papa. As proof, I submit the following picture of my daughter Elizabeth and me, taken recently as she painted one of the pumpkins we bought at the local pumpkin patch before celebrating Halloween:
Now I will be honest: looking back on it, the blessed state of Fatherhood was one that clearly I was not mentally prepared for. It took a while for me to grow into the role of being a Dad; it's one that I continue to grow into more and more each day.
If not mentally prepared for the change, however, I did turn out to be surprisingly adept at the stuff of fatherhood. There were justifiable concerns in this area. After all, one has to wonder if a man who once set his own eyebrows aflame during an outdoor candlelight Christmas Eve vigil (my cheeks were numb with cold, and the Andy Rooney like quality of my eyebrows makes them easily combustible) would have any luck keeping his child alive without a very detailed instruction manual.
As the picture shows, so far so good. I have a happy, healthy, smart little girl. In fact, last week while I drove to church to meet my wife and daughter for one St. Mark Lutheran's weekly dinners (prepared by the talented volunteers at Cafe St. Mark) there was a comedy bit on the radio about being a guy being a new dad, the comedian lamenting -- without much hilarity -- the lack of the aforementioned manual. As I listened I gave myself a pat on the back with the knowledge that so far my foray into fatherhood could be considered a great success.
O Beware, those who suck upon the sour teats of Our Lady Hubris!
The church dinner was over, choir practice had begun, and it was time to take Elizabeth home. Because I arrived late I had to move the car seat from my wife's car to mine (times are tough, the middle class is squeezed, and so we can only afford the one), and I put Elizabeth in the seat but did not strap her in, grabbed my keys which had fallen out of my hoodie pocket on to the bench seat, and closed the door. The car beeped, indicating the door was locked.
No big deal, I thought. I'll just take my keys out and unlock the door and....
What is this? My keys are disconcertingly light. Something is missing. The car key and FOB are missing. The door is still locked. And it dawns on me that I have just locked my daughter in the car.
You see, I keep my car keys on a little hook, a clip, so that I can detach my car keys from the rest of my keys. I do this because I hate carrying my keys around in the pocket of my jeans. I hate carrying around keys around in the pocket of my jeans because I like to wear tight jeans to accentuate my buttockular region, which if I do say so myself is quite exquisite. Most of the time my keys live in my satchel bag (aka as a purse) along with whatever book I happen to be reading and some other stuff (mints, a flashlight, pens and pencils, a slide rule, knuckle dusters, flick knife, Hungarian phrase book, a Civil War bullet I bought at an antique store, a flip book in which two stick figures do it if you flip the pages real fast), but if I ever want to walk around without my murse I can just quickly disconnect my car keys from the rest of the set, slip the FOB in my pocket, and then I can make the world a better place in my own particular way with my tight man booty.
The drawback of this system is that occasionally, just occasionally, my car keys disconnect themselves without me knowing it. I think they are desperately trying to get to Japan where they were born.
Unfortunately for me they had rather unwisely decided to attempt their latest great escape while I was in the car itself getting my daughter's car seat in place (which naturally I did with great success, because this guy, who just locked his only child in the car, is something of a Superdad), and I was just short of a full set...of keys.
I'd like to say that coolness of head prevailed. It did not. The problem was clearly too large for me to solve (and it turns out there was indeed a rather simple, elegant solution), all of my circuits overloaded, and I decided this was a matter for the Police, the Fire Department, the Kommando Spezialkrafte, or my wife.
I ran into the darkness of the parking lot, abandoning my now bewildered and frightened child, and went back into the church. I poked my head into the choir rehearsal room, pointed at Trish, and motioned to her to come outside. Clearly my face betrayed that something was very wrong, and she ran out into the hall.
"What is it?"
"I've locked Elizabeth inside the car!"
We both rushed out into the parking lot where Elizabeth, realizing the gravity of the situation and upset over my cowardice, was crying. Much like any Tommy Lee Jones character in movies such as Law Enforcement Officers of the USandA and The Man Who Ran Away From the Police, wife quickly wrested control of the situation away from the inept keystone cops who had so royally managed to screw-up (me, Superdad), and rapidly seized on the very simple solution I had missed: because Elizabeth was not strapped into her car seat, if we could convince her to get out of her seat and try pushing one of the buttons on the doors to unlock the car, we could get her out. The Kommando Spezialkrafte would not be necessary.
Trish started talking to Elizabeth through the closed windows, and once Elizabeth was calmed down she happily made her way into the drivers seat where she started mashing all the buttons at my wife's direction; because there are like 8 buttons next to the drivers seat even in my run of the mill Subaru Outback Sport, and since it was dark, she just wasn't hitting the right one.
So it was that Agent Samuel Gerard sent Deputy Roscoe P. Coltrane back into the church to see if Gus, who is basically St. Mark Lutheran's Sargent-At-Arms, had a flashlight. To do this I had to interrupt choir practice for a second time and as the choir director turned to me with a look of slight yet genteel exasperation I felt some kind of explanation was in order.
"Gus, do you have a flashlight? I locked my daughter in the car!"
The wide range of human emotion that greeted the news was an amazing thing to behold. On the women there were looks of shock, deep concern, and touching sympathy.
The men? They all laughed at me.
Gus, ever resourceful, DID have a flashlight on the hip, and so I went back out into the parking lot only to see that Elizabeth was thankfully out of the car, cradled in Trish's arms, her tiny hands raised in triumph. "We did it!" shouted Trish. I breathed a heavy sigh of relief.
But one more problem remained. For some reason my car's alarm had gone off in the process of extracting my daughter from its interior, and the only way to turn it off was to insert the key into the ignition three times. Not 4, not 2, and definitely not 5, but 3.
So I proceeded to search the car for my car keys. I couldn't find them. I thought maybe they had somehow gotten under the car seat as I was installing it, so I ripped it out. All the while the horn is blaring and the headlights are blinking and the choir, now hopelessly distracted, is now starting to congregate in the parking lot to see what is going on.
The keys were not under the now dislodged car seat. Confused, I stepped out of the car to get a little fresh air and re-evaluate the situation. I rubbed the back of my neck and looked down as I often do under duress...
I saw something. I couldn't be sure...I couldn't quite believe it...
There, on the ground, sitting in a puddle of fresh November rain all this time--
My car keys.
That's right. This guy:
the same guy who wrote this:
But if, say, Anne Hathaway met me at the 46th street gate with a dozen warm doughnuts (again, not of fund raiser quality), well, then we could talk. No guarantees. If she was naked, or even mostly naked, that may help sway my decision, but still won't necessarily carry the day in Mr.Cuccinelli's favor.
and this:
"Couldn't help but notice you were enjoying the jazz!! I really liked the part where the trumpeter went 'skiddly bap bap do bap di dap dap dibbledy dibbledy doowhap POW POW POW BWAAA! Yeah man, those cats sure can jive. You gotta smoke?"
and this:
Amelie sat down on the edge of the bed and pulled her bathrobe tightly around her body, trying to keep out the autumn chill that touched her soul like a distant longing. She listened in the darkness to her husband snoring loudly with smug contentment. She sighed. It wasn't that James was a bad guy, but it was just so embarrassing to be with a man who was so worried about giving away Coke's "secret formula" when he was drunk at a party; so worried that he made everyone sign non-disclosure agreements on the back of napkins written in block letters with a sharpie.
is a dad. A Father. Ein Papa. As proof, I submit the following picture of my daughter Elizabeth and me, taken recently as she painted one of the pumpkins we bought at the local pumpkin patch before celebrating Halloween:
 |
| Elizabeth and Me. Photo props to my wife Trish. |
If not mentally prepared for the change, however, I did turn out to be surprisingly adept at the stuff of fatherhood. There were justifiable concerns in this area. After all, one has to wonder if a man who once set his own eyebrows aflame during an outdoor candlelight Christmas Eve vigil (my cheeks were numb with cold, and the Andy Rooney like quality of my eyebrows makes them easily combustible) would have any luck keeping his child alive without a very detailed instruction manual.
As the picture shows, so far so good. I have a happy, healthy, smart little girl. In fact, last week while I drove to church to meet my wife and daughter for one St. Mark Lutheran's weekly dinners (prepared by the talented volunteers at Cafe St. Mark) there was a comedy bit on the radio about being a guy being a new dad, the comedian lamenting -- without much hilarity -- the lack of the aforementioned manual. As I listened I gave myself a pat on the back with the knowledge that so far my foray into fatherhood could be considered a great success.
O Beware, those who suck upon the sour teats of Our Lady Hubris!
The church dinner was over, choir practice had begun, and it was time to take Elizabeth home. Because I arrived late I had to move the car seat from my wife's car to mine (times are tough, the middle class is squeezed, and so we can only afford the one), and I put Elizabeth in the seat but did not strap her in, grabbed my keys which had fallen out of my hoodie pocket on to the bench seat, and closed the door. The car beeped, indicating the door was locked.
No big deal, I thought. I'll just take my keys out and unlock the door and....
What is this? My keys are disconcertingly light. Something is missing. The car key and FOB are missing. The door is still locked. And it dawns on me that I have just locked my daughter in the car.
You see, I keep my car keys on a little hook, a clip, so that I can detach my car keys from the rest of my keys. I do this because I hate carrying my keys around in the pocket of my jeans. I hate carrying around keys around in the pocket of my jeans because I like to wear tight jeans to accentuate my buttockular region, which if I do say so myself is quite exquisite. Most of the time my keys live in my satchel bag (aka as a purse) along with whatever book I happen to be reading and some other stuff (mints, a flashlight, pens and pencils, a slide rule, knuckle dusters, flick knife, Hungarian phrase book, a Civil War bullet I bought at an antique store, a flip book in which two stick figures do it if you flip the pages real fast), but if I ever want to walk around without my murse I can just quickly disconnect my car keys from the rest of the set, slip the FOB in my pocket, and then I can make the world a better place in my own particular way with my tight man booty.
The drawback of this system is that occasionally, just occasionally, my car keys disconnect themselves without me knowing it. I think they are desperately trying to get to Japan where they were born.
Unfortunately for me they had rather unwisely decided to attempt their latest great escape while I was in the car itself getting my daughter's car seat in place (which naturally I did with great success, because this guy, who just locked his only child in the car, is something of a Superdad), and I was just short of a full set...of keys.
I'd like to say that coolness of head prevailed. It did not. The problem was clearly too large for me to solve (and it turns out there was indeed a rather simple, elegant solution), all of my circuits overloaded, and I decided this was a matter for the Police, the Fire Department, the Kommando Spezialkrafte, or my wife.
I ran into the darkness of the parking lot, abandoning my now bewildered and frightened child, and went back into the church. I poked my head into the choir rehearsal room, pointed at Trish, and motioned to her to come outside. Clearly my face betrayed that something was very wrong, and she ran out into the hall.
"What is it?"
"I've locked Elizabeth inside the car!"
We both rushed out into the parking lot where Elizabeth, realizing the gravity of the situation and upset over my cowardice, was crying. Much like any Tommy Lee Jones character in movies such as Law Enforcement Officers of the USandA and The Man Who Ran Away From the Police, wife quickly wrested control of the situation away from the inept keystone cops who had so royally managed to screw-up (me, Superdad), and rapidly seized on the very simple solution I had missed: because Elizabeth was not strapped into her car seat, if we could convince her to get out of her seat and try pushing one of the buttons on the doors to unlock the car, we could get her out. The Kommando Spezialkrafte would not be necessary.
Trish started talking to Elizabeth through the closed windows, and once Elizabeth was calmed down she happily made her way into the drivers seat where she started mashing all the buttons at my wife's direction; because there are like 8 buttons next to the drivers seat even in my run of the mill Subaru Outback Sport, and since it was dark, she just wasn't hitting the right one.
So it was that Agent Samuel Gerard sent Deputy Roscoe P. Coltrane back into the church to see if Gus, who is basically St. Mark Lutheran's Sargent-At-Arms, had a flashlight. To do this I had to interrupt choir practice for a second time and as the choir director turned to me with a look of slight yet genteel exasperation I felt some kind of explanation was in order.
"Gus, do you have a flashlight? I locked my daughter in the car!"
The wide range of human emotion that greeted the news was an amazing thing to behold. On the women there were looks of shock, deep concern, and touching sympathy.
The men? They all laughed at me.
Gus, ever resourceful, DID have a flashlight on the hip, and so I went back out into the parking lot only to see that Elizabeth was thankfully out of the car, cradled in Trish's arms, her tiny hands raised in triumph. "We did it!" shouted Trish. I breathed a heavy sigh of relief.
But one more problem remained. For some reason my car's alarm had gone off in the process of extracting my daughter from its interior, and the only way to turn it off was to insert the key into the ignition three times. Not 4, not 2, and definitely not 5, but 3.
So I proceeded to search the car for my car keys. I couldn't find them. I thought maybe they had somehow gotten under the car seat as I was installing it, so I ripped it out. All the while the horn is blaring and the headlights are blinking and the choir, now hopelessly distracted, is now starting to congregate in the parking lot to see what is going on.
The keys were not under the now dislodged car seat. Confused, I stepped out of the car to get a little fresh air and re-evaluate the situation. I rubbed the back of my neck and looked down as I often do under duress...
I saw something. I couldn't be sure...I couldn't quite believe it...
There, on the ground, sitting in a puddle of fresh November rain all this time--
My car keys.
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