Back-Off Old Lady!

This past weekend I took the boy to the grocery store for some much needed staples and people watching. Along the journey I gathered my regular stock of the alcoholic suds and tossed them carefully in the buggy along with my other goods, not even realizing they would soon instigate rage within one innocent by-stander.

A few minutes later I’m putting groceries on the conveyor belt while a few moms are smiling at the boy’s eagerness to help. I then lift from under the buggy a case of beer and put it along with the rest of my grub. Being the kind, gentle being that I am, I then grab the line-break plastic thingy and placed it behind the case of beer to let the nice little old lady behind me know she could now begin putting her old-lady groceries on the belt.

As I smiled at her and give her a friendly nod, the devil himself ripped through her skin and said loudly, “how could you do THAT!?! Buying alcohol in front of such a young impressionable boy? SHAME on you!”

My initial reaction was to clench my ass, as not to shat myself, pull my son close to me for protection and roam the store with my eyes to make sure I wasn’t on some lame-ass hidden camera show. What seemed like hours passed between when she spat her verbal stupidness to when the rage from within me boiled to the point of explosion.

Pushing the boy behind me I say, “what do you THINK I’m going to do with it when I get home you psycho bitch?!”

Now, I’ll be the first to admit that was not a well thought-out response. In fact, it was just wrong. But I was pissed. Who feels they are ever righteous enough to say something like that to someone? In my mind I’m thinking:

• Why didn’t she just shake her head in disapproval then go call her friend Marge to bitch about it?

• Didn’t she notice it was just beer? And cheap canned beer at that! It’s not like I was on a playground buying crack using my son’s piggy-bank for the loot.

• Why did she have to say it so loud? Oh…cause she needed to hear herself cause she’s probably hard of hearing…never mind. That one was legit.

I could have yelled at her for buying so much prune juice and raisins, pointing-out the fact that the sewer issues in this city are because of people like her!

Regardless, what gives her or anyone else the right? What I do in my own home is not for her or anyone to assume, conjecture, and act upon in a public arena. If she wants to go home and journal about it and use it to make herself feel better about her own dysfunctional family, fine!

We’d all be better people if we could keep our comments to ourselves and come down from that ivory tower long enough to….

Ahhh…who am I kidding, if that were the case, people watching at grocery stores, malls and airports wouldn’t be such an important part of my life and I’d be unhappier for it. Judging is human nature. It’s what makes us wake up in the morning and think, my life isn’t as shit as that guy’s life! So judge away kids…have fun with it, but just keep it to yourself. And, just know that no matter your age, race, or sex, if you take the risk of voicing what you’re judging me for, you’re gonna get it right the hell back!

Ode to the Dangly Shoelace

Despite the fact my son can do multiplications…he can’t tie his shoe.

Despite the fact he knows monsters aren’t real,

Isn’t scared of the dark,

And can rip a worm in half on a fishing trip …he can’t tie his shoe.

We went cross-country skiing this past weekend,

From the seat of my ass,

Deeply implanted in the snow,

He stood there coaching me to “use your polls to go!!,”

But he can’t tie his shoe.

He’ll steal sushi from your plate if you’re dozing for a second or two,

But he can’t tie his shoe.

He can wipe his own ass….but he can’t tie his shoe.

He’ll tell a complete stranger Happy Birthday,

Climb a tree faster than me,

Be on my front wheel on a 15-mile bike ride,

Throw himself in a pool whether he’ll swim or come in with the tide,

But he still….can’t tie his shoe.

He calls his sister his “enemy,”

Until I see him lying next to her laughing.

He’ll put tacks on the floor,

Won’t bother to hold a door,

And tell me “you’re mean!” when I punish him.

Yesterday he held his foot out with his regular pitiful look,

His knot-tying plea,

I said, “you’re seven, why don’t you tie your own shoe!”

He said,

“Cause everyone always does it for me.”

My son can tie his own shoe.

Can We Pleeeeease Have Sex?

My son’s obsession with the Wii has helped me realize I ask the wifey for sex WAY too much.

Every day I hear the car door slam quickly followed by the pitter patter of feet running and the high-pitched tones of children giggling and laughing. One of them usually slams themselves against the front door in the heat of victory over being the first to the house. A key rattles in the keyhole as the wifey yells “JUST A MINUTE GUYS!!! BACK-UP!!”

The front door opens unleashing a flurry of flying book-bags, coats, shoes, and a flustered wifey. The girl tears-ass upstairs to immediately change into her jammies. The boy? Like a bloodhound he drops to all fours with his wet slobbery nose just inches from the floor and begins sniffing for any scent that ultimately leads him to me.

Within seconds he’s spazzing-out on my lap saying, “daddy can we play Wii? Please? You said yesterday we could play Wii and we didn’t even get to play that long so I wanna play longer this time and will you play with me please daddy? Wii daddy? Daddy! Wii!”

Every day this happens. And I love spending time with the kid and playing Wii, but the incessant and persistent asking to play Wii drives me up the wall. First thing in the morning. First thing when he gets home. Before dinner. After dinner. In the grocery store. Picking him up from school. Wii Wii Wii fucking Wii!!!!!

Then, like a fresh splash of clean oil on a broken down 1950s engine, my brain starts to work and it hits me! “Holy shit! This must be how the wifey feels about me asking for sex constantly!!! Oh my baby jesus…I have got to STOP doing this to her or I’ll never have sex again!”

The more I think about it the more I start to shudder at the thought of how completely annoying and unattractive my “game” has been over the past….oh shit…over the past decade. In a panic I grabbed a sheet of paper, a pen, and dropped some Mr. Wizard knowledge into a chart to compare my son’s Wii obsession with must-mount-wifey-now obsession. Here’s a few examples of what my brain managed to contemplate.  

#1

The boy NEVER wants to play Wii alone. He’s emphatic that I join him every time and gets upset if I beg him to just play by himself for a bit.

I get upset and throw a temper-tantrum when the wifey’s answer to my sex request is, “why don’t you just go upstairs and take care of yourself?”

#2

When I play Wii with the boy, he has to sit right next to me with arms touching. So while I’m maneuvering Mario through his maze of snapping turtles and angry walking mushrooms, I get poked and prodded by the fidgety mini-me who’s wedged his body next to mine.

The wifey will be laying on the couch comfortably and peacefully and I’ll slowly climb my cumbersome 6’3” frame in between her and the back cushions causing the blanket to get all fucked-up, pushing her forward so she has to put an arm down to keep herself from falling off and I grab her ass while saying, “hey there little lady. Wanna fool around?”

#3

After playing Wii for a while with the boy I’ll make the announcement, “OK bud, five more minutes and then we’re done.” That’s always followed by a whiney, high-pitched, “awwwweee…come-on daddy! We just started playing. I don’t wanna stop in five minutes. Pleeeease?!”

The wifey and I will be in the middle of one of the most amazing sex sessions of humankind with birds chirping louder, rays of sun beaming brighter, and all is right in the universe when she’ll say, “we should go ahead and wrap this up.”

And I’m all, “Awwwweeee…come on honey!! But we just started! I don’t wanna stop, pleeeeease…just a little longer?”

After completing this exhaustive list I felt ashamed. I felt how a fly must feel after finishing therapy for obsessively flying around a cow’s ass for many years—empty and full of motivation to just apologize endlessly. And, I knew that’s just what I had to do.

So, I walked over to the wifey who had just stood up to go upstairs to bed and I threw my arms around her and hugged her passionately. And before I could utter the first sympathetic apology she said, “Fine! Let’s go upstairs and do it.”

('’)

Time To Get Off This Spot

It’s been some time since I last updated on my current situation.

The summary…Big-eared, gap-toothed freak gets job in Chicago, lives in empty house on air mattress alone in Chicago while his family tries to sell their house in Virginia, four months later said family moves to Chicago, freak works at new job for exactly18 months before being given a choice to stay at half the salary or leave and get full salary for three full months…gap-toothed freak decides to leave after searching soul and talking with friends, colleagues and family.

December 1, 2009, was the first day of unemployment and the beginning of a pretty incredible internal journey. I woke up and had nowhere to go. The kids went to school, the wifey headed off to her job, and there I was…disheveled, hung-over from feeling sorry for myself the night before, scratching myself, and looking around the house thinking, “OK…now what?”

I had a brief explosion of support from my kick-ass Twitter peeps. I pimped my resume far and wide, and met and talked to some really great, helpful people.

This is a really bad comparison, but I imagine this is kind of what it’s like when you lose someone close to you. You find out who your true friends are and they rally around you. And, for a short time you feel like you can conquer the world. But then they leave because they have their lives to live. They have their families to take care of…

Then I found myself one early morning seven weeks later standing there, disheveled, hung-over from feeling sorry for myself the night before, scratching myself, and looking around the house thinking, “I have absolutely no place in this life.”

What used to be 5 a.m. daily runs have turned into 6:45 a.m. snooze-bar workouts.

I drink more than I should at night because…well because fuck it, I don’t have to work tomorrow.

I didn’t shave or cut my hair for weeks and was introduced by the wifey to the term “beard funk.”

My son was sitting on my lap the other day and reached out and poked my stomach.

I find myself regularly and randomly telling the cat secrets and make him “pinky-swear not to tell!!”

After interviewing for what would be my dream job, I got an email letting me know they’re “pursuing another candidate.”

Last week I spent the day with the executive director of a great organization here in the Chicago suburbs. I’ve worked with her since I’ve been in Chicago and she wanted to discuss a new position being created that she wants me to take. She has to go through the motions associated with advertising it, but when all is said-and-done, she says the job is mine. Of course I won’t consider it mine till the paperwork is signed and I’m on board, but still it’s a huge relief.

And as phenomenal and fortunate as that is, I’m still here in this spot. The spot where I’ve stood since the day I was let go. Watching life pass by each day. A ghost of me interacting with my family and friends. Self pity lurking in every corner ready to be grasped as an excuse when needed.

So why am I not happy with this very fortunate news? And I realized, I’m ecstatic with the news, I’m just not happy with myself and how I’ve handled this situation. And even more so—I think I’ve been waiting for someone to come by and pick me up, fix things, show me the new course to follow, then pat me on my ass and say, “now go get em tiger!”

But life doesn’t happen like that. Life’s going to continue with or without me—that much I have learned. And I’ve got such a great group of family and friends—but they all have their lives to lead too.

All you parents out there who’ve seen Nemo 4,398,219 times remember the scene when Marlin and Dory are with the turtles riding the East Australian Current and little Squirt gets tossed out into the still water. Crush, the father, says, “let us see what little Squirt does flying solo.”

It’s time for me to move off this spot. It’s time for me to cut the hair, trim the beard, get back in my regular routine, and leap back into the wild ride of the current of life I’ve ignored for too damn long. No one’s going to come out there and grab me and pull be back in. I’ve gotta do it on my own.

What I Learned In Two Weeks

Two weeks. I survived two freakin’ weeks as a single, stay-at-home dad. No, wifey hasn’t left me…yet. She does work part-time though. So, from 8 a.m. to 2:30 p.m. I was the lone individual responsible for keeping two, insane children alive and from killing themselves, or me.

So here are my thoughts and some snapshots of what went down:

1)  Stay at home moms fucking rock. And! Single parents should be given full-tax breaks and awarded Pulitzer Prizes of Awesomeness made of diamonds.

2)  My daughter is absolutely head-over-heels in love with Patrick from SpongeBob.

3)  My kids watch too much SpongeBob.

4)  Watching my boy interact with strangers on a sledding hill brings the biggest, dumbest smile to my oversized face.

5)  Checking out the view from the top of the Sears Tower is kick-ass and makes wifey poop herself.

6)  It becomes painfully difficult to find time to masturbate when children are in your life 24/7.

7)  Wait…I mean…#5 is something I heard on Oprah.

8)  Shit – I swear I did not start watching Oprah over the past two weeks. I hate that woman!!! But seriously, her holiday episode…I mean…SHIT!

9)  I get my period when I’m alone with the kids for that long of time.

10)  I found myself standing in a room at least once a day, with absolutely no idea why in the fuck I walked into it.

11)  I went grocery shopping twice with a list of over two dozen things and came out with only beer and popcorn.

12)  My daughter thinks she’s iCarly and wants to kiss a boy.

13)  iCarly is banned from this house for the next 13 years until she goes off to college.

14)  Parenting with a hangover is really really really hard.

15)  When my kids are lying on the couch, entranced with a movie, and not moving—they are the most adorable fucking things on this planet.

16)  My wife wonders what I “do all day?”

17)  I’ve learned how to turn my phone off all day, then when the wifey asks “what’s up with your phone,” I use my brand-new, off-the-shelf mid-western accent and say, “Ohh geeze…the battery died so I had to plug it in to charge and forgot to turn it back on-okay! Sorry yah!”

18)  Trying to do a cartwheel when you’re naked and alone to celebrate the children going back to school is not a good idea. The cat attacked Mr. Small-Time and almost made it Mr. No-Time.

19)  I hate…hate…hate my fucking cat. Lazy, furry, cozy, snuggle buddy. I mean..that asshat.

20)  My son and I became closer than we’ve ever been and it makes me weak in the knees.

21)  All I have to do is look in my daughter’s eyes for a split second, and she’s scrambling to sit next to me…grabbing my arm and laying it around her and across her chest.

22)  My wife has the ability to make me do whatever in the holy hell she wants me to do and I have no control over it. I painted our bedroom and hallway, and went to Ikea all in a two-day span. And I didn’t even know it happened until it was over.

23)  Three days is the limit for me not taking a shower. After that…even I’m writing myself hate-notes and slipping them under my pillow.

24)  A lot of employers don’t post available jobs during the holidays.

25)  Despite all that’s absolutely and totally fucked right now…I love my life and those who are in it.