For reasons that will become clear, this entry is going to be a bit shorter than the others. (Thank God, you say).
Nancy and I are in the finishing stages of packing and steeling ourselves for our trip to Maine.* We leave tomorrow (Saturday). This will be our first time tending to toddlers on an airplane. All I can think about is how much the other passengers are going to resent us. I have nightmares in which the kids spontaneously multiply and embark on a campaign of in-flight terror so egregious that we end up being forced off the flight mid-air somewhere over Amish country. Here’s what my nightmares sound like:**
Forcing toddlers off planes (though NOT mid-air), it seems, has a recent precedent. Check out story from a few weeks ago:
http://www.msnbc.msn.com/id/19735896/
and this one from January:
http://www.msnbc.msn.com/id/16773655/
So, we may get to Maine and we may not. We’ll see. But if the airlines think talking too much or throwing a small temper tantrum is bad, wait until they get a load of David deciding he is Going To Bite You. There’s no escape. He’s a viper in a diaper. I’m reminded of the movie “Snakes on a Plane” (which I never did see), and Samuel Jackson’s famous tirade: “I’m tired of these Mother----ing snakes on this Mother----ing plane!” Exchange “babies” for “snakes” and you get the gist of what most passengers will be thinking. My brother suggests that I avoid eye contact with other passengers: they won’t be suddenly filled with sympathy and love. They will only take the opportunity to let me know – in a passive-aggressive way, looking up from their airport-purchased bestsellers or scowling sidelong from their trade journals and/or laptops – just how pissed off they really are. At which point, I will have David go over and tell a few of them all about tractors…yellow tractors. And maybe I’ll have him throw in a thesis about the “boo boo” he got in the park. Or what color their books are.
But maybe they will be perfect little darlings. There’s a precedent for that, too. We took them to Turkey Run State park last Saturday and walked Trail 10 – a 1.5 mile trail that had been marked as “Moderate,” but occasionally joined with Trail 3 which was marked as “Very Rugged.” 1.5 miles doesn’t sound like much, but it’s different, I found, when you’ve got a wiggling toddler in your arms/on your shoulders. One of the highlights was trying to pass over a little gorge by climbing up a slightly wet rock about 10 feet and then traversing a one-foot-wide ledge for another 20 feet or so before descending the rock again. I felt pretty proud of us until I saw a guy do it holding one toddler in his arms and a baby in a harness on his back. Another highlight was noticing (after crossing over “Wedge Rock”) that David’s “Pull-Up” diaper had finally had enough and started to make its way out of his shorts and down his right leg. Luckily, it was filled only with liquid. But we didn’t have a replacement (because we’re stupid), so we just removed the diaper (which I rolled up, secured, and placed in my pocket…mmmm, yum), and let him go Commando the rest of the way. The rest of the way took about 20 minutes and Nancy spent that whole time praying to the hiking gods that they demanded no more offerings. The gods obliged her. Finally, once we got back to the car and changed the kids, we went to have lunch at the Turkey Run Inn. Anyone who has ever bussed or waited tables knows that the only thing worse than a toddler in a restaurant is TWO toddlers in a restaurant sitting close to one another: Oh the humanity! But David and Trin, to our surprise and glee, turned in a performance for the ages. Both stayed seated; both ate their meals (with forks!); both drank their milk out of straws (where did they learn to do that? Is it a hard-wired function?); and both charmed the wariness right out of the other patrons.
Thinking ahead to tomorrow’s adventure, is it too much to ask that we can step in the same stream twice?
Bon voyage.
*since there is only limited access to internet there, I will be taking next Friday off from the blog. But I will return on August 10 to tell you all about it.
**this is a combination of many different recordings made over several weeks. It is not (thank goodness) an actual representation of what our house sounds like.
Friday, July 27, 2007
Friday, July 20, 2007
Do It Again
A couple days ago, I awoke at the usual time (6:00 am) to the usual sound of Trinity bouncing around in her crib and shouting “Hi Dada! Hi Mama!” I rolled over, looked at the clock, and thought: “I’m not feeling it today.” I may have even said as much to Nancy who, as usual, simply got out of bed and started the day. As I lay there semi-dreading the morning routine – juice for the kids, coffee for us, breakfast for the kids, eating my own breakfast standing up, getting the kids’ diapers changed, getting them dressed, the inevitable toddler skirmish and the equally inevitable tears, getting them packed in the car for daycare, and then the stealth routine of trying to leave daycare without upsetting the kids, all so we could go to work – I thought of one of the many great Kinks anthems to the middle age, middle-class, workaday doldrums: “Do It Again.” Here’s the video for those of you who might be interested. But for those of you not inclined toward British Invasion power rock here’s the gist of the song’s sentiment:
And now it’s back where we started.
Here we go ‘round again.
Day after day I get up and I say
I better do it again, do it again, do it again.
I first heard that song when I was 18 or 19 and starring in my own rock and roll fantasy with my pals Noel and Scott in our band, Joe Rockhead. I loved the Kinks because they seemed to rock better than just about anyone else, but I was clueless about the real force of the song’s point. Now, at the age of 40, I think I get what the song is about. I feel it every morning as I try to summon up the whatever-it-is to get up, go out, and do it again.
And it’s not just some middle-age longing for my lost youth (believe me, I don’t want to be 18 again); it’s more about feeling the weight of my age finally pressing down on me. Last week, the annual Vigo County Fair opened up and, of course, we took the kids. The idea was to see the animals mostly, but we simply couldn’t resist the midway. David was too small to go on any of the rides except the Merry-Go-Round; and Trin could go on that one, too! So we all went: Nancy standing next to Dave and I next to Trin. Now, I’ve never been one for wild, upside down, spin-you-in two-directions-at-once, make you want/need to vomit rides. At least I could handle them, though. But on this night, the Merry-Go-Round made me dizzy. “That’s it,” I thought. “If I can’t handle the Merry-Go-Round, there’s absolutely nothing left for me here.” Except, that is, for the games.
As a new father, I felt obligated to win a prize for each of the kids. So off we went looking for a game that I might have a reasonable shot at winning. It turns out that there are two kinds of games at the fair: those you can’t possibly win (they trade on the male ego’s unwillingness to give up), and those that you can’t lose (they trade on the male ego’s need for bigger and better things). We picked that latter: throw darts at a wall full of balloons. The guy running the game saw us hesitate and preyed on my basic need to be a provider in order to get me to play. He even gave me the first dart free. I threw the dart at the wall of blue balloons, with the occasional red balloon thrown in, and “POP,” I nailed it, holding Trin even!
“OK, now three gets you a small prize,” he said as he handed me three more darts.
POP! POP! POP!
“Oh, he’s good! Two more gets you something on that wall.”
He sets two darts in my hand. I rear back and: POP! POP!
“Two more gets you a medium prize.”
POP! POP!
“Five more and you’re up to the large.”
POP! POP! POP! POP! POP!
“Three more and you can take anything off that wall right there.”
POP! POP! POP!
At this point Nancy stepped up and said to me, “You might want to stop.”
“Yeah?” I asked.
“Um, yeah,” she said. “Each dart is a dollar.”
“Really?”
“Yeah.”
I had thought he was just letting me go until I missed, all on that first investment of three darts. “OK,” I said to the guy. “That’s it.”
“OK,” he said, not as interested in me anymore. “You can take anything off one of these two walls.” We looked at what he was pointing to and saw some uninspiring “Finding Nemo” dolls no bigger than a bread box. I was pretty sure I had heard him say that I was up to the big prizes, but as a rule I try not to argue with guys with prison ink. I hesitated because I didn’t see anything I liked.
He was tired of us and wanted us out of there now that he had our money. “Or you can have two prizes out of this box,” he said and held up a box of stuff from the Island of Misfit Toys. I chose an orange iguana for Dave and a faux felt flower with a wire stem for Trin.
They were happy and I was out fifteen bucks. Next year, we just look at the animals.
Nancy more than made up for the loss by winning an award at the 63rd Annual Wabash Valley Juried Exhibition held at the Swope Art Museum here in Terre Haute. It’s a show that pulls in artists from around Indiana and Illinois and is always a big draw. The jurors have gotten more prestigious, and getting in, let alone winning anything, has become more competitive. Nancy’s piece, “Gathering,”
won the Vernon Cristee Award of Recognition. Seems that Nancy is on a bit of a streak at the Wabash Valley show: she’s won an award six years running now. She’s yet to win the big one, though: The Award of Excellence. I told her that we should create a computer program that compiles all the attributes of the winning pieces going back twenty years according to media, subject matter, size, and color pallet, and then have the computer devise a sure-fire top-prize winner for next year. She thinks that sounds like the opposite of art. She’ll just enter another piece and see what happens. I say we need to take it to the next level.
And speaking of the next level, Dad’s birthday is coming around again this coming week. He’s likely not to be all that happy about it (he never is), but it’s a big one. I won’t say how old he’ll be other than to say that it rhymes with “eleventy.” So, as I sit here and complain about feeling old and all the mid-life angst I’m experiencing, I think about Dad and how much he does day to day. This is the guy who has replaced all the wiring and plumbing in our house (which required a fair amount of alone time digging a ditch in the crawl space). And he’s done much the same kind of work in Chris and Steve’s houses as well. He rebuilt the “family room” in Chula Vista and also just finished building a massive set of cabinets for his next-door neighbors.
Plus, he regularly “volunteers” to do repairs for friends as well as St. John’s, where Mom volunteers an enormous amount of time. So, I say, happy birthday, Dad. Take a day off.
Back in my bedroom, my mind races through a range of tenuous associations. My thoughts turn from the routine of the day to the Kinks and from there to the heady days of discovering the Kinks (and the Replacements, X, the Clash, etc) in college and then to playing music in my first band with Noel and Scott. And then I think of something Scott once said at a rehearsal. We were probably mailing it in and not playing very well – more interested in how many Mickey’s Big Mouths were left than getting the song right. Scott said, “If you’re serious you rock even when you don’t feel like it.” And so I get up. I get up because I’m serious about my job as a father, because my parents got up every day and took their jobs seriously, and because hard work and sacrifice really are rewarded. Sometimes the reward is in the form of recognition by your peers, sometimes it’s in a hearty “Thanks” from the neighbor, and sometimes it’s in someone applauding your craft. Or, as in the case of that morning, in the way Dave and Trin find even the simplest game wildly funny.
Do it again, indeed!
And now it’s back where we started.
Here we go ‘round again.
Day after day I get up and I say
I better do it again, do it again, do it again.
I first heard that song when I was 18 or 19 and starring in my own rock and roll fantasy with my pals Noel and Scott in our band, Joe Rockhead. I loved the Kinks because they seemed to rock better than just about anyone else, but I was clueless about the real force of the song’s point. Now, at the age of 40, I think I get what the song is about. I feel it every morning as I try to summon up the whatever-it-is to get up, go out, and do it again.
And it’s not just some middle-age longing for my lost youth (believe me, I don’t want to be 18 again); it’s more about feeling the weight of my age finally pressing down on me. Last week, the annual Vigo County Fair opened up and, of course, we took the kids. The idea was to see the animals mostly, but we simply couldn’t resist the midway. David was too small to go on any of the rides except the Merry-Go-Round; and Trin could go on that one, too! So we all went: Nancy standing next to Dave and I next to Trin. Now, I’ve never been one for wild, upside down, spin-you-in two-directions-at-once, make you want/need to vomit rides. At least I could handle them, though. But on this night, the Merry-Go-Round made me dizzy. “That’s it,” I thought. “If I can’t handle the Merry-Go-Round, there’s absolutely nothing left for me here.” Except, that is, for the games.
As a new father, I felt obligated to win a prize for each of the kids. So off we went looking for a game that I might have a reasonable shot at winning. It turns out that there are two kinds of games at the fair: those you can’t possibly win (they trade on the male ego’s unwillingness to give up), and those that you can’t lose (they trade on the male ego’s need for bigger and better things). We picked that latter: throw darts at a wall full of balloons. The guy running the game saw us hesitate and preyed on my basic need to be a provider in order to get me to play. He even gave me the first dart free. I threw the dart at the wall of blue balloons, with the occasional red balloon thrown in, and “POP,” I nailed it, holding Trin even!
“OK, now three gets you a small prize,” he said as he handed me three more darts.
POP! POP! POP!
“Oh, he’s good! Two more gets you something on that wall.”
He sets two darts in my hand. I rear back and: POP! POP!
“Two more gets you a medium prize.”
POP! POP!
“Five more and you’re up to the large.”
POP! POP! POP! POP! POP!
“Three more and you can take anything off that wall right there.”
POP! POP! POP!
At this point Nancy stepped up and said to me, “You might want to stop.”
“Yeah?” I asked.
“Um, yeah,” she said. “Each dart is a dollar.”
“Really?”
“Yeah.”
I had thought he was just letting me go until I missed, all on that first investment of three darts. “OK,” I said to the guy. “That’s it.”
“OK,” he said, not as interested in me anymore. “You can take anything off one of these two walls.” We looked at what he was pointing to and saw some uninspiring “Finding Nemo” dolls no bigger than a bread box. I was pretty sure I had heard him say that I was up to the big prizes, but as a rule I try not to argue with guys with prison ink. I hesitated because I didn’t see anything I liked.
He was tired of us and wanted us out of there now that he had our money. “Or you can have two prizes out of this box,” he said and held up a box of stuff from the Island of Misfit Toys. I chose an orange iguana for Dave and a faux felt flower with a wire stem for Trin.
They were happy and I was out fifteen bucks. Next year, we just look at the animals.
Nancy more than made up for the loss by winning an award at the 63rd Annual Wabash Valley Juried Exhibition held at the Swope Art Museum here in Terre Haute. It’s a show that pulls in artists from around Indiana and Illinois and is always a big draw. The jurors have gotten more prestigious, and getting in, let alone winning anything, has become more competitive. Nancy’s piece, “Gathering,”
won the Vernon Cristee Award of Recognition. Seems that Nancy is on a bit of a streak at the Wabash Valley show: she’s won an award six years running now. She’s yet to win the big one, though: The Award of Excellence. I told her that we should create a computer program that compiles all the attributes of the winning pieces going back twenty years according to media, subject matter, size, and color pallet, and then have the computer devise a sure-fire top-prize winner for next year. She thinks that sounds like the opposite of art. She’ll just enter another piece and see what happens. I say we need to take it to the next level.And speaking of the next level, Dad’s birthday is coming around again this coming week. He’s likely not to be all that happy about it (he never is), but it’s a big one. I won’t say how old he’ll be other than to say that it rhymes with “eleventy.” So, as I sit here and complain about feeling old and all the mid-life angst I’m experiencing, I think about Dad and how much he does day to day. This is the guy who has replaced all the wiring and plumbing in our house (which required a fair amount of alone time digging a ditch in the crawl space). And he’s done much the same kind of work in Chris and Steve’s houses as well. He rebuilt the “family room” in Chula Vista and also just finished building a massive set of cabinets for his next-door neighbors.
Plus, he regularly “volunteers” to do repairs for friends as well as St. John’s, where Mom volunteers an enormous amount of time. So, I say, happy birthday, Dad. Take a day off.Back in my bedroom, my mind races through a range of tenuous associations. My thoughts turn from the routine of the day to the Kinks and from there to the heady days of discovering the Kinks (and the Replacements, X, the Clash, etc) in college and then to playing music in my first band with Noel and Scott. And then I think of something Scott once said at a rehearsal. We were probably mailing it in and not playing very well – more interested in how many Mickey’s Big Mouths were left than getting the song right. Scott said, “If you’re serious you rock even when you don’t feel like it.” And so I get up. I get up because I’m serious about my job as a father, because my parents got up every day and took their jobs seriously, and because hard work and sacrifice really are rewarded. Sometimes the reward is in the form of recognition by your peers, sometimes it’s in a hearty “Thanks” from the neighbor, and sometimes it’s in someone applauding your craft. Or, as in the case of that morning, in the way Dave and Trin find even the simplest game wildly funny.
Do it again, indeed!
Friday, July 13, 2007
Kissing Julia Roberts on the Naughty Mat
I have a strange affection for “bad” television shows that follow an absolutely rigid formula. For instance, “Cheaters” tells the stories of people who 1). suspect their partner might be cheating, 2). hire the “Cheaters” team to follow them, during which the “Cheaters” team 3). videotapes the culprit coming and going with another person, 4). tapes a lying phone call from the cheater to the jilted partner, and 5). orchestrates a confrontation during which a van with a television crew rolls up on the cheater in a parking lot and much gnashing of teeth takes place. And then there is “Supernanny” with the misbehaving kids, clueless parents, and lessons about “cuddles” (Supernanny sounds like a London East Ender) and the need for time-outs on the “naughty mat.” Of course, each week, the lessons are learned, and then forgotten, and then learned again…by the parents. And so it goes in our house (“Supernanny, that is, not “Cheaters”). We’ve started trying out the “naughty mat” idea whenever David decides to bite, hit, scratch, etc. (the boy feels things deeply). We require him to sit for twenty seconds and then look us in the eye and say he’s sorry. This process usually takes about 20 minutes but he always gets it together eventually. The problem is that I always feel guilty afterward. It’s sort of like breaking a wild horse. There’s something sublime about the force of his will; breaking it just seems wrong. Of course, I don’t really want him biting people when he’s 25 (though Marv Albert seems to have made it back from scandal to the announcing booth), but as I know all too well, sometimes you’ve just got to let it out. And maybe that’s the problem for the parents on “Supernanny”: they love everything about their kids, even the horrid, often bloodletting behavior and, subconsciously, put them in situations where Mr. or Ms. Hyde is going to come out eventually.
For David and Trinity, the problems arise when we refuse to give them something they feel they need quite desperately: like a paring knife or an electrical cord or, much more benignly, television. We’re trying to keep David and Trinity as television free as possible during these early years (see the previous post regarding the Elmo jones). But David’s new obsession is a DVD of “Good Night, Gorilla” given to him by my parents. It got in to the DVD player on a day that he was home sick with a mystery fever and didn’t feel like doing much more than laying on his “blue bed” in the TV room: a maroon colored comforter folded over twice topped off with a blue pillow. Ever since that day he occasionally runs into the TV room, points at the television and says “Guh.” Every once in a while we break down and oblige him because, like the parents on “Supernanny,” we’re just plain lazy sometimes. We even let him watch Elmo again this week. At one point during the video, he walked right up to the screen, his eyes not two inches away. So, of course, I started to say, “David, get away from the screen. You’re going to ruin your eyes.” But then I noticed that he was actually kissing the screen, or more specifically, Ernie, then Elmo, and then Julia Roberts. I guess he really does love that video. But he’s still going to ruin his eyes.
And I, apparently, am hell bent on ruining my feet. It all started with a temper tantrum that David was throwing at the kitchen table. I’d had enough of him throwing Hot Wheels and food on to the floor and screaming, so I decided to pick him up and put him in the living room. They call this “redirecting.” David was sitting on a heavy oak bench that runs along one side of the kitchen table, and when I went to pick him up he hooked his feet under the seat of the bench. I, of course, being out of patience, decided he was not going to win so easily and just kept lifting. Plus, I knew that if I put him down, he’d go totally boneless and it would be twice as hard to get him out of there. Well, the next thing I remember is the sound of the side of the bench seat hitting the floor (or what I thought was the floor) and then perhaps the worst pain I’ve experienced in my 40 years – and that includes accidentally sticking my finger in the socket of a heating element in the popcorn warmer at the Loma Theatre in San Diego, circa 1986, and winding up ten feet away with my back against the soda dispenser and the remnants of the blue arc flash still in my eyes. Anyhow, the bench had tipped over and came crashing down on my bare right foot. Now, I wish I had been stoic and simply said, “Damn,” through gritted teeth. But the truth is, I screamed, set David down (though I don’t remember actually doing that), hopped to the TV room, laid on the couch, clutching my foot and yelling. I did have the thought at one point during all of this that my foot had better be broken because I’m making an awfully big fuss. Luckily for me there is no doubt whatsoever that two toes are indeed fractured: the big toe and the pinky toe. How the others escaped is up for slow-motion instant replay to reveal. All I know is that the two injured digits turned a shade of purple that almost exactly matched Trinity’s Dora the Explorer chair (without, of course, the faux velvety sheen).
So, now I limp everywhere I go. And I must have set David down awkwardly because he will occasionally go to Nancy, put his hand to his head and say, “Dada. Head.”
But maybe he’s referring to the clarity of my thinking. Last night, much to Nancy’s dismay and disapproval, I decided to go play softball. Nancy told me that I was plain stupid and that she doesn’t want to hear me complaining about my gnarled feet when I am 80. If I make it 80, I’m sure I’ll have plenty of other things to complain about – just you wait. The good news is that we had more than enough players show up and so I was able to ride the pine for the first few innings. When I did get into the game, I played first base, saw no action whatsoever there and only made one plate appearance. Since I can’t put any real pressure on my right foot, I had to hit from the left side of the plate – something I taught myself to do back in the pre-teen years when my brother Steve and I would hold one-on-one baseball games in our driveway during which we would choose a current team (he was ALWAYS the Red Sox) and bat as each and every player in their current line-up, no matter lefty or righty. I hit a bloop single and then was forced out at second on ground ball to short by the next batter. The upshot is that I was able to look like a stud out there (at least I thought of myself that way: playing with broken toes!) but without really having to do much of anything that might actually cause me any actual discomfort.
But my proud reverie was quickly broken when I came home to find Nancy stressed out and scowling (a rarity for her). It seems that while I was away pretending to “tough it out,” she was home actually enduring one of the great trials of parenthood: multiple toddlers awake and screaming. Before I left for the game, I had put Trinity to bed and left Nancy quietly reading with David before taking him upstairs for the night. One thing you have to know is that David is tough to get to sleep; it requires time and patience, the latter of which Nancy has in spades. She had spent about an hour or so with David and had him just about to nod off when Trin woke up in one of her patented itch-fests that lead to yelling for someone to come pat her back to sleep. Apparently, Trin’s protestations woke David and it got to the point where Nancy was trying to get both of them back to sleep at the same time. By the time I got home (10:00 pm from a 9:00 pm game), Nancy had just gotten Trinity back to sleep. I was pretty sure Nancy was ready to pack her things and leave right then. But, as with most things, a good night sleep made it all seem less horrible than it was at the time. This morning, Nancy told me that at one point during the “events of the evening” she was holding David on her hip and leaning over Trin’s crib, patting her. David took the opportunity to start hugging her and kissing her cheek over and over again. It was good – and a good lesson for me – to see her finding the happy side of a stressful situation. We're learning that there is no formula. What works this week will not work next week. And one kind of behavior blends inevitably into its opposite. One minute you are kissing the television screen and the next you are on the naughty mat.
For David and Trinity, the problems arise when we refuse to give them something they feel they need quite desperately: like a paring knife or an electrical cord or, much more benignly, television. We’re trying to keep David and Trinity as television free as possible during these early years (see the previous post regarding the Elmo jones). But David’s new obsession is a DVD of “Good Night, Gorilla” given to him by my parents. It got in to the DVD player on a day that he was home sick with a mystery fever and didn’t feel like doing much more than laying on his “blue bed” in the TV room: a maroon colored comforter folded over twice topped off with a blue pillow. Ever since that day he occasionally runs into the TV room, points at the television and says “Guh.” Every once in a while we break down and oblige him because, like the parents on “Supernanny,” we’re just plain lazy sometimes. We even let him watch Elmo again this week. At one point during the video, he walked right up to the screen, his eyes not two inches away. So, of course, I started to say, “David, get away from the screen. You’re going to ruin your eyes.” But then I noticed that he was actually kissing the screen, or more specifically, Ernie, then Elmo, and then Julia Roberts. I guess he really does love that video. But he’s still going to ruin his eyes.
And I, apparently, am hell bent on ruining my feet. It all started with a temper tantrum that David was throwing at the kitchen table. I’d had enough of him throwing Hot Wheels and food on to the floor and screaming, so I decided to pick him up and put him in the living room. They call this “redirecting.” David was sitting on a heavy oak bench that runs along one side of the kitchen table, and when I went to pick him up he hooked his feet under the seat of the bench. I, of course, being out of patience, decided he was not going to win so easily and just kept lifting. Plus, I knew that if I put him down, he’d go totally boneless and it would be twice as hard to get him out of there. Well, the next thing I remember is the sound of the side of the bench seat hitting the floor (or what I thought was the floor) and then perhaps the worst pain I’ve experienced in my 40 years – and that includes accidentally sticking my finger in the socket of a heating element in the popcorn warmer at the Loma Theatre in San Diego, circa 1986, and winding up ten feet away with my back against the soda dispenser and the remnants of the blue arc flash still in my eyes. Anyhow, the bench had tipped over and came crashing down on my bare right foot. Now, I wish I had been stoic and simply said, “Damn,” through gritted teeth. But the truth is, I screamed, set David down (though I don’t remember actually doing that), hopped to the TV room, laid on the couch, clutching my foot and yelling. I did have the thought at one point during all of this that my foot had better be broken because I’m making an awfully big fuss. Luckily for me there is no doubt whatsoever that two toes are indeed fractured: the big toe and the pinky toe. How the others escaped is up for slow-motion instant replay to reveal. All I know is that the two injured digits turned a shade of purple that almost exactly matched Trinity’s Dora the Explorer chair (without, of course, the faux velvety sheen).
So, now I limp everywhere I go. And I must have set David down awkwardly because he will occasionally go to Nancy, put his hand to his head and say, “Dada. Head.” But maybe he’s referring to the clarity of my thinking. Last night, much to Nancy’s dismay and disapproval, I decided to go play softball. Nancy told me that I was plain stupid and that she doesn’t want to hear me complaining about my gnarled feet when I am 80. If I make it 80, I’m sure I’ll have plenty of other things to complain about – just you wait. The good news is that we had more than enough players show up and so I was able to ride the pine for the first few innings. When I did get into the game, I played first base, saw no action whatsoever there and only made one plate appearance. Since I can’t put any real pressure on my right foot, I had to hit from the left side of the plate – something I taught myself to do back in the pre-teen years when my brother Steve and I would hold one-on-one baseball games in our driveway during which we would choose a current team (he was ALWAYS the Red Sox) and bat as each and every player in their current line-up, no matter lefty or righty. I hit a bloop single and then was forced out at second on ground ball to short by the next batter. The upshot is that I was able to look like a stud out there (at least I thought of myself that way: playing with broken toes!) but without really having to do much of anything that might actually cause me any actual discomfort.
But my proud reverie was quickly broken when I came home to find Nancy stressed out and scowling (a rarity for her). It seems that while I was away pretending to “tough it out,” she was home actually enduring one of the great trials of parenthood: multiple toddlers awake and screaming. Before I left for the game, I had put Trinity to bed and left Nancy quietly reading with David before taking him upstairs for the night. One thing you have to know is that David is tough to get to sleep; it requires time and patience, the latter of which Nancy has in spades. She had spent about an hour or so with David and had him just about to nod off when Trin woke up in one of her patented itch-fests that lead to yelling for someone to come pat her back to sleep. Apparently, Trin’s protestations woke David and it got to the point where Nancy was trying to get both of them back to sleep at the same time. By the time I got home (10:00 pm from a 9:00 pm game), Nancy had just gotten Trinity back to sleep. I was pretty sure Nancy was ready to pack her things and leave right then. But, as with most things, a good night sleep made it all seem less horrible than it was at the time. This morning, Nancy told me that at one point during the “events of the evening” she was holding David on her hip and leaning over Trin’s crib, patting her. David took the opportunity to start hugging her and kissing her cheek over and over again. It was good – and a good lesson for me – to see her finding the happy side of a stressful situation. We're learning that there is no formula. What works this week will not work next week. And one kind of behavior blends inevitably into its opposite. One minute you are kissing the television screen and the next you are on the naughty mat.
Friday, July 6, 2007
¿Quien es mas macho?
I’ve been catching up with a television series that I had until now ignored: Rescue Me, Dennis Leary’s hyper-masculine, post-9/11 drama about New York City firefighters. The show is on Wednesday nights at 10:00 and that may explain why I haven’t watched it previously. Bravo’s Project Runway and Top Chef are also on Wednesday nights and those, being the only television besides American Idol that Nancy watches regularly, take precedence. I must admit to falling into the clutches of those reality shows as well; at least they focus on people with actual talent. Though I think I can honestly say that I’m done with American Idol after watching them make that poor Blake fellow sing a song he must surely have hated with all his semi-hipster, beat-boxing little heart. “This Is My Now”?! Ack! And this after preaching song choice, song choice, song choice all season long. Hypocrites. He lost, of course. Upon reflection, my sudden yearning to add Rescue Me into my viewing schedule may in fact be a way to reclaim some of the masculinity that is surely being drained from me by singing, fashion, and cooking shows.
My other effort to reclaim some manliness – somewhat ironically, softball – got off to a less than totally auspicious start on Tuesday at my first official game with the team: The Fighting Pacifists (a name that spells clever, nerdy trouble from the outset). We got thumped (14-3). The highlight was watching the city fireworks display from the field, though I worried a little about getting distracted by the bright flashes and taking a hard ground ball in the chops. I played shortstop and did fine in the field: no errors, but nothing spectacular, either. But I only went 1 for 3 at the plate, and began my tenure on the team by grounding into a double-play: no easy feat in softball, with its shortened base paths. Many of you know that one of my defining traits as a ballplayer has always been: “no wheels.” Slow doesn’t begin to describe it. My second plate appearance went better: I drove the ball down the first base line for an RBI single that I stretched into a double (but just barely). But then I got thrown out at the plate trying to score from second on a single. The third base coach waved me in like I had plenty of time, and any normal person likely would have been able to go in standing. Me? I had to slide in an effort to beat the throw (which I did, doggonnit!) but was called out. Where did that throw come from? I think they might have thrown the ball around the horn once before figuring out that I was still lumbering toward home. By the way, it turns out that if you haven’t had the opportunity to slide in to a base in over 10 years, you may want to work up to it slowly; it’s a lot more painful that it used to be. And while I did manage to get some macho points in the form of a lot of dirt and a little blood, in retrospect I wish David had been coaching third and given me the following advice:
And while I am fighting the growing up process, David is making big strides in that area. First, he got a relatively short haircut for the first time. For those of you who haven’t seen pictures of Dave yet, he has beautiful wavy/curly hair that has a Michael Hutchence quality to it when it gets really long. We weren’t allowed to cut it for a long time because the bios wanted him to have cornrows eventually. But their rights have now been terminated and we got tired of saying “Actually, he’s a boy,” whenever anyone would see him and inevitably say, “Oh, what a beautiful little girl!” He also moved up from a crib to a toddler bed this week and is LOVING IT! Of course, it’s meant a change in his sleeping patterns now that he can get out of the bed on his own. There’s something both maddening and hopelessly charming in the silhouette of a 2’11” munchkin with a blanket padding past our bed at 2:30 in the morning, almost quietly saying. “Mama. Mama. Juice.” Of course, that’s the happy, cute version. There’s also the 4th of July version (before we learned to leave his door ajar) that included banging on the door and screaming “MAMA!! MAMA!!” on any number of occasions when one of our neighbors lit off his atomic fireworks: the ones that make that sound somewhere between a thump and a whoosh when you light them off and then shake the windows when they explode. Bravery doesn't come all at once.
I’ve never liked the 4th of July all that much. It’s not that I’m unpatriotic – I don’t actually think about that very much; it’s that I don’t like holidays where the reigning purpose is getting drunk and blowing stuff up (Halloween fits in here, too, with the added benefit of dressing up as well). And it’s not that I’m against getting drunk or blowing stuff up (or wearing a costume, for that matter): it’s just the combination. Maybe it’s a product of growing up in a place where personal fireworks shows were illegal. But here in Indiana, almost nothing (besides manufacturing methamphetamines) that can hurt you or start a fire in someone else’s house or yard is illegal. Beginning around the first of June, you can see tents selling fireworks cropping up on almost every corner.
They sell things like “Black Cat: The BIG ones!” And it seems like they all have “Buy One Get Two Free!” sales, which has the result of keeping the neighborhoods rocking until the dawn’s early light. At 11:00 on Wednesday night, after David had woken up for the third time, I took a walk through what sounded and looked like a Middle Eastern red zone but turned out to be our street, and found one of my neighbors just standing in his driveway lighting off freakishly big fireworks seemingly for nobody but himself. He’s a big guy: shaved head, tattoos, drives a big truck. I thought about asking him to stop for the night, but then I noticed that pain in my shoulder and my leg and I thought better of it.
Usted es mas macho.
My other effort to reclaim some manliness – somewhat ironically, softball – got off to a less than totally auspicious start on Tuesday at my first official game with the team: The Fighting Pacifists (a name that spells clever, nerdy trouble from the outset). We got thumped (14-3). The highlight was watching the city fireworks display from the field, though I worried a little about getting distracted by the bright flashes and taking a hard ground ball in the chops. I played shortstop and did fine in the field: no errors, but nothing spectacular, either. But I only went 1 for 3 at the plate, and began my tenure on the team by grounding into a double-play: no easy feat in softball, with its shortened base paths. Many of you know that one of my defining traits as a ballplayer has always been: “no wheels.” Slow doesn’t begin to describe it. My second plate appearance went better: I drove the ball down the first base line for an RBI single that I stretched into a double (but just barely). But then I got thrown out at the plate trying to score from second on a single. The third base coach waved me in like I had plenty of time, and any normal person likely would have been able to go in standing. Me? I had to slide in an effort to beat the throw (which I did, doggonnit!) but was called out. Where did that throw come from? I think they might have thrown the ball around the horn once before figuring out that I was still lumbering toward home. By the way, it turns out that if you haven’t had the opportunity to slide in to a base in over 10 years, you may want to work up to it slowly; it’s a lot more painful that it used to be. And while I did manage to get some macho points in the form of a lot of dirt and a little blood, in retrospect I wish David had been coaching third and given me the following advice:
And while I am fighting the growing up process, David is making big strides in that area. First, he got a relatively short haircut for the first time. For those of you who haven’t seen pictures of Dave yet, he has beautiful wavy/curly hair that has a Michael Hutchence quality to it when it gets really long. We weren’t allowed to cut it for a long time because the bios wanted him to have cornrows eventually. But their rights have now been terminated and we got tired of saying “Actually, he’s a boy,” whenever anyone would see him and inevitably say, “Oh, what a beautiful little girl!” He also moved up from a crib to a toddler bed this week and is LOVING IT! Of course, it’s meant a change in his sleeping patterns now that he can get out of the bed on his own. There’s something both maddening and hopelessly charming in the silhouette of a 2’11” munchkin with a blanket padding past our bed at 2:30 in the morning, almost quietly saying. “Mama. Mama. Juice.” Of course, that’s the happy, cute version. There’s also the 4th of July version (before we learned to leave his door ajar) that included banging on the door and screaming “MAMA!! MAMA!!” on any number of occasions when one of our neighbors lit off his atomic fireworks: the ones that make that sound somewhere between a thump and a whoosh when you light them off and then shake the windows when they explode. Bravery doesn't come all at once.
I’ve never liked the 4th of July all that much. It’s not that I’m unpatriotic – I don’t actually think about that very much; it’s that I don’t like holidays where the reigning purpose is getting drunk and blowing stuff up (Halloween fits in here, too, with the added benefit of dressing up as well). And it’s not that I’m against getting drunk or blowing stuff up (or wearing a costume, for that matter): it’s just the combination. Maybe it’s a product of growing up in a place where personal fireworks shows were illegal. But here in Indiana, almost nothing (besides manufacturing methamphetamines) that can hurt you or start a fire in someone else’s house or yard is illegal. Beginning around the first of June, you can see tents selling fireworks cropping up on almost every corner.
They sell things like “Black Cat: The BIG ones!” And it seems like they all have “Buy One Get Two Free!” sales, which has the result of keeping the neighborhoods rocking until the dawn’s early light. At 11:00 on Wednesday night, after David had woken up for the third time, I took a walk through what sounded and looked like a Middle Eastern red zone but turned out to be our street, and found one of my neighbors just standing in his driveway lighting off freakishly big fireworks seemingly for nobody but himself. He’s a big guy: shaved head, tattoos, drives a big truck. I thought about asking him to stop for the night, but then I noticed that pain in my shoulder and my leg and I thought better of it.Usted es mas macho.
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