Sunday, December 28, 2008

Wednesday, December 17, 2008

Dissonant Dad Don't Domir

I find my current problem is sleep, and lack there of, I seem to be able to come up with infinite reasons not to sleep, I'm angry, I'm happy, I'm bored and I need something to do, I'm having too much fun to go to sleep, I'm horny, I just had sex and didn't do the stuff I normally do at night so I have to go do them now even though it's 11:36pm, there's a bunch of good shit on TV, I keep turning through the 5 million channels and can't find a damn thing if I keep going I'm bound to find something ...

I go into this kind of haze from about 10pm to around 12:30am where reason and consequence are lost on me, what I need to do the next morning, hell what I need to do before I go to bed, bills, chores, check the doors, turn off the lights, get the recycling out, I watch more TV during this two to three hour time period than I do all day, then around 1am I snap out of it and have to figure out if I am better served by getting a semi-decent amount of sleep or by doing an hours worth of chores and crashing into bed with crusty contacts and unbrushed teeth.
It does not help that my oral hygiene routine takes about a half an hour if done properly. I often dread having to do more "work" at night after running around behind my kids all day so I brilliantly do nothing and wind up having to make up for it at 1am or have double the amount of work the next day, genius I know.

... it's like I'm addicted to staying awake, I know it comes from the way I learned to over come depression by taking one day at a time and making sure I squeeze some drops of happiness out of each day. The thing is, wishing you had more free time is not depression, but as we often do I'm using a coping mechanism that works in one arena but is inappropriate for another.

Monday, December 15, 2008

Door Decorations

On a lighter note, yesterday in our office my three year-old comes up to me while I am on the computer and says, "Daddy look I decorated the door!" (insert thought bubble above my head: this can not be good, exactly how did he decorate the door). Me, "Show me what you did," and he proceeds to take me by the hand, opens up the office closet door and proudly shows me a pencil doodle drawn on the inside of the door of what looks like a stick figure ice skating on a lake or something like that.
"Buddy I know you didn't know that you weren't suppose to do that, but you're not allowed to draw on the walls or doors in the house. Don't cry you're not in trouble just don't do it again."

He Tried To Tell Us

My preschooler mentioned something about going to school on the weekend to me this weekend, and I was like, there's no school on the weekend. Unbeknownst to me he apparently told my wife that his teachers said there was a party at school this weekend, to which she answered there's no party at school on the weekend ... well as I took him to school this morning I got a notice that must have been from last Friday stating that they were having a Memorial Service for his friend who died this past Sunday. Man, I wish I had known about this, my wife is bumming that she did not look into what he was talking about because he told her about this "party" a number of times.
Yesterday my little guy was the most upset about his friend since I first told him, he initiated a talk about who he feels about loosing his friend with his mom last night, I understand now why, I just wish he had said it's a party for "Mike" so that it might have made my wife look in to it.
I know this topic does not make for an entertaining read but I kind of just have to get this stuff off my chest so I do not go around all day feeling like shit.

Saturday, December 13, 2008

I Know What Boys Like

On Wednesday morning this past week after we dropped my 1st grader off at school and were driving back home my pre-schooler said:

3: Boys like Led Zeppelin
39: Yeah they do, but they use to be very popular, I don't know about now-a-days but girls use to really like them too
3: When I'm 28 I'm going to be a rock star
39: Is your brother going to be in the band?
3: Yeah, him and ah ... "Mike" can't be in the band because he's dead, maybe "Alan" can be in the band.
39: Yeah that would be cool ...
3: Boys like Sonic the Hedgehog
39: Yes they do son, yes they do

Immediate Aftermath

So Monday night I had a long serious talk with my son's about my younger son's best friend's death, it went really well, my little guy was upset but has a pretty good grasp of what's happened, actually his older brother seemed more freaked out than he was. The 3 year-old seems upset that he can't play with his friend or even see him anymore, disapprove if you will be I went with the standard when you die you go to heaven angle, I do not know how else one would explain the death of a child to another child and what happens after that death. My son had a bit of a time grasping that he can not give things to his friend anymore, so I just started rolling with it and saying he could ask God to make a copy of the thing in heaven for his friend to play with or look at depending on what it was.
We prayed that our dead cats would find "Mike" so they could play with him and keep him company.
My little guy does not comprehend that dying often is accompanied by pain and fear, that a child's death is by far the worse thing a parent can endure so his friend's parents are surely in quite a state, or that heaven may be a fantasy, so again he is just dealing with the fact that he can not see his friend anymore, so I believe that he should get through this without too much psychological damage.

He made a Spider-Man paper doll for "Mike's" parents.

Monday, December 08, 2008

It's Too Late ...

My son's pre-school just called me and gave me the bad news.

Real Life and Hopefully Not Death

My wife left for a four day business trip today, so my boys are pretty bumming. She wanted to spend some extra time with our pre-schooler so we wound up being later than usual. (My older son is so use to being late that when we showed up to taekwon-do early last week he almost had an anxiety attack because he did not know what he was suppose to do until class started.)

So I am unpacking my little guy's back pack and getting his gloves and hat into his coat sleeve as I read a few notices that were in his cubby. I notice one has a picture of his best friend, who I vaguely remember had been out of school for a while because every time I ask my son if he played with his best friend he says he was not there today or he was sick.

Anyway, any photocopied form of communication with a picture of a child on it raises my antenna as being BAD FUCKING NEWS, I skim the flyer and it states that his best friend has been out for quite a while and is currently in a hospital four states away, and living in an area with a lot of hospitals with two huge cities in adjoining states, this is really NOT good.


My son says hey that's "Mike," and I look up and say something like, it says he's in a hospital in another city, or he's with a doctor far away that can help him get better, I hope I actually choose my words better than that. He freezes and unfortunately looks as if he completely understands the ramifications of what is going on. One of his teachers walks in the cubby room and asks how he's doing, the usually out going and friendly kid does not respond at all, now I have a pit in my stomach, did I tell him too much.

In a daze I get him to class and drop off his nap time sheet (yeah I actually remembered to bring it this time) in the room where he naps. I pass a number of mom's talking, I do not know if I am projecting or over analysing but they all seem to be in less of a hurry, less gossipy, more quiet and still. I pass a couple of the teachers and the "school mom," their oldest teacher is crying saying, "I didn't know it was that bad."


I see one of my boy's teachers in the hall tell her that my guy's upset about his mom's business trip and the news about his friend and then hightail it out of their before I start full-on snot nose weeping. I make it to the car and then full-on snot nose weeping, what the fuck, every Monday something comes up, and the come up's seem to be increasing in severity. What if this boy dies, what is the school going to tell the children, it's pre-school they range from 2 1/2 to 5, how are they going to process that information.


How would I explain this to my three year old, that the boy he's been asking to have a playdate with everyday for two months that I did not set up because I thought his mom should set it up because she's had a few conversations with the boy's mom and I got a slightly weird vibe from her, like she's not use to interacting with pierced, artsy wannabe, mulatto, stay @ home dad's, even though it's my job to set up the playdates, a perceived "very slightly weird vibe" kept me from acting on my son's wishes, even when I know the likelihood of my wife actually setting up the playdate was slim because she's busy enough and has a hard time fitting in anything that's not in her normal sphere, while I'm at it I should explain why I yelled at him to give me a break from asking about the playdate with "Mike" because he's driving me crazy and if his mom doesn't do it soon I'll set it up for the week after Christmas.


I do not know that I could tell him that his best friend is dead, bad parenting or not right now if feel like lying to him and saying "Mike" moved to be closer to the good doctor might be the best thing. My son is so positive and seeming well balanced, I do not want anything devastating his world at such a young age, the rest of his immediate family is twisted enough as it is, including his six year-old brother whose outlook could out gloom the most tragic of sixteen year-olds.


So I spend the five minute ride home crying and moaning and as I get home notice my wife pulling out our driveway, I can not tell her this right now, she is afraid to fly (and just called me from the airport) and way more prone to burst into tears and obsess over something than I am, she's flying cross country with a VP I can't have here trippin' out over this, she jumps out of her car to say good-bye and jokes are you crying because you are going to miss me? I say yeah, they she asks what's up and I make up something about being congested, I will tell her about "Mike" tonight.


It worked for my wife's best friend who was giving a couple of weeks to live with brain cancer so it can work again, Agnostic prayer in action, take two.

Do Laundry Outside of the House? And Thanks

Poor petite bourgeoisie me, yesterday I had to go to a public Laundromat to wash my laundry,
so inconvenient, I've dreaded doing it all week, I mean god I haven't do laundry out side of my
house in like 6 years!

What a little bitch I can be, this reminds me to take a post from my other blog about what I'm thankful for:

Happy Thanksgiving,
I'm giving thanks for my friends who blog with me
Not having to have a corporate job
Being a part of the petite bourgeoisie while holding social-anarchistic world views
Never having gone to jail
Not living somewhere where I have to worry about my kids getting shot in the crossfire of a drive-by
still having my real teeth
NO MORE BUSH
my chiropractor and massage therapist
Brett Favre
Dungen and other Music I've been into this past year
love, cute furry animals,
and my family

Tuesday, December 02, 2008

Unsolicited Advice for a Brand New Mom

The text from an email I recently sent to a friend that just had her first child:

"Quick advice, - start vetting and training some baby sitters sooner than later, be it grand parents or professionals, the sooner you can go out to a show or dinner with (your husband) the quicker normalcy will return.
- at some point when the baby is sleeping you will totally think it looks dead and feel the need to double check if it's breathing, that's normal they sleep very deeply, but still double check anyway.
- if the grand parents (or anyone, me included) give you crazy child rearing advice, don't bother debating with them just be like, "Okay I'll keep that in mind" and do what you think is best, they're just trying to help however misguided or annoying they may be.
- lastly don't be surprised if some people now treat you like the gatekeeper to the baby and not a person, often family is so excited about the baby that they forget to give the mother their props."

Monday, December 01, 2008

Semi-Sick / Fully Whining

So 45 minutes ago as I was in my basement curled up in the fetal position remembering that when I woke up this morning feeling like crap my first thought was after I get the kids off to school I'm getting right back in bed. Well the whole family has been fighting off illness exacerbated by spending the Thanksgiving holiday on the road in homes that have pets, so we all have that semi-sick, allergy-sinus congestion, post-nasal-drip don't feel like going back to work / school thing going on, on top of the usual cases of the Mondays.

My 1st grader, the complain-i-est of the family, is no surprise complaining about feeling sick and the fact that he should have the whole month of December off because it's Christmas time. I check and he does not have a temperature but his nose is very runny, so I'm inclined to send him to school. My wife thinks we should send him to school but tell his teacher to keep an eye on him and send him to the nurse if he's sick, but I view that as semi-lame kind of abdicating our parental responsibility, plus I would then have to go back and make another trip to pick him up from school. The tipping point is when I can not find any singles or enough quarters to send in with him to buy lunch at school, that and the litany of maladies he has been persistently professing to me as I rush around trying to get things to together so we can improve on our 65% tardy average.

Fine no school today for you, but you have to spend the whole day in bed, not on the couch watching TV.

A few minutes later he's on the couch singing so his misery index has drastically dropped, though his nose is running pretty badly so I think I made the proper decision.

We take the pre-schooler to pre-school and I realize as I do every Monday that I forgot his nap sheet, so we have to go home to pick one up and come back. My 1st grader is complaining about having to go back and forth and the fact that I won't let him wait for me in the car as I look for this bed sheet. I search around not able to find a clean sheet (which are toddler bed size, so I can not just use one of ours) so I think I have enough time to wash one before his nap time at 1PM. I can not track down the Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles tote that we transport his sheet back and forth from school in, but I do find another sheet in the to be bleached pile on the floor of the laundry room. I open the washer and it's full of soapy water and wet clothes.

Shit

The washer has been breaking down bit by bit but I thought I had helped my wife get it running again last night, but apparently not and apparently she forgot to check on the clothes before she went to bed. So now what, I fire up the washer again to monitor what's going on deduce that it is not draining the water out during the spin cycle. It also periodically leaks, which it did yesterday so the three piles of sorted clothes that are waiting to be washed today are all damp, so now I have to figure out what to do with four loads of clothes in varying states of wetness, how to get a new washer in here pronto, and where to track down a clean sheet for my son on top of the 15 things on my to do list for Mondays.

I eventually track down a clean sheet for my son, but by this point I am wondering if I ever brought back his sheet from school last week before Thanksgiving, maybe it's still there, I would still be clean, he did not use it for a full week, I am running with that idea however faulty the logic.

As I sit on the commode mumbling the utterances of pissed-off sailor with tourette's my 1st grader walks in with a picture of a smiley face with the caption "bont feL bad" (which of course translates to "don't feel bad"). He says I heard you saying bad stuff and I wanted you to feel better and then gives me a hug. That does make me feel better, unfortunately it is momentary because as I write this I am taking a break from purchasing a new washer online because the store with the best price which I have spent the last 20 minutes reading all of their fine print, the one who lists itself as having "free shipping" will actually cost us $140 to have them bring the over 200 pound washer into our laundry room and that will be ten days from now, the free shipping is curbside.

Man I just wanted to get to bed straight away from dropping off the boys. I guess my state of semi-sickness will continue, especially if I am dumb-ass enough to stay up until 2AM doing whatever non-productive mind numbing b.s. I do after everyone else goes to bed and get four and half hours of sleep tonight.