Oh Yeah We Finally Moved

We didn't have Internet for a month, went on two week long vacations, one down the shore and one in California, still have many things in boxes and tons of items in storage, weren't able to get some renovations done to the house while we were away on vacation so life still feels in a state of disarray.

Driest Hands in the World : More Hits from the Palm

Dipping into postings that I wrote in my Palm Pilot but never got around to posting on the blog. This one is from this past winter:


Every time someone goes to the bathroom in my house i have to wash my hands, the toddler with his diapers and cleaning him up after using the potty seat, checking the kindergartner to make sure he actually wiped after pooping, and of course myself, add to this that we are all on the same cycle so this all happens within 20 to 30 minutes of each other, that I'm semi-recovered from having a hand washing OCD problem, and that I pretty much hate the feel of lotion on my hands all equal me having the driest hands in the world.

I WON THE MEGA MILLIONS LOTTERY!!! or so i thought for 3 minutes

I went to the dry cleaner with my two boys to pick up my wife's clothes, as we left I saw that the multi-state lotto was up to 105 mil, so I thought it would be fun to have the kids pick three numbers each.
On the rare occasions that I buy lotto tickets I usually loose them, or forget that I even bought one, which was the case with this time until I heard some guy down to the A&P Fresh (daddy why is it called 'fresh' everything in there isn't fresh?) say, hey did you sell the winning ticket, it's from Jersey and no one claimed it yet.
So then I'm like hey, I bought a ticket in Jersey and didn't claim it, that's got to narrow down the odds right, so I rush home pondering grad school vs. starting a record company, nannies vs. me continuing to take care of the kids, how much would I donate to Obama, being able to pay for movers to pack up my whole house for our impending move and all kinds of other more extreme and ridiculous scenarios, so I get home unload the groceries, check online and of course I didn't win.

I'm not so big on the whole dollar and a dream thing, now I really don't feel like packing for the next five days straight, I think I operate better sans hope.

a great moment

I had a great moment with my oldest son the other day. My six year-old and my three year-old were jockeying for position on my lap, the little guy was able to displace his older brother and said, “You’re too big to sit on Daddy’s lap!”
I said, “No, he’s not too big to sit on Daddy’s lap,” and my big guy said, “Yeah, not until I’m ten.”
Then I told him, “Even when you are ten, I don’t care how old you are or how big you are you can sit on my lap, I don’t care if you’re 50 and I’m all old and frail, so long as I have a lap you can sit on it.” Now I really doubt there will be any lap sitting when I’m an octogenarian, but I was trying to make my point strong and clear.
My six year-old was apparently really touched by this he gave a big eyed look, held my face and gave me a kiss on the cheek.
The reason this was so rewarding is that as a loving and communicative parent one is always trying to let their children know how much they truly love them, and nine times out of ten they don’t get it, I mean they do know you love them but deepness of it doesn’t usually dawn on them. So for this silly little incident and unpremeditated comment on my part to actually get through to my son how much I love him was an unexpected joy.

My six year-old is cooler than your kid

He is in art day camp; he takes six classes a day one of which is jazz tap. My wife told me that when you are a kid taking dance, the tap shoes or ballet points or whatever seem magical to you and make you feel like you have an enhanced ability to dance. Armed with this information I drove a half an hour north to the Capizio outlet to get kids tap shoes, and they still were not that cheap, anyway my son took to them right away.
When his mother got home from work I told him to show her what he had learned, plus some of the moves that he had already made up himself, he shyly when through a few steps, when he finished I asked if he wanted to show mommy some of the moves he came up with and he kind of lamely tapped out few steps, which surprised me because he had been stoked about tapping all day.
I was like okay thanks, that was good, do you want to show us anything else and he says yeah check this out and starts tapping out an Arctic Monkeys song, and after the intro he starts full on tapping and singing the song at the same time, it was fucking awesome.

And another thing, I’m a huge Clash fan, some my kids are familiar with them and know a number of their songs. So the other day I picked out a new album by their guitar player’s new band Carbon/Silicon and I’m playing it and my six year-old asks, “Is this the Clash?” and I answer no but really close and explain who the band is and who is in the group, and I think how awesome is that, that he could unprompted recognize the song writing as similar to the Clash’s. The only bad thing is that two of Carbon/Silicon’s best songs have “Fuck” in the chorus …

What, It's Not Me?

I’ve changed/slowly evolved into a somewhat friendly person over the years as compared to the person I was before that rarely hid his disgust for the world and little time for chit chat with strangers and shop keeps, I think living in San Francisco had a large part to do with my change from a very East Coast I don’t give a fuck about you come introverted and somewhat depressed demeanor.
Having moved back to the East Coast after seven years I’ve found people friendlier than in years past, some have attributed the change to 9/11. Now I often say hi to unknown passersby while on walks and most everyone at my boys schools are friendly particularly the teachers, camp councilors etc.
I say all of that to say this, this past week for the first time my two boys were out of the house at the same time for their separate summer camps, last school year one was on an early schedule the other on later one which we set up that way so they each could get some solo daddy time on a regular basis. So again this past week I was alone for a good four hours a day and I tried to take advantage of that by getting some exercise and walking places instead of driving. In the course of these walks I have discovered that the denizens of my region have not suddenly become more friendly, nor has my recently adopted practice of acknowledging most of the people I come into contact with hello or a nod been reciprocated with any regularity when I am traveling sans my really cute kids, it was them all along, I’m still that guy that people don’t sit next on the train, it’s interesting how people having a positive reaction when they come in contact with you on a regular basis uplifts your general mood.
My chiropractor, who is normally a warm and friendly guy was all business at my last visit sans kids, no hand shake, no chit chat, no big smile, I thought my new found openness and efforts at friendliness was really spreading a positive vibe to those around me that was being mirrored back to me, but apparently I was wrong.
Now when my kids reach that awkward not so cute anymore age I guess I’ll have to get a puppy to keep the friendly vibes coming my way.

PARENTS CUT CORNERS, BUT NOT KIDS' SPORTS
In lean times, families still spend in hopes of giving them a leg up in college

BY LISA KENNELLY Star-Ledger Staff

Preschoolers now tackle assignments, and some wonder at what cost

An early start on homework
Preschoolers now tackle assignments, and some wonder at what cost

BY CARRIE STETLER Star-Ledger Staff

Remember That Dream House We Over Bid On

So that "dream house" that we over bid for, (see May 20th posting), honestly it is really like dream house #4 in our house search, anyway a few weeks ago one of my son's classmate's mothers who live on the block that the house is on told me that she heard that the winning bid was falling through, we were already full steam ahead on another house but the next time I talked to our real estate agent I told him what I heard, he looked into it and said that the dream house #4 deal was going through fine.
So we forgot about it.

Now a few weeks and a large down payment on another house later our realtor tells my wife that the "dream house #4" deal fell through, I told my wife that it was too fucking late, the people we are buying our current house from are good people who already have a new house in mind and more importantly we've already signed the paperwork and given them a deposit, also and who ever our realtor spoke with two weeks ago did the sellers a major disservice by lying and saying that the deal was going fine because they are going to cost their client a whole bunch of money.

Real Estate is pretty fucked up. Actually I guess it is people with large sums of money on the line that are fucked up no matter the endeavor.

p.s.,
I just spoke with my realtor, he says that no one could have known about the buyer's problems until this morning, so the house I had heard there were problems with must have been another house on the block, I don't know if that's true, but it's still annoying either way.

No Gifts?

My 6 yr-old who just had a birthday was confused about the agreement he made. (See my May 22 entry) He knew people were going to make donations in his name to save baby seals and babies, but he did not realize that it meant he was not going to get any gifts from his classmates for his birthday. I reminded him that I had fully explained to him how we were asking for his classmates to donate to charity rather than giving him gifts, reminding him that they COULD bring gifts if they wanted to stop the tears that had began to flow.

Luckily his party went fine and he got gifts as well as donations for his charities so it all worked out.

I also learned that you can't let kids know that there is a surprise toy in their gift bags if you don't want them riffling through them before you are ready to give them out. Another thing I learned don't let a kid touch the pull string pinata before you are ready either because a windfall of candy being a few colorful string pulls away is way to much temptation for a six year-old to deal with.

skin rash AGAIN!

Seems like every god damn week there is some new innocuous but in need of attention illness going on with my kids and it is becoming a huge fucking pain in the ass, my little guy has some rash on his face and body to a lesser extent, he doesn't have pre-school today, but he does have soccer with his brother, I'm sure the little guy is going to be fine, but I probably can have him participating in sports with other kids with a big assed rash, BUT, then his brother has to miss soccer too, ALSO we need to go to soccer to give one of their team mates an invitation to the big guys birthday party, ALSO AGAIN, the big guy's ankle has been bothering him, I think he just needs new sneakers, they did not have any in his size a few weeks ago when we went to the kid's shoe store, we don't have time to go to the shoe store between school and soccer, nor do I have time to take the toddler to the doctor for him to say what they say every time, "it's nothing," and waste some money and time ...

Donations please

I got my 5 year-old to agree to have the guests at his "kids" birthday party to donate to charity rather than buy him some more unneeded gifts.
In the note I put in the invitations I forgot to put that I wanted people to write out checks to the organizations so we could mail them in with a letter and a picture of my boy, so people may just donate online, which is cool for the charities, but may not give my son the satisfaction of collecting and sending the contributions.
So goes it when working on projects after midnight when you haven't gotten the minimum requirement of sleep in months.

Can you say bidding war / housing market still hot in my town

We just bid $38,500 over asking for a house in the nicer part of our town and were still out bid, we did come in second out of five offers, that's a nice consolation though, yeah right.

Metal bats vs. Wood bats

Family of boy hit by baseball holds onto hope

Not feeling too good

Hey ya'll, I've been packing up my house for sale, three weekends and 3 Big Boxes later, (big boxes are like PODS, I'm not sure if city dwellers will know what they are, basically a truck drops off a big assed storage box, about the size of a college town bedroom, you fill it up, then they take it away, and deliver it to where ever you wind up moving too), serious neck and shoulder problems, and some nausea yesterday to top it off, basically I'm physically falling apart, and we didn't get the house we bid on even though we bid 30Gs over asking because we had a contingency, which means that if we were unable to sell our house then the deal would fall through, so now we will hopefully sell our place before finding a new house that we like, but that will potentially put us in a position of having to settle for a not perfect new home, or renting for awhile while we look for a new place to buy. One shitty thing is that in my town, there are only year long rentals, no month to month opportunities, at least not any place to I'm willing to move my family into.