Monthly Archives: September 2013

Some like it hot

My family is trying to kill me. For sure, the woman and the big boy are. The jury is still out on the little boy; he may not be part of their conspiracy. He might have his own game plan, in which I end up only bruised. I haven’t uncovered the full web of alliances yet.

We didn’t have a blazing hot summer, which may be the only reason I’m still alive. Otherwise, their plan to boil me in my own northern blood might have succeeded.

My wife and my eldest son get cold very easily. Mention November and they start shivering. They dress for a sleigh ride when we go to the grocery store. If I need a break from domestic life, I stand in the frozen foods aisle. Nobody can touch me there. It’s just me and the fish sticks in quiet contemplation.

I’m not a hot weather person. My sun screen bottle says SPF 5×1014. At 78˚F, I sweat from the head like Frosty the Snowman when he got locked in the greenhouse by that magician dude. The Washington Redskins could completely diffuse their whole name controversy if they would only replace their logo with one of me sitting by the pool.

Everyone loves a snowman

Granddad had a way with women. Maybe it was the uniform.

I suspect that my younger son is more like me, but he is still too young and inarticulate to help me. I always get outnumbered, two to one, with the little boy holding his own counsel or voting in a foreign language.

My death by spontaneous combustion/melting will occur in one of two places. In the car, my wife is always surreptitiously turning off the A/C. She thinks I won’t notice the cabin temperature spike to 110. Rather than fight over the controls, I usually roll down my window. This will not necessarily make me comfortable, but it may keep me alive for up to three minutes. Three minutes is as long as the boy in the back can be expected to refrain from kicking a wounded man with “Daddy, can you roll up your window? I’m cold.”

weapon number 1

The moment I look away, this dial will be turned all the way into the red.

Every return from a car trip is a victory, but then I’ve still got to make it through the night. One Christmas, I bought my wife a heated mattress cover. I thought it would ease her January chills. I never imagined she’d use it in July. She only turns on her half of the bed, but my side is still connected. I should be happy. It’s rare that someone shows that much appreciation for a gift. I’m sure she’ll mention in the eulogy that I was always a thoughtful gift-giver.

High!

On the mattress pad controller, H stands for “He’s about to melt in his own bed.”

My only potential ally in this war of temperatures is the little boy. I think he finds it in his interests to save me. He likes to throw stuff. His velocity is good but his accuracy is suspect. To help his confidence, he needs a big target. Without me, he’d frustrate himself aiming for one of the smaller people moving around the house.

Conversations with my wife: Chicken, waffles, and the dry heaves

When my wife found some of those new Chicken & Waffles flavored potato chips in the grocery store, she was very excited. No, chicken and waffles is not her favorite dish. She’s never had chicken and waffles in her life. The first time she saw it on a menu, she thought it was a misprint. She’s never come close to trying it at a restaurant.

It’s all about the potato chip. For a long time, her entire adult life, at least, she has fantasized about new and exotic potato chip flavors. She tells me that they should make a this-and-that-flavored chip. I nod and agree. Sometimes they actually do come out with her flavor, or one resembling it. Then she gets upset and asks me why I didn’t submit her idea first, when we still could have been made rich by it. I shrug and apologize.

Whether or not they stole her idea for their newest flavor, she wants to taste it. She wants to have experienced every potato chip flavor known to mankind. Chicken & Waffles was never her idea, which spared me a scolding, and that is the best thing I can say about it.

I came in from the garage with the last load of groceries to find her slumped over the kitchen sink.

ME: “What’s wrong?”

WIFE: (Gagging noise.) “Oh my God, they’re wretched.” (Gagging noise.)

ME: “What is?”

WIFE: (Hacking into the sink, points at the newly opened bag of chips on the counter beside her.) “Get me some juice!”

ME: “I told you it was a horrible idea.”

WIFE: (Between hacks.) “Don’t talk! Get juice!”

ME: “What kind of juice?”

WIFE: “JUICE! NOW!”

ME: “Here.” (Handing her a glass of juice.)

WIFE: (Downs juice in three gulps. Turns to me with watering eyes.) “That is the worst thing I’ve ever put in my mouth. I’ve never had anything so wretchedly horrible. There’s never been a food so awful. It literally made me puke.”  (She picks up the bag and shoves it into my chest.) “You have to try one.”

What could go wrong?

Is the world this desperate? Somebody should be working on Tar & Feathers flavored chips right about now.

Let me throw a little compassion at you

Our one-year-old is developing a couple of traits that seem like an odd pair of characteristics for a little boy to form simultaneously. He loves to throw things, which seems quite normal. What is less usual is the level of compassion he shows when someone in his family is hurt or sad.

The boy loves playing catch, minus the part where he catches anything. He has quite a limber arm and throws a ball, or any other convenient object, with a healthy velocity. He is not picky about the projectile or the target.

Meanwhile, he is always ready with a hug whenever his big brother is upset, no matter how ridiculous the cause. But big boys never cry over silly things anyway, right? Toddler Boy kisses boo-boos to make them all better and is never stingy with a pat on the back when he has run through his repertoire of hugs and kisses.

mini catcher

Only one of these children came dressed to play with the likes of my little boy. For the rest, he would have only sympathy.

At first blush, these two traits seem as though they would have little overlap in daily life. That is, unless the boy grows to become a baseball pitcher who rushes to the plate to console batters he’s struck out, or a football quarterback who passes out hand-written thank-you notes to receivers who catch his passes.

In reality, these traits are just two sides of the same coin for an indiscriminate living room hurler. Like the other day, when he beaned me, point-blank, with plastic balloon pump. I still have the red mark on my temple to attest to his marksmanship. The moment he realized he’d hurt me, he was all over me with hugs and kisses. It really made for a sweet scene, or I’m assuming it did; my vision was still a little blurry.

He appears to be right-handed, although when he gets on the playground, he throws mulch equally well with both arms. I hope he quits throwing mulch soon, because mulch scatters like birdshot and he might wing kids other than the one he’s aiming for. As an upstanding parent, I’m all for minimizing collateral damage.

everything's a missle

When we run out of balloons to blow up, we use this handy device as a projectile to keep Daddy looking sharp.

The responsible adult in me wants to discourage him from throwing things so much, but the sports-fan father in me wants him to keep his arm loose. You can’t warm up by throwing air. We’ll try to steer him toward tossing various types of balls and away from chucking random bits of nature. We’ll also encourage him to throw toward folks who are ready and willing to catch what he’s pitching. This may take some time.

As he learns to blindside fewer people with heaved objects, he will have less cause to call upon his vast compassion for the injured. I hope this won’t make that trait fade from his character. I admire his compassion and hope he keeps it always, so long as it doesn’t prevent him striking out batters with heartless precision.

Kindergarten’s first hard lesson: It’s a morning people’s world

I’m waiting for the Kindergarten grind to catch up to my son.

His preschool was only three hours in the afternoon. Kindergarten runs all day. Like his old man, he’s more inclined toward being a night owl than a morning person. We’ll see where that gets him after a few months of having to get up early every day.

We worked on adjusting his sleep schedule in the buildup to school, but there’s nothing like the real thing to make it hit home. So far, after a week of school, he still must be forced to go to bed at a reasonable hour. He gets up in the morning without too much fuss, though it’s clear he’s not happy about it. Welcome to my world, kid.

There have been no reports of him nodding off in school, which makes him a better man than I was at that age. When I was in Kindergarten, I came home at noon. That, and the modern curriculum, makes his current situation more comparable to my first grade experience.

In first grade, my day went like this: get up at 4 a.m. for a quick bowl of Cream of Wheat before going to milk cows; get to school 15-30 minutes late, smelling as little like the barn as possible; chocolate milk and a cookie at 10; fit some learning in before noon; peanut butter sandwich and random Hostess product for lunch; sleep at desk until awakened for bus ride home.

Sleeping school

Where was this school when I needed it? I could have been first in my class.

I’m not sure what my class did in the afternoons as I was rarely with them in consciousness. I don’t remember falling behind, so maybe it was just a recap of the morning’s work. For all I know, it was free play all afternoon, or maybe the teacher led them in games of Let’s Shoot Spit Wads at the Sleepy Farm Kid. I was blissfully ignorant of the goings on around me, which makes me pine for the days when I could put my head down and fall asleep at my desk. The work day would go so much smoother if I could still sleep in that position.

Desk sleeping

“Arrgh! How do they expect me to sleep at such an uncomfortable desk?” (Image: Bayard Taylor)

By the second grade, I was staying awake all day. I’m not sure how that happened. It seems impossible that I could go to bed even earlier than I did in first grade. Maybe I matured, or maybe the second grade teacher made a habit of kicking my chair in the afternoons. It could be that the specter of cursive writing made it too hard to relax.

With all the stuff they throw at little kids in school these days, I doubt it’s a good idea to take the afternoons off anymore. If Kindergarten does start to wear my son down, we still have room to adjust his bed time. That should help him get through the day, but I don’t think he’ll like the idea at night. Hopefully, he’ll be too tired to raise a stink.