Category Archives: frustration

Skunk 2.0

Posted on January 27, 2011 | 5 Comments

It’s back.

We thought we’d dispensed with it three years ago. Remember? No? Read about it here, here, here and here.

Okay, so maybe this skunk is just a distant relative.

Either way, a few day ago this little bugger must have found cousin Pepe’s former apartment, moved in and got right down to the business of stinking the place up.

It’s really horrible to be awakened by a smell. Scents are the things that reach deepest into your most primal, lizard-esque brain cells and touch your very soul, whether for good or ill. This smell is definitely squarely in the “ill” category, as it propelled us both out of bed and into various activities: me going downstairs to fetch the vinegar jug, my wife to opening windows and doors wide to let in the 30-something degree air from outside, which smelled fresh and sweet.

I filled up a spray bottle with vinegar and began saturating the surfaces and air with the tangy, neutralizing elixir. This helped some, but it required regular booster sprays throughout the day. Whatever that polecat was doing, it certainly knew how to smell up the inside of the house without being detectable from the outside.

I called up the same wildlife guy as last time, and he came out and set traps the very next day.

Nothing caught so far, but it’s only a matter of time.

And this time, I am going to put up the wire mesh around the deck to keep that bugger OUT. Between that and a regular application of cayenne pepper spray in the back yard, we shouldn’t have skunk problems any more.

Michael asked me why God made skunks, if they’re so stinky and cause so much trouble. It was difficult for me to provide a good answer: “God needs skunks here for a good reason. Daddy can’t really figure out what that reason is, but God’s a lot smarter than daddy so that’s why He’s in charge.”

I am going to ask Him when I get the opportunity, though.

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Posted in dad, frustration, life, stress

Portal Of Doom

Posted on January 14, 2011 | 10 Comments

Toilets are evil. At least, the ones in our house are. I’m convinced they’re sentient and angry about something, and have for some reason selected me as the target for expressing their resentment.

We have three bathrooms in our house, each with a toilet having its own personality. Upstairs in the kid’s bathroom is “Breezy”, the toidy that is forever discarding its seat. I must have re-attached the seat five times last year. Over in the master suite is “Twitchy”, the latrine that never quite stops running; you have to actually get into the tank to adjust the flapper to seat right so it doesn’t keep on repeating the “endlessly tinkle and loudly refill” pattern all day. And downstairs in the powder room we find “Eager”, the commode that tends to be done with flushing before the job is complete. To get him to behave, you must hold the flush handle down in order for the bowl to empty, or to “drink it up” as Michael puts it.

Guarding Eager’s chambers was an equally evil powder room door. A pocket door. A door that I have dubbed “Surly.”

From the time we moved in, the thing never worked right.

First of all, it was impossible to lock. Pocket doors are not known for presenting a high security level, and this one was no exception. In fact, because the house had settled funny in its twenty-some-odd years, the frame was askew, and even when you closed the door as much as possible, it left a gap big enough to drive a Buick through. There was little hope for the door’s latch to ever span the distance to make contact with the strike plate.

Once my stepdaughter’s dad visited, bringing along Cousin O (stepdaughter’s little half sister, who was no more than two at the time). He stepped into the downstairs restroom for a bit, no doubt believing he had a semblance of privacy. This lasted until Cousin O decided to find out where daddy went, and she opened the door wide, and then scurried off elsewhere to play. From his compromising position he called out frantically to me for help, since I was the only other responsible male in the house. I mercifully shut the door and stood guard.

Eventually, the door went from merely not locking to full-on sticking. It became an ordeal just to cajole it into sliding shut. It required puzzling skills and acrobatics in order to properly align it while simultaneously sliding it along, and even great skill to open it. While this new behavior did incidentally provide a rudimentary form of privacy, it was far from ideal.

After a year or two of door wrestling, I’d had all I could stand.

I decided to take it apart and fix it. How hard could it be?

After removing approximately three thousand four hundred nineteen pieces of trim, bracing and structural lumber to access the door itself, I became quite aware of exactly how hard it could be.

I tilted the door outward and pulled it off its track.

Ah, simple! The rollers were bent! No sweat.

I employed some carefully chosen pliers and clamps to re-straighten the rollers, and then replaced the door.

It rolled smooth as silk, open and shut. And as a bonus, it even closed enough to get the latch to work! Amazing!

Time to put back all the lumber!

I got it all back in place, though the resultant pock marks on the trim made it look a lot like I employed a burlap sack filled with jagged rocks.

But at least it was done. Problem solved.

Then after about two or three days, it started sticking again. Except it was worse.

We endured worse for most of a year, until I decided I needed to try again with the fixing. Because it takes a whole heap of lessons before I learn.

Somehow this time it required the removal of six thousand eight hundred thirty eight pieces of lumber; not sure how I got so lucky the first time I did the job.

But I was eventually able to remove the door, and saw that the rollers were completely shot.

Off to Home Depot for new rollers!

Luckily, they had them.

Replace rollers, adjust and align rollers, replace door, smile, replace lumber, whap thumb with hammer, come this close to issuing extremely foul language. By this point the trim looked like I re-installed it using a shotgun loaded with hatchets and piranhas.

But the door worked great!

For two days.

From there on out, it closed just fine – and then wouldn’t open up. I mean, it really wouldn’t open. Surly’s first new victim was Michael, who upon discovering his surprise jailing, cried frantically until we could let him out. This required the deft application of daddy’s fist against the door in a forceful and relatively angry manner.

Then the inadvertent incarceration happened to his mother. And his sister. And his grandmother. And then me.

So for several weeks, we just went without a door. You could use the bathroom, but only if you didn’t cling to social mores such as discreetness. I could have hung up a sign: “Check your modesty here before you enter.” My personal choice was to run upstairs to take my chances with Twitchy instead. On the plus side, that meant lots of trips up and down the stairs. That counts as exercise, right? There’s a silver lining in every cloud.

In time, the balance of reason and decency outweighed my pride and I called in the handyman.

He came in to inspect, and immediately confided that he hated pocket doors. We chatted about our options, tossing around ideas such as a bi-fold door, curtains, beads, etc., but eventually settling on replacing Surly with a regular hinged door with a knob and a real lock. For actual privacy.

That weekend, he got to work removing the old door and frame, and hanging and finishing a new door. In the space of three hours, he was done with the whole job. Why the heck didn’t I have this done years ago?

This new door I have dubbed “Jeeves,” because he looks proper, and is there solely to do my bidding without giving me any attitude.

Now that I don’t have to go running up and down the stairs any more, I should probably get a stairmaster.

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Posted in dad, family, frustration, life

The Thing That Wouldn’t Sleep

Posted on November 30, 2010 | 6 Comments

Wednesday night, November 24th, was a thing to be savored.

For Wednesday night was the entryway to the glorious period of time known as the Four-Day Weekend. I could see it all stretching out before me: sleeping in on Thursday morning, a warm and cozy day inside with a fire crackling and the game on the big screen. Maybe even a beer with lunch. And three more days besides! It would be wonderful.

So it should have come as no surprise that Michael would bust into our room at 3:45 AM, hoping to rouse his mommy and convince her to come downstairs to watch movies.

I was having none of this. I arose, and quite firmly instructed him to go back to bed. I ushered him out of our room and steered him toward his own, and then noticed the flickering light of television downstairs. His sister was up.

“What the heck is going on here?” I asked, not pleased.

“Oh, well, I was up already and he came down a little while ago, so we watched two movies…”

“TWO MOVIES? How long has he been up?”

“Uh… I dunno…” she said.

“Go to bed.”

“Okay,” she said, switching off the TV.

I trudged back up stairs, grumpily, then flopped back down on the bed.

“He’s not going to go back to sleep,” my wife said, softly.

“I know,” I sighed. She was right: if he was this awake, he was going to stay awake.

After I took a few minutes to regain my composure, I got up and went into Michael’s room.

“You can come sleep with us,” I said, reluctantly. He bolted out of his door like his room was on fire and hopped into our bed.

After an hour and a half of wrestling and flailing, he finally settled down to sleep.

And for 90 minutes, he did.

At 7:00 AM he was rarin’ to go again, just as perky as ever. My wife and I dragged ourselves through the morning, making preparations for Thanksgiving dinner. We were expecting sister B to make an appearance, as she had stated days earlier that she wanted to spend Thanksgiving with us. However, a phone call later in the day revealed, though indirectly, she’d changed her mind. Thus, we got the bigger turkey and extra potatoes for no reason. My spirits were not improving.

The day crawled along, dinner finally came and went, and by 7:30 I was beyond pooped. Michael was still pretty peppy, though.

Regardless, I decided that it was bedtime for him, and off he went. My wife and I went to bed shortly afterward.

Imagine our shock to have Michael knock on our door at 2:10 AM.

“Michael! It’s the middle of the night! It’s way too early to be up. Go back to bed!”

“BARK!” Michael coughed, making a sound not unlike a Harbor seal.

“HONEY!” I yelled.

“What is it?”

“Listen!”

“BARK!” Michael produced another tussive blast, jolting his mom into action.

“Get dressed! And get him clothes!” She called out orders as she started the shower and dragged Michael along toward it.

I got my clothes on as quickly as I could and found clothes for Michael. She quickly got herself dressed and finished Michael’s outfit while I woke up his sister and explained that we were heading off to the hospital.

On our way, Michael continued his barking cough. Being a nurse, his mother was worried that he was suffering from a potentially deadly laryngeal disease, something that would eventually close off his airway completely. Hence, the urgency.

But along the way his barks gave way to less sonorous coughing, which made us both feel better.

The ER at the hospital was practically deserted; probably all of the action occurred earlier with the home chefs carving off their thumbs instead of the white meat. They saw to Michael right away, and diagnosed his condition as being Croup.

“It’s pretty common in little kids,” the doc said. “And it happens in the middle of the night. The virus hits, and can lie dormant for days, but then will suddenly strike and cause this ‘Stridor’ in his throat. Have you ever heard that term?”

My wife nodded patiently. I wanted to interject: “Dude, she’s a nurse. She used medical lingo with you when he came in. Did you forget?” but I held my tongue.

“Most adults don’t get the croup because you outgrow it. By the time he’s four or five he won’t get it any more,” the doctor continued.

“By the time he’s four or five?”

“Yes.”

“Okay.” My wife and I exchanged looks, but held our laughter until we were in the safety of our van, headed home.

The rest of the day was uneventful, but tiring. My wife and I took turns trying to nap, to catch up on that rare, precious commodity known as sleep. We each had some success.

Michael, however, continued on his interminable wakefulness, demanding our attention and prattling without rest.

Again, at 7:30, I decided it was bedtime for him. He went to bed without a fuss…

…and got up at 4:30 the next morning.

It wasn’t until I kept him up until 10:15 Saturday night to watch The Wizard Of Oz that he actually started to show signs of drowsiness.

Fortunately, he slept until 7:00 on Sunday. And even so, he was mad at his mom for not waking him up in the middle of the night to watch movies.

I don’t know where he got the energy to stay up for so many hours this last weekend, but I wish they’d bottle it. I could use a swig.

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Posted in frustration, inscrutable, michael, night

On Coupons

Posted on November 18, 2010 | 4 Comments

Here I’ll be ranting about grocery store checkout lines and the use of coupons. Fairly warned ye be, says I. Arrrgh.

I’ve mentioned before that I have a knack for picking slow lines at the grocery store.

This phenomenon is usually exacerbated by the urgency of my mission: the more in a hurry I am, the slower the line goes. And it’s usually because of coupons.

My big problem isn’t coupons themselves, but the problems they create. Or rather the problems that crop up when coupons are either misused or misinterpreted.

I absolutely ABHOR getting stuck behind someone who’s adamant about forcing the checker to accept coupons, when the checker is either confused or hesitant. Invariably, what would be a two minute process is drawn out into a fifteen minute one as checker and customer banter and haggle over 50 cents off of toothpaste.

For crying out loud.

In all the time I’ve spent waiting in line, I’ve honed my perturbation down into this crystalline point: the argument is not worth it.

Time is money. The time we’re all spending balking at give or take of a quarter or two is worth far more than the face value of the coupon. If Sally Spendthrift is trying to use a coupon for half off a pair of 99 cent nail clippers but it’s for a slightly different model, then just give it to her! It’s just 50 cents!

While waiting in a situation like this I’ve often been very close to tossing a twenty dollar bill over the belt divider and yelling “There! That ought to cover it! Now LET’S GET CRACKING HERE! CHOP CHOP!”

Instead, I’ll stand there and fume while my ice cream and frozen orange juice become sauces, the eggs turn and produce degrades into compost (note to the concerned mother: the ice cream is totally for the kids).

To me it is this simple: to be sure the store isn’t giving up a few extra pennies, they’ve spent numerous dollars worth of the checker’s salary arguing.

And what if I decide I don’t want the goo that once was my groceries and just leave them and walk out? There! Lost revenue! How about them apples?

Stores should implement a policy: if the customer uses a coupon that doesn’t scan but insists upon the price break, give it to them. It’ll save us all grief and save the store a lot of money, not to mention provide impetus to the customer to return out of joy of good customer service.

Or, alternately, we could set up one or two checkout lines that prohibit the use of coupons. I’d think this would be acceptable, since the money the store would save having a steady stream of customers go through those lines quickly and coupon-free would more than pay for the extra infrastructure.

I can dream, can’t I?

Heck, I have plenty of time for it, waiting for the customer ahead of me to go through all her coupons.

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Posted in dad, frustration, life

Playing Games

Posted on November 10, 2010 | 8 Comments

Michael had a tough day at school yesterday, and lost his computer privilege.

He wasn’t happy about that, needless to say.

While preparing dinner, his mom sat down with him to help him get his homework done: writing out the names of his family members, writing some random sentences, reading a book.

He was not pleased to be doing work:

“I don’t know how to write!” he complained.

“That’s why you’re doing homework,” his mom said.

“Ugh… I hate this!” he moaned.

“How many letters do I have to write?” he groaned.

“I can’t write all these letters! I don’t know how!” he whined.

“You can make an ‘S’, right? Start with that…” his mom said, gently.

He flopped back in his chair, boneless and despairing, his pencil clattering uselessly to the floor.

“Come on, Michael. Please!” his mom said.

I hate hearing him complain. It’s like red hot ice picks shoved through both eardrums. I find it far easier to give in and let him rot his brain playing on the computer than to hear his incessant complaints at doing actual literacy work.

“Michael, if you finish your homework, you can have 30 minutes of computer time back,” I said while shredding potatoes.

He reluctantly picked up his pencil and started in.

Then I added: “But, you could lose it. You have five lives now, and every time you complain, you lose a life.”

“Okay!” he said, newly energized. He whipped through his writing assignment, and then uttered a complaint.

“Oh, no! I only have four lives left because I complained!”

But he pressed on, and completed his homework with two lives to spare.

Whatever works, right? We live to battle another day.

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Posted in frustration, inscrutable, michael, parenting

The Marble

Posted on October 20, 2010 | 6 Comments

At one point Friday night, while playing an online SpongeBob computer game, Michael hopped up and ran to the bathroom.

And as I usually do, I listened closely to the sound of his activity, ever vigilant against the possibility of his forgetting to flush or wash his hands properly.

After the sorts of sounds one expects to hear from a kid in the bathroom, there was a long silence. Michael was still in the bathroom, there was no doubt: the light was on, and he hadn’t come sprinting back to the computer. The germ of a question concerning his silent activities had just begun to form in my mind when he started bawling.

Both his mom and I got up immediately and hurried into the bathroom to see what sort of sad occurrence had triggered his outburst.

“What’s wrong?” I asked.

“Nothing!” he cried, sniffing back tears.

“It doesn’t sound like nothing. It sounds like a whole lot of something. Now, what’s wrong?”

“NOTHING!” he shouted, through fresh tears.

“Did you hurt yourself?” His mom asked, quickly performing a mom-scan, looking for blood or other visible signs of injury.

“No… I found a bead,” he said.

“A bead?”

“Yes! This one!” He held up a microscopic bead, a clear one that might have fallen off of a bead necklace at some point in the last seven years we’ve lived in this house.

“Really?”

“Yes…” he said, but I was not convinced.

We thought nothing of it until later, as it neared bed time. While snuggling with his mom on the couch he began to wail again, this time his crying reaching a fevered pitch.

His mom finally got it out of him: He’d dropped a marble down the heater vent in the bathroom. A small, brown, glass marble.

“Is that all?” I asked while heading into the bathroom to investigate.

The bathroom heater vent is wooden grating on the floor, about four inches by eleven inches. Underneath is a wire mesh specifically placed there by his mom to keep this sort of thing from happening. This meant that Michael had to put forth some effort to get that marble to pass through.

One of his life’s passions is to cram things down openings to see them disappear and muse on where they might go. What he hasn’t grasped fully yet is the connection this activity has with losing items that are precious to him.

Which brings him to the point where he may possess a valuable trinket such as this marble, and yet be compelled to shove it into a drain or vent or other orifice, and render it lost to mankind for all eternity.

I removed the grating and the mesh and peered into the vent duct. It shot straight down about six inches, then curved back 90 degrees and continued on until it reached the heater itself. With a flashlight and a mirror I could see down the duct about three feet.

But there was no marble to be seen.

“I don’t see anything,” I yelled. This brought forth a fresh eruption of howls from Michael.

“It’s okay! It’s okay! Daddy will find it!” my wife yelled over the din, hoping some fraction of her words reached Michael’s ears.

So began my Valiant Effort at Marble Rescue.

First try:  Vacuum Cleaner with Sock Over the End

While this was very effective in retrieving all sorts of small objects, including a rubber ear bud grommet, two pieces of popcorn, a penny and several sticks, it did not yield a brown marble. I tried this trick several times before moving on.

Second try: Vacuum Cleaner with extended hose, but without Sock

This was even more effective, in that the suck power was increased greatly by not having the sock in place. Unfortunately, it meant tearing through the vacuum cleaner bag to find the marble, if retrieved. Of course I wasn’t brilliant enough to consider changing the bag before making this attempt, resulting in my going through a bag that was choked with dust bunnies, a spate of spider carcasses, sticks, popcorn and assorted floor-borne detritus. Not a fun evening.

Third try: Take the Heater Apart

This was not effective at all. After removing some screws and a couple of panels, I discovered that the portion of the heater I was after was pretty much set in concrete and not removable using tools at hand. I had no intention of jack-hammering my garage floor to retrieve a marble, so I gave up. It occurred to me later that it wouldn’t have worked anyway: the bottom part of the heater is the return, thus the marble wouldn’t be there anyway.

Forth try: Shop Vac with Greatly Extended Hose

This time I was smart and emptied the shop vac first. The only length of hose I had handy to act as an extension was some spare dishwasher drain tubing, so I duct-taped this to the shop vac hose and switched it on. I’d forgotten that the reason I kept the dishwasher drain tubing was because it makes a cool whistle when you pass air through it. With the shop vac pulling air through it like a wind tunnel, the tubing responded by shrieking like a banshee, emitting a skull-piercing scream during my recovery attempt. I got that tube down there as far as I could, pushed, pulled, twisted and probed, hoping by some miracle the marble would jump into the end and find its way into the shop vac.

No such luck.

And with that, I gave up.

After my hearing returned, I explained to Michael that the marble was just plain lost, and that he needs to learn his lesson not to do dumb things with stuff he likes.

We had a nice chat about it before bed time stories. He asked me about dumb things I had done as a kid. I could have reeled off a list that would have lasted all night, but I chose a couple of fitting examples and finished off by telling him that I eventually learned my lesson. Take care of things and you’ll be able to keep them for a long time.

Saturday and Sunday passed with no mention of the marble. I figured Michael had gone through all of the stages of grief over this marble, and was fully in acceptance.

It wasn’t until Monday, while Michael was at school, that the ugly reality of the marble loss once again slapped Michael in the emotional tush and sent him on another crying jag, this one pretty much tanking his day at Kindergarten. We got a note back from the teacher that day describing at great length how much effort it took to calm him down. He wasn’t able to do his work, he was sent to the principal, and he didn’t participate in classroom activities.

Because of a marble.

If I knew what it looked like, I’d just get one and then report that I “found” it in the garage under the heater.

I am going to try again, though. Next weekend. With a hose that doesn’t scream.

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Posted in frustration, inscrutable, michael, moments

On Keys and Tears

Posted on September 17, 2010 | 4 Comments

I lost my keys this morning.

I don’t mean “Whoops, I dropped them… where did they go?” kind of lost, I mean I made them vanish into non-existence. For a short time, anyway.

It was because my mind is elsewhere, either hiding or trying to solve some dilemma that really has no solution.

Upon leaving the house this morning, I nearly forgot to give my wife a kiss goodbye, which is not like me at all. Michael chattered all the way to the car as we got in and buckled him in place.

As I was getting in the driver’s seat I noticed that I didn’t have my keys with me. Whoops.

“Just sit tight, Michael. I’ll be right back.” I shut his door and ran back to the house, and knocked on the door urgently. My wife ran to the door and unlocked it.

“What’s the matter?”

“I don’t have my keys with me!” I said, frantically.

We did a quick search of my standard key landing spots but turned up nothing.

“Here, just take mine,” she said, and handed me the spare set she keeps.

“Thanks, sweetie. See you at lunch,” I said, and kissed her goodbye again.

About halfway to school, my mind delivered to me a startling bit of logic: ‘If you didn’t have your keys, how did you get in the car in the first place?’

Suddenly I remembered having them. I remember pushing the button on the fob to open the door. I remember taking them out of the cubby by the front door, and I remember holding them as my wife gave me the requisite pout for nearly forgetting that goodbye kiss.

So I had my keys. Somewhere in the car.

I did find them, eventually, tucked underneath the center console. How they got there I have no recollection.

This is the issue: where’s my mind? What’s consuming my brain cells?

I believe it is worry. Or at least, a buried anxiety concerning my little boy and his brand-new school career.

He’s been having some difficulty adjusting to going back to school, and having to leave his home and his mommy. She hasn’t been having the easiest time with it either, and I think he picks up on that to some degree…

It’s that critical point where I walk him into school and then give him a hug and say “go and play” before turning on my heel and leaving; it’s then that we both have a sense of discomfort. He looks up at me with his big blue eyes and earnest expression, searching my face for reassurance, looking to confirm that it’s right for him to be here. And I have a hard time delivering on that. There’s a big piece of me that wants to scoop him up and take him back home.

The few times his mom has brought him to school were more difficult. He’d cry, which would make her cry, which would make him cry more… luckily the teachers and the principal are right there, and being entirely used to that scenario, will cheerfully whisk him outside to play with the other kids.

It’s difficult for us. Not that we don’t think he’s ready or that he shouldn’t be going to Kindergarten. I just think we’re having trouble adjusting to the fact that he’s really there, and that he’s taking his first real steps along the path that will eventually lead to complete independence.

To help him cope with his own uncertainty, I’ve reminded him many times that mommy goes to work, daddy goes to work and his sisters go to school – so we all have places to be. And I remind him that he’s a big boy, and big boys go to school. He hasn’t entirely bought into this yet, though. He told his mom that he wants to be a little boy again and not go to school.

Am I worried about him? No. Every day it gets a little better, and he has an easier time with the farewell hug before running off to play. He even announced this morning that he wants to ride to school on the bus.

Growing up, getting bigger, leaving behind baby-hood; these will all come easier to him as the weeks pass. He’ll make friends and start getting into the groove of being an elementary school kid.

I’m not sure it’s going to be as easy a transition for his mom and me. We’ll just have to do a better job of keeping it to ourselves.

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Posted in frustration, parenting, ponderings, stress

Literatorture

Posted on August 31, 2010 | 7 Comments

Michael isn’t much of a reader yet.

Years ago, his mom and I held out high hopes. At the age of two he knew all of his letters and their sounds, and was spelling out words he saw: EXIT, STOP, OFF, WALK, etc. We assumed he was going be reading Dostoevsky and Joyce in no time.

But despite my efforts, reading to him on a daily basis and providing him a substantial library of early reader books, Michael hasn’t willingly ventured into the realm of reading.

Quite the opposite, in fact. Trying to cajole him into reading his books is like trying to get the cat to take a bath. He drags his feet hard enough to carve grooves in the floorboards.

And he likes TV. Way too much. He is skilled – nay, he is a virtuoso – at wearing down parental will, such that an otherwise sensible and firmly resolved parent can quickly be reduced to a slathering, gnashing primate capable only of acting upon the basest instincts of survival, such as biting and clawing his or her way through the couch cushions in order to find the remote and tune in Nick Jr. or Sprout to quell the dreaded, unending whine of “mommy? mommy? mommy? mommy? mommy? mommy? mommy? mommy?”

This is a fact of which I am very much not proud.

His mom and I have decided we owe it to him to be better than this. So last night, when Michael requested TV time, his mom told him that he must first read two simple books.

This triggered his response of whining, begging, pleading and tantrum-ing as we had expected it would. But his mom stood her ground, and with each outburst she added another book to the total, which made it up to five before he gave in.

She sat down with him and opened up the first book he’d selected, which was a SpongeBob phonics book. This one highlighted the long “I” sound, and explored use of the silent “e”. And as we have done with every attempt at helping him read, we insisted that he sound out the words.

To him, this was some form of excruciating torture. I watched from the kitchen as he twisted and squirmed and nearly hyperventilated trying to compile the sounds that comprise the word “him”. He struggled. He stammered. He whined, wiggled, wobbled and tore at his clothes as his mom slowly and painfully urged him to sound out each letter and then string those sounds together into the one word.

“I don’t remember what the word is!” he protested repeatedly.

“There’s no need to remember. Just sound it out,” his mom said repeatedly.

From the kitchen I witnessed this embroilment as his mom fought valiantly to prod him into figuring out the sounds himself and as he strained to do anything to get out of doing so.

From time to time she’d say “I think maybe your daddy had better help you with this, instead of me.” This is a phrase she pulls out whenever she wants to shock Michael into proper behavior. It usually works.

I couldn’t help but think that maybe she wanted a bit of a break herself.

“Okay,” I said. “Here I come.”

“Nooooooo!” protested Michael, from the floor.

“Yup. I’m going to read with you, and mommy is going to finish making dinner.”

My wife looked up at me with pleading, defeated eyes. I smiled and held out my hand. She ascended from the couch with the grateful expression of a soul redeemed, plucked from the seventh circle of The Inferno.

“All right, sport. Sit up here,” I said.

He didn’t move. I reached down and drew his boneless body into my lap and molded him into an upright position. “Come on. Sit up straight. We’re going to get through this.”

I was determined that we would make it through without fighting. I would give him space, I would give him leeway, I would give him latitude. I would not press, I would not become impatient, I would assist him and help him see that he can do this.

I was determined.

“All right, now. Let’s look at the page. What’s Plankton doing here?”

He relaxed immediately and described what Plankton was doing.

“And what’s SpongeBob holding?”

“A magnifying glass,” he said. “And these are cans of lima beans,” he offered, brightening.

“Right! How did you know they were lima beans?”

“It says so.” He pointed out the words.

“Well that’s great. Okay, since you know this, let’s read the words. Ready? Here we go. What’s this word?”

“I don’t know…”

“Okay, what’s this letter?”

“Y”

“And what sound does it make?”

“Yuh”

“Right. What’s the next letter?”

And so it went. Letter by letter, millimeter by millimeter, we went through each letter of each word, very slowly but no less surely covering each word and then repeating each sentence to reinforce. He became more confident with each word. The sounds and the comprehension came easier to him with each page, all the way up to the last one. Slowly and surely.

In all that time I’d spent with Michael, my wife completed dinner, dessert, an amuse bouche, mastered the five mother sauces, knitted two sweaters and built a replica of the Eiffel Tower from toothpicks. Okay, so I exaggerate. It was only a model of Sutter’s Fort.

But in this time, while he grew in his ability to read, I had grown in my patience. He and I both had our victories.

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Posted in frustration, michael, mom, parenting

Sleep Wreck

Posted on August 28, 2010 | 6 Comments

Tom yawns and he sets the last button on his jammies. He stretches and climbs aboard the Sleepytime Express, ready for a good night’s trip through Slumbertown.

“Good evening, sir,” the driver says. “Usual stop? 4:30 AM?”

“Not this time, Joe! It’s Saturday! I’ll be going straight on through town,” Tom says with a sleepy smile. He sits down on the second bench seat right next to his wife, who’s already on board. “Just drop me off wherever. 8:30 would be okay. 9:00 would be even better.”

“Okay, sir!” The driver pulls the doors closed, releases the brake and carefully steers the Sleepytime Express out onto Drowsy avenue.

“Boy am I bushed,” Tom says as he nestles into the seat for the night-long trip.

The bus drives on through the night. The lights of dreamland flash by as Tom sits back and enjoys the journey. He recalls previous trips throughout the week, ones in which he was forced to get off at his 4:30 or 5:30 AM stops, feeling entirely unrested. This non-stop trip through town would be a welcome change.

“Wow, I might make it through this time,” Tom thinks as the bus passes a sign for 4:15.

CRASH!



Out of nowhere, a brick wall named Michael appears in the middle of the road, taking the Sleepytime Express driver entirely unawares as the bus and all of its passengers smash into it at full speed.

With tinkling glass still flying and the smell of charred rubber heavy in the air, Tom and his wife lay sprawled on the road, blinking and jarred, next to a mile marker that reads “4:24″

The wall transforms into a six-year-old boy.

“Mommy? I’m all sweaty!” Michael cries as his mom and I reluctantly haul ourselves out of bed and into active service.

It had been such a nice trip. Maybe tonight we’ll make it through.

In all fairness, it was sister S’s alarm clock that woke him up. I have yet to understand why she’d have it set to go off then. But there’s precedent, so it doesn’t surprise me much.

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Posted in dad, frustration, michael, night

Hasta La Vista, Bacon

Posted on August 25, 2010 | 8 Comments

Yesterday Michael, his mom and I drove up a short way into Washington to retrieve sister S, who’d spent a week with her dad.

Her first grand announcement as we pulled back onto the freeway headed for home:

“I’m a vegan now!”

“Good luck with that,” I replied.

See, this is a girl who only recently has maintained that she will one day be owning a combined Hot Topic / Taco Bell store. She loves steak, chicken and ice cream. She never met a piece of bacon that she didn’t like. The thought of her going one day without consuming an animal product in some form or another is by all rights absurd.

On the trip back, we prodded a little bit for more on the how, why, when and what of it.

“Who got you interested in being a vegan?”

“Mr. Sparklepants.” (Note: this is not his actual name. However, the name we were given is not any more believable.)

“And how old is Mr. Sparklepants?”

“He’s in seventh grade.”

A sterling credential if ever there was one.

“And is he a dietician?”

“No, but he knows what he’s talking about.”

“Give me an example.”

“Well, you can get all your Omega 3s and protein by eating walnuts.”

“Okay…”

“So that’s what I’ll do.”

“Just walnuts?”

“And Ramen.”

Sounds to me like she has the plan all worked out. She explained it to us with such confidence, we figure she must have notes:

“Where are you going to get your calcium?” her mom asked, after a brief pause.

“And your vitamin B?” I asked, immediately afterward.

“And your vitamin D?” her mom asked before I’d finished my question.

“I don’t know… I’ll figure it out.”

This is where we let it drop. My wife and I know when to step up for battle and when to stand down.

While we certainly support lofty goals and noble causes such as protecting animal rights, it is our job as parents to ensure that our children understand every aspect of what they’re getting themselves in to. Knowing sister S, we’re pretty sure she’s missing quite a big chunk of the picture. She latched onto one facet of the vegan lifestyle and a couple of tips and figures she’s ready to run with it.

I give it a week.

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Posted in daughters, frustration, inscrutable, kids, moments