It’s bedtime, and we’re upstairs brushing teeth.
Michael has had evidently been bitten by an exceedingly large wiggle bug because he won’t hold still while I attempt to maneuver the spinning brush around his teeth.
He gives one spectacular lurch and the brush is pushed out of his mouth completely, then goes skittering along his cheek.
“Hold still! I almost brushed your eye that time,” I said.
“Well, if you did, then at least I’d have good oral EYE-giene!” he replied without missing a beat.
Just a quick note to snapshot Michael’s life at the moment.
Michael is enjoying 2nd grade quite a bit. We had a bit of a rough start this year; due to budget cuts, there were some shakeups with the teaching staff. The teacher assigned to his class was not ready for the task and eventually resigned. The replacement teacher was wonderful and we had high hopes for her in this position… but she came down with a malady that while ultimately treatable prevented her from continuing in the teaching capacity. Luckily, our favorite teacher, Mrs. P., whom you may remember as being his teacher during 1st grade, was chosen as the replacement replacement, and this has proved to be the best of all. If only we could have her be his teacher all the way up through his senior year of high school!
He’s still taking swimming lessons, and doing quite well. He can already swim rings around me, having learned the proper techniques for various swim strokes, including the side-breathing method used in the “crawl” or free style arm stroke. I never could get that down. My best style is dog paddle and stay alive until the coast guard arrives. Coupled with the swim class is diving. Here’s an older video of him during one class (sorry it’s so distant; that’s as close as the spectators can get):
He’s improved quite a bit since then. He goes three days a week. It’s clear across town but it’s a great outlet for all of that energy he has. The only downside is that it ends up making for a pretty late evening; by the time we get home it’s already way past bedtime. He’s handling it just fine, though.
His sisters are doing well, too. Oldest sister B is working at a pizza shop, and was recently promoted to shift manager. I stopped by one day while she was working. It was heartening to watch her take orders, make five pizzas (including the dough tossing – not something I have mastered) and direct the drivers to their deliveries. Middle sister S is in her final year of high school, and has improved her math skills to the point where she has been able to tutor others informally. Sister L, Michael’s twin, is fully enmeshed in her Renaissance pursuits at her art school, stuck between choosing graphic arts, theater and literature. She has a love of antiquities that makes her grandmother (and would make her great-grandmother) very proud.
And it’s just a few short months until Michael’s Mommy starts her new job.
Myself, I have plans to take an extended stay-cation this summer (fortunately my workplace offers that benefit every seven years) to catch up on my honey-do list. I have a number of projects in and around the house that need tending to.
This year is shaping up to be a very good one.
Yesterday was a particularly lazy day. Having completed our weekend cleaning chores the previous two days, we opted to observe President’s Day by doing essentially nothing at all: caught up on some episodes of “Avatar: The Last Airbender”, enjoyed a mid-day cup of coffee, assisted Michael in the upgrade of Minecraft to include the Angry Birds texture pack, etc. Important stuff like that.
We (and by that I mean my wife) decided that Michael and I should get hair cuts, since we were looking pretty shaggy.
Right across from the haircut place is Michael’s favorite pizza restaurant, and as we crossed the parking lot he looked over at it longingly.
“You want pizza for lunch? We can do that,” his mom said. This perked him right up. He sat through his haircut patiently, with only minimal wiggling. After completing mine and settling the monetary aspect of the transaction, we headed out and over to the pizza place.
“It’ll be about fifteen minutes,” said the waitress after taking our order. We decided to walk around the shopping complex to kill time.
Just to be sure, I got out my iPhone and set the timer to go off after twelve minutes.
Now… I know how to use my phone’s functions pretty well. I’d say I’m at a Brown Belt level: not a novice, but by no means a master. So I didn’t give it a lot of thought when I pressed the “Start” button and casually noted that the alarm type was set to “Doorbell”
“Hmmm… Doorbell sounds nice,” I thought.
And off we went on our walk. We sauntered around the building, down past an insurance place, another barber, a paint-it-yourself ceramics place and a Subway… then crossed a roadway and circled back up around a dentist office and a fitness center.
I glanced down at my phone and noticed that it was about time to head back to the pizza place, so we plodded on down the stairs and across the parking lot.
I opened the door and let Michael and his mom in. The door chimed announcing our entry. I checked with the waitress while Michael and his mom headed back to the video games.
“It’ll be out in just a couple of minutes,” she said.
The doorbell kept chiming. I looked to see if the door was partially open, but no.
I walked down to where my family was. The doorbell kept chiming, but this time I heard it from the back door.
“It’ll be just a couple of minutes,” I told them.
“Okay. Michael’s perfectly happy,” my wife said.
Meanwhile, the doorbell just wouldn’t quit. For some reason, the staff wasn’t concerned about it at all.
As I made my way back to the front of the restaurant, the sound of the doorbell seemed to keep changing position: it was in the back of the restaurant a minute ago, now it’s up above by the television screen, and now it’s right by the front door.
The waitress, obviously overworked and unsure of my presence, asked me if she could help me with something.
“No, I’m just waiting for our pizza.”
“Oh, okay,” she said and went back to dressing a salad and pouring some sodas.
“The doorbell keeps going off,” I said. “Like it’s stuck or something.”
She smiled and looked at me somewhat confused, and turned to listen to the sound of the bell that apparently only I could hear, despite the fact that it was loud and clear. In fact, it now seemed to be coming from the food preparation area.
“Geez, this would drive me nuts,” I said to no one in particular. It was getting to the point where I wanted to fix it myself.
The pizza finally was put up, and after paying for it and calling to my family, we headed back to the car. I held the door open with one hand and balanced the pizza with the other.
Once outside, I noticed that the sound of the doorbell was every bit as loud as it was inside the restaurant.
“My gosh,” I said. “Does that doorbell go everywhere?”
“What?” My wife asked, looking at me confused.
We walked to the car, the doorbell continuing to chime. The sound never dimming. The sound continuing to follow me.
Following me.
Like it was my own personal doorbell.
I suddenly realized what was going on, and starting laughing.
“What’s so funny?” my wife asked.
“The doorbell sound – it’s me!” I pulled out my phone, and there was the timer, dutifully alerting me to the lapse of time that I’d requested, chiming away like a doorbell, just as I’d specified.
I turned it off, and wiped away the tears of laughter as I got in the car. My wife looked at me and shook her head.
“You’re a real ding-dong, for sure,” she said.
Yes, but I’m her ding-dong.
…sometimes work out just great!
Sherman, set the wayback machine to 2008. We were in a bit of a bind regarding the future of my wife’s employment. Suffice it to say, she needed to quickly escape a destructive work environment.
Since she’s a nurse with some years of experience, it should have been fairly easy for her to find a position at another hospital.
As it turned out, there wasn’t much available.
What we did find, though, was rumor of a new hospital being planned for the area close to our home; potentially with in bike riding distance. It was slated to open in five years. After much dialog and prayer, we decided that she should try to hire on with the same company at a hospital facility across town. It would mean a substantial commute, but the payoff could potentially be a solid foot in the door when the new facility opened up near us.
She submitted her application and was hired. Her new job was a good solid fit and she was happy with it. The drive can be a killer some times, and it invariably tacks at least an hour and a half on her day, on a good day. More often than not the trip is an hour each way: taking surface streets to reach the freeway, traversing five freeways and several bridges of choking traffic. I spent any number of nights worried about numbskull drivers out there on the road that might smash into her at some point.
We kept checking on the progress of the new hospital, scouring the internet for any hint of news: a ping on a construction blog in one place, another ping on a financial newsletter somewhere else… over the years the rumors turned into plans, the plans turned into announcements, and eventually the announcements turned into construction. “Baby steps to 2013,” we’d tell each other. “Baby steps to 2013…”
For the last two years we would watch as the site was prepared, foundations poured, steel welded and siding affixed. Then the landscaping went in, building decorations and signs. The new hospital was definitely there, and rapidly approaching completion.
Then last autumn the word went out to employees: the new facility was accepting applications! She applied, and we waited… and prayed.
Just a few days ago, the call came: she was hired on at the new facility, to start in May!
Her new travel time? Five minutes. Maybe ten if traffic is bad.
Sometimes, God smiles and says yes.
I’ve discovered that I have a super power.
The realization struck me quickly. It just all suddenly made sense.
You see, up until now, I had been wondering why no one else emptied the garbage cans and wastebaskets in the house. Why every time I wanted to just toss something away into the garbage pail that resides under the sink, I was invariably met with a tottering stack of odoriferous refuse. Banana peels and can lids; napkins and popsicle wrappers; soda straws and cereal bags; on and on.
Every. Single. Time.
And every time, while smushing down the explosive load of detritus and cinching the bag cord, I’d loudly complain “Why am I the only one who seems to know how to take out the garbage?”
Others, when facing this perplexing situation, trying to throw something away in a garbage can that was already full, would simply toss their waste item into the general area of the can and quickly shut the door, hoping to disavow any and all knowledge of the waste and its destination. I would find all manner of wrappers, food chunks, peels, papers and what not scattered about the floor of the under-sink cabinet. These of course would have to be inserted into the bulging sack manually; I would inevitably have to steel myself against raw disgust at touching whatever gloppy, slimy item had been carelessly tossed.
It was while performing this very action that the realization dawned: it wasn’t that they didn’t know how, it wasn’t that they couldn’t see the garbage needed to be taken out, and it wasn’t that they didn’t care.
No, it was none of those things.
The fact is, they are all unable to take out the garbage.
Only I can do it. It requires my special powers. My special super powers.
I am: GARBAGE MAN!
Now I need a cape.
Posted in dad, family, frustration, life, ponderings
Monday morning began like most of its kind: way too early. It was one of Michael’s Mommy’s work days, which means up at 4:30 and rushing around to help her get out the door before 6 AM.
All was well until 5:58, when she discovered that she had misplaced her keys.
“Oh, shoot!” she said, heading to the garage door. “I left my keys upstairs!”
“Where?” I asked.
“In my gray sweatshirt. I put my keys in there and then realized I should wear a heavier one and grabbed the blue one before I came down,” she said.
“I’ll get them,” I offered. “You and Michael get to the car and I’ll bring them to you.” (some of you may recall that Michael likes to ride in his mom’s lap out of the garage and down the driveway on the mornings she goes to work. I am fairly confident he won’t be doing that when he’s 15, but he’s almost 9 and hasn’t lost any enthusiasm for the event.)
I rushed upstairs and began to paw through the few cast-off garments that graced the chair in the corner of the room. The gray sweatshirt was there, and a quick search of the pockets yielded nothing, not even lint or a gum wrapper to say nothing of car keys. I hunted a bit more: on the floor, on the chair, on the end of the bed, the dresser, the bathroom counter… nothing.
Pretty soon my wife came up the stairs, obviously concerned.
“Did you find the sweatshirt?”
“Yes, but no keys!”
“They have to be in there! I remember putting them in the pocket!” she grabbed the sweatshirt and searched it herself, but found nothing. “Where the heck are they?” she cried, panicked.
“I hunted all over the room and on the floor. Let’s take another look downstairs,” I said.
“Okay…”
We searched high and low through the obvious (and not so obvious) spots for her keys, to no avail.
“Look, just take the spare, and I’ll find your keys later,” I said, working her spare car key off of my ring.
Immediate crisis resolved, we said our goodbyes and Michael got his ride.
Shortly afterwards, as I was preparing my own lunch, I went to get my lunchbox. It was not where I had last put it. I had reorganized some shelves and left the lunchboxes out on the dining room table while I decided where they should live permanently. Unfortunately, my wife had cleaned up the dining room and made it look nice again, thus deciding for herself where the lunchboxes should live permanently.
Annoyed and frustrated, I sent her a rather perturbed text message. “WHERE IS MY LUNCH BOX?”
The reply came back in just a few short minutes: “In the closet, on the shelf over the shoe rack.”
I pawed through the closet, pushing past coats and scarves, three thousand mittens, costumes for the plastic flamingo in the front yard, and a flag of the United States. There were lunchboxes there all right, but not mine.
“I don’t see it,” I texted back. “I don’t have time to look for it.”
“It’s hidden inside another bag,” came the reply, along with a little smiley with a cheesy, impish grin.
“Indeed it is,” I said, after finding it stuffed down inside another bag pushed to the back of the shelf.
“I’m a good hider,” she said, tacking on more cheesy grin emoticons.
I made lunches for Michael and myself, and soon we were on our way to start our separate days.
After work and before swimming practice, I searched for my wife’s keys some more. I retraced her steps, checking each of her usual “landing spots”, but still no luck. Upstairs, I used a flashlight and scoured underneath the bed and on the floor under the chair. I checked garbage cans and behind bookcases, in the couch cushions and in the refrigerator.
No keys.
It occurred to me that she might have had them with her in the car or in her coat pocket, two places we hadn’t looked.
When she finally arrived at home last night I asked her.
“Did you ever find your keys?”
“No!” came the sharp, somewhat accusatory reply.
“I couldn’t find them anywhere. I thought maybe you had them after all,” I said.
With that, a strange look suddenly flashed across her face, and she turned and went to get her purse.
She gave it an exploratory shake.
Jingle, jingle.
Hunting inside, she reached down into the bottom, and there were her keys.
“I can’t believe it,” I said.
She just stood there and giggled.
“And it’s a small purse!” I said. “How do you lose something in a small purse like that?”
“I’m a good hider!” she laughed.
“That you are.”
“Well, at least it gives you something to blog about,” she said, after finally wiping away her tears of laughter.
“Don’t mind if I do,” I said.
I am still going to the gym at work.
I am still out of shape.
But… I am able to work a little harder, go a little farther, last a little longer than I have since I started.
I don’t feel any stronger, but my resolve definitely is.
This weekend was pretty much devoted to rounding up Legos.
He’d recently gotten a couple of Star Wars – themed Lego building sets and decided that it was time to start in on them.
So he did what any self-respecting kid would do: tore open each of the little plastic pouches right where he sat on the couch.
I’m not sure if you’re all aware of this, but Lego blocks are created from a special kind of material that seeks the lowest, farthest in, most inconvenient nook it can if left to its own devices. This is why when you happen to allow some of these little buggers escape your grasp, they will instantly bury themselves in whatever crevice is handy. A couch makes a perfect spot for this, as it has several strata and plenty of inaccessible crannies in which to lose things.
“Daddy! I lost some pieces!” Michael cried.
“Michael, you didn’t open these up on the couch, did you?” his mother asked.
“Yes but I have all the pieces except I lost some,” he admitted.
“Well let’s gather what you have into something solid and put them aside while we look for the pieces you lost,” his mom continued. “Really, Michael, you can’t tear into packages like that on the couch! You have to do it on a flat, hard surface where things can’t get lost,” she reprimanded.
Michael grabbed a nearby Frisbee and we used that to scoop up the pieces we could see, and we set them aside.
Digging through the couch did not immediately yield any treasures, so we had to resort to lifting the cushions.
A couple of Lego studs fell out, and maybe a block or a random character’s head.
Still some missing.
Time to turn the couch modules over completely and scour the floor. Our couch is a corner sectional unit, one we chose for its ability to simultaneously contain the posteriors of everyone who might at any one time be relaxing downstairs to enjoy the fire or the television. So it does turn over, but in four chunks.
Eventually we got the sections turned over and moved out of the way. On top of this were the cushions, bolster pillows, throw pillows, blankets and other assorted flotsam.
On the floor was quite a bit of shameful detritus not reached by the vacuum. Including a couple of Lego pieces. Not the entire contingent of missing pieces, but some.
Which meant more searching.
What made things complicated was the many battalions of green army men that Michael had deployed earlier. There were several troops arrayed in various areas, mostly flanking the fireplace and the ottoman (earlier there had been a squadron deployed along the floor between the table and the couch, but an avenging foot got tired of stepping on them and swept them out of the way). These complicated matters by making a larger array of items that needed to be picked up and put away before we could search for missing pieces, which we had to do before we could vacuum.
Michael reluctantly agreed to recall his troops. As of this writing I believe they are all still on leave.
A few more shakes of the blankets and one sweatshirt revealed the last of the missing legos.
Michael received another admonishment to be more careful, and a command to pick up every single individual Lego piece.
Eventually we were able to vacuum and restore the couch to order. By Sunday afternoon the family room looked neat as a pin, and Michael’s Lego project was safely stored in a Ziploc bag.
Last night he opened up another box and started in. This time, with a set that had four times as many pieces.
Fortunately, he did it on the carpet, not on the couch. So we only lost three pieces.
I’m going to be wearing shoes in the house until the Lego phase passes.
The concentrated labor is done, just to tie up a loose thread here on the blog.
And while I’m glad of that, I am also acutely aware that there’s still a good bit of cleanup to be done. It’s manageable, but it’ll take some time.
Again… not something I can really write about, but I am glad to be on the downhill side of the mountain.
Hopefully some day this picture will show a guy in a hammock slurping a drink with a little umbrella in it.
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Posted in life, ponderings
Last night, my wife made something new and extremely delicious for dinner. We take turns cooking, but because our computer had gotten zapped by a power outage recently and had to be rebuilt, I was occupied with being Mr. Computer Guy and restoring everyone’s email and iTunes and all that stuff. So it was up to her to provide the family with sustenance.
On the menu was was roasted chicken sausage over a bed of red cabbage and apple sauerkraut. A German feast to be sure, and tasty beyond description.
But what stuck in my memory was the exchange that occurred just before dinner was served. Michael asked what would be served with it.
“Mommy, are there vegetables?”
“Well, the cabbage is a vegetable,” she said.
“But what about Brussels sprouts?” he asked, hopefully.
“Not tonight; we don’t have any Brussels sprouts.”
Michael heaved a disappointed sigh. Yes, you read that correctly.
“Oh,” he said.
“But I do have cauliflower that I can roast. Would you like that?” his mom offered.
“Yes, that would be good too,” he said.
You know you’re doing something right in the kitchen when your eight-year-old is disappointed that you’re not making Brussels sprouts.
After dinner I told my wife that she needs to cook every night. Oddly enough she was not overjoyed at my suggestion.
Posted in food, inscrutable, michael, parenting