Raging

 


9.6

9.8

9.9

10

9.8

All Hell's Breaking Loose

 

So when had this wren lay soem eggs in our shed a few weeks back.

We watched as the bird incubated the clutch and then peeked in on them once they hatched.

It was a nice little view of nature for the boys.

Earlier this week I noticed that the chicks had gotten so big that they were essentially pushing one another out of the nest.

It would soon be time to fly I thought.

Then Wednesday I went into the shed to get the charcoal to fire up the grill for burgers and all hell broke loose.

Apparently the chicks had ventured out of the nest and were investiagting their surroundings until I spooked them getting the charcoal.

The chicks flew into the walls in all directions and dropped to the floor.

Three of them fell behind junk I thought they may never find a way back out of because of the cramped quarters.

I watched a confused mother wren come back to the nest with a worm to find her chicks gone.

And then I watched her bounce about the shed looking for her babies.

I felt bad so I grabbed a broom and swept the floor, then started humping junk out of the shed to give the chicks some space. Of course this scared the shit out of them and they began sending out chirping calls of distress.

Suddenly I found myself surrounded by a family of birds flying around me, zooming through my legs, bumping into me and basically just general chaos.

I managed to huddle three of the five into an empty corner and then left for a few minutes.

I came back to find that mom must have rescued two of them and was on her way ot the third when - once again -
I startled and scared them.

The third chick flew across the deck to the other side, hit the brick wall and then slide down and to cover under the deck.

I heard him chirping under there an hour os so later.

I'm not sure if he ever reconnected with the family.

I tried to help but felt I'd only made matters worse.

Three Years Ago...

this happened to me:

http://www.indyweek.com/gyrobase/Content?oid=oid%3A21927


please read my harrowing account of our healthcare system gone awry and the evils of over-the-counter drugs.

ps. click on Three Years Ago for direct linkage

Linville Falls

Yep.


Nature my friends.

Credit goes to my boys for hiking up this beast of a trail.

You guys rock.

But that piggy back the last half mile was unnecessary dontcha think?

Why Is It?

That people have the urge to say "moo" when they see cows? It's like - and you parents out there can vouch for me - how people feel compelled to speak baby talk to your child.

"Oh Bobby is sooooo cute-da beebee baahh baahh goo goo," they'll say.

I've admit it - I've done both myself (although I can say that alcohol was a factor in the cow conversation).

Just sayin'.

So here I find myself in the passenger seat as my wife took this picture "mooing" to the cow, kids in the back providing their own moo soundtrack.

Finally I barked out, "Can we go now?"

This wasn't well received.

"Can't we moo at the cows," my wife said with a cheerful giggle. "Oh my gosh."

I shook my head.

We drove off.

The cow mooed as we left.

I wondered what he said.

Priceless

Okay, so we didn't have much luck in the river that ran through it.

And maybe that's because I'm not some diehard fisherman.

I like to fish. Don't get me wrong.

But I'm more of a surf or lake fisherman.

We were smack dab in the heart of fly fishing country.

I lost a lot of hooks is what I'm saying... so we broke down and took the boys to a trout farm by Garndfather Mountain so they could catch some fish. It was sort of ridiculous: they supplied the rod & reel, bait, bucket and net. Yeah and even a pond full of trophy trout just for your pickin'! But we caught some fish, had them cleaned and took them home an ate 'em. Yum.

Plus, I got this picture out of it.

Rainbow Trout

With toasted pecans in butter, topped with parsley and served with the beverage of your choice and a few wedges of lemon.

And brown rice.

Can't you just about smell it?

A River Runs Through It

The family spent a few days in the mountains last week where we stayed at a place around Linville Falls called Camp Creek cabin. We spent the majority of our time fishing for trout and looking under the rocks for salamanders. At night we made campfires and enjoyed the scenery.

It was the first time we had taken the kids to the mountains. When we do have the opportunity to take a vacation, being the beach lovers that we are, we usually head to the ocean. But this time around we figured it was time to show the kids what the mountains of North Carolina was all about. They got to experience white knuckle driving on the Blue Ridge Parkway, saw Grandfather Mountain, Linville Falls and Linville Caverns.

All is all it was a really good time.

The Family Garden

This thing was the subject of much debate for the past six weeks; what to plant and where to put it.

And finally, when it was all said and done, when it was built and the vegetables were planted foul weather came. And the weather hasn't been very good to our little project since - first came the freeze where we had to cover the plants or bring the potted ones inside. Of course the cat had a field day with the herbs. So we lsot a few to the frost and a few to the belly of our cat. Then came the torrential downpours and now we are experiencing the tail end of this nor'easter that is wrecking the entire East Coast.

Ah! The joys of DIY...

Oh Little Birdie

A finch has made a nest in our shed right under a tray for paint and in a pan used for changing oil in our cars. Sure hope the little chicks don't come out three-headed...

Dogwood blossoms

Did I mention spring has sprung here in North Carolina?

Spring Has Sprung

That greenish, yellow dust is pine pollen folks.

The local news station said it's the worst measurable pollen in something like eight years. Even though the weather is beautiful, you can't open your windows or the entire contents of your home will be covered in pine pollen dust.

I know this from experience.

Never Make A Promise You Can't Keep*

The promise: To build a tree house for my son Spencer before his fifth birthday.

I would like to mention up top here that this was not my idea – but the wife’s. She’d been looking at web sites and books with schematics and decided that she would take off the week of Easter, essentially Spring Break for the masses, and we will build the tree house.

The beginning of my tree house boot camp started on Saturday, March 26, 2005. My wife and Spencer drove to a lumber store in Burlington, NC, because it was significantly cheaper than the local Lowes or Home Depot.

My wife is all about the discount.

When they returned, Spencer ran in to tell me of how the wood fell out of the truck and that “people he didn’t even know” helped them pick the wood off of the highway. Yes, I just said HIGHWAY. My wife and son were one of those people – the kind who spill lumber out of the bed of a truck. Shortly thereafter, I ferried 60 pound bags of cement to the backyard and hauled whatever timber was needed at the moment off the back of the truck.

In the blink of an eye, my wife darted off to rent a two-person auger. Boy, did we feel sore the next day. But shit if we didn’t get some holes burrowed and 6” x 6” x 12’ posts set.

We finished framing the tree house, fastening lumber with lag screws to the pine trees which acted as the back of the tree house. Since we don’t have much in the way of tools, we borrowed a power drill and some drill bits. Outside of that, our circular saw, a hammer, and a pair of vice grips do the bulk of the work.

Day One was over and we were spent.

Sunday, Day Two, began at the crack of dawn. The kids were fed breakfast, coffee was made and by 9 a.m. the family was outside and construction continued. 5 ¼” x 6’ x 10” decking boards were placed as flooring. By now it was apparent that our thorough measuring wasn’t all that thorough: some angles weren’t straight and some lumber wasn’t level. We were well on our way to building a tree house of Dr. Seuss proportions.

Midway through the day, my hands became to sore – the hammering of ten-penny nails and screwing 2 1/2” screws into planks with a shitty drill bit took its toll.

We broke for the day at dinner time.

Monday found rain in the forecast so I attended a business meeting most of the day and it turned into a day of much needed rest; a day to recoup our energies and step back and take in what progress had been made.

Tuesday began much like the other days: the kids got fed the coffee brewed and then off to the backyard to work amongst the backdrop of whirring saw blades, buzzing drills, kids hollering and us screaming back at them. The agenda called for putting up the 6’ x 6’ sides, slapping up railings made with 2 x 4s and placing the balusters. The balusters mimic the look of the deck in our backyard and also function as a safety element prohibiting the kids from falling off the sides. As dusk arrived, the yard was cleaned of its construction litter and the tools placed back inside, because the next day was Spencer’s birthday and for that we spent the night at Wrightsville Beach.

Wednesday morning slogged by because we couldn’t leave too early since check-in time at the hotel wasn’t until after 3 p.m. We packed clothes and organized toys to be used as distractions for the kids during the 2 plus hour drive to the beach.

The wife was behind the wheel and we were somewhere east of Raleigh. She came upon what appeared to be an unmarked police car. He sped up and she followed him. Then he slowed down and got behind a car in the right lane. My wife did the same. He broke out of the right lane and sped up. Again, my wife followed suit. Finally he settled back into the flow of slower moving traffic in the right lane and with that my wife made the executive decision that the unmarked car is not a cop after all but probably just some business man. She zoomed past him in the left lane.

Moments later she cried out, “Dammit! It was a cop.

I turned around to see the red and blue blinking lights. I started to search for the registration in the glove compartment.

“Ma’am,” he said. “Do you know hwy I pulled you over?”

“I was doing the speed limit,” my wife snapped back.

“Ma’am,” he said emphatically. “Don’t argue with me! I haven’t written a ticket in over four years but I still could if I wanted to.”

The cop is obviously angry. He lectured her about safe driving. “Especially with children in the car,” he said.

“Ma’am,” he said sternly. “Please drive safely.”

The rest of the car ride to the beach is done in silence.

The beach was fun. The weather was great, the ocean water was predictably cold, but the pool was heated. Spencer did double duty going from beach to pool to beach and then back again to the pool until late in the evening. We attempted to eat dinner out by our youngest Cole was restless at the dinner table so we retreated to the room and ordered room service where we sat and ate as we looked out from our balcony to the beach, the waves and the horizon.

We ordered The Incredibles on pay-per-view and collectively snuggle in bed. Despite all the hype I’d heard about the movie, it barely kept my interest - or anyone else’s for that matter – and consequently drove the whole family to sleep.

Sunrise came too soon.

We hit the breakfast buffet, tackled the beach and pool one more time, than headed back home. Once home the car was emptied and it was back to the business of building a tree house. A couple of hours were put in tinkering before we shower up and the babysitter arrived. The wife was on vacation after all so a nice dinner between the two of us was a must.

Friday - Day Four of proper building if you are counting - came and we framed the roof, built a ladder, and attached a slide. The wife had second thoughts about putting on a tin roof because it cost too much so she settles for a blue tarp. I balked at the blue tarp because it didn’t appear very safe – the tarp wasn’t going to break the fall of a pine tree limb. So the roof situation is rethought and it is decided that the tarp with go and the tin roof will stay.

Saturday came and we now had a tree house in the backyard. But it was raining and the yard was all tore up from all the lumber and saw dust and still muddied from the previous rain storm earlier in the week. Our goal to finish in time for Spencer’s birthday party on Saturday was achieved only nobody was going to get to enjoy it since it was pouring down rain.

We kept the promise we made by building the tree house in time for his party. But it wasn’t an easy task.

And another lesson in the world of parenting was learned: never make a promise you can’t keep.

*A version of this essay originally appeared in Raleigh's The Hatchet.

The Dirt On Dad

The first major obstacle, and there would be many, that I had to wrap my head around when I first became a stay-at-home-dad was laundry. With a thirteen-month-old boy, there was always laundry to be done. Growing up my mother always had a dedicated day for laundry, usually Saturdays but sometimes Sundays. By the time I got to college and started washing my own clothes I noticed religious undertones to doing laundry; for some it was like the Sabbath, a day dedicated to observing nothing but washing machines and dryers.

But with an infant, laundry can be a daily routine. There are burp cloths, drool bibs and exploding diapers. It is basically impossible to keep a baby’s clothes clean - they puke, they piss, they crawl, and they cry - there’s not a moment in their existence at this stage of life when they possibly can’t soil their clothes.

Laundry, and the constant need to do it, was the first household chore to make me feel like I was going mentally ill. It was like trying to stave off waves from the sand castle you built at the beach as a kid, a useless and plumb silly task. And just when you thought you’d gotten a hand on the boy’s laundry, along came time to wash our clothes. I had to have a crash course from my wife in the basics of “line drying” clothes and told that it was imperative that I read the labels as to how to care for certain articles of clothes. Curses! It just seemed to never end. As a matter of fact, almost seven years later I still find that there’s always a load of laundry to be done only now I sometimes ignore the pile of dirty clothes until they get up and walk away.

It would pretty much be the same way with dishes. There would always be a bottle to wash. Although we were still breast feeding our son, my wife had to pump her breasts so there was always an arsenal of breast pump mechanics to be disinfected and cleaned as well. I began to formulate a design for the man-boob; some sort of breast-like device that a father could wear that would simulate the scenario of breastfeeding on mom’s teat. I’m sure it has been invented by now.

The dishwasher and the laundry machines became my new best friends, we shared coffee and conversation together most mornings although they weren’t very good at conversation – it was pretty much a one-way street but they were very attentive and great listeners.

In keeping with the cleaning m.o., I started a very intimate relationship with our vacuum cleaner. Much like dishes and dirty clothes, there wasn’t a day that went by that I felt I couldn’t find a reason to use the vacuum. That first Christmas after I became an at-home dad my wife got me one of those Dirt Devil hand-held vacuums, the only downside to the Dirt Devil was that it didn’t come with a holster. It would be much further into my tour of duty that I would discover the genius that is the Swiffer and his glorious cousin the Wet Swiffer. Somewhere down the line, I began thinking about leaving my Hoover for a Dyson, but those Dysons I just couldn’t afford.

There’s one common thread here and that is my own anal retentiveness. I found that I was becoming completely obsessive about trying to have everything clean all the time. A few years later I would learn to let go, that it was OK to not have the household clean as a whistle 24/7. I realized that the pursuit of such a thing would drive you completely bonkers. I also have come to the conclusion that it is perfectly okay to be bonkers.

Bonkers.

ESL For Kids - Trying to explain the good from bad*

Just the other day my 4-and-a-half year old son Spencer got his first black eye.

It happened the way most injuries happen to little boys – by accident.

Spencer was watching a television show. Worked up with nervous energy, he decided he was going to start spinning around in the middle of the family room.

“Be careful,” I said.

“Know your surroundings,” I said wondering to myself if my words ever since past the cranial cracks of his thick skull.

“Watch it!” I hollered. The preceded to chide him about getting too close to the edge of the futon couch, visions of hospital emergency rooms dancing in my head.

And that’s when I averted my eyes for s second.

And then there was the sound: Thunk! The indecipherable wail of sheer pain followed soon after and I knew exactly what had happened by deductive reasoning. Now finding the exact spot of impact was a more challenging task.

“Where does it hurt?” I asked him.

“My fa-fa-faaaa-ce,” he said.

“I know, I know but where on your face?” I said.

“Here,” he said between sobs and pointed to his cheekbone.

I did my best sports trainer impersonation to try and get him to let me put some ice on it, but he would have none of that nonsense. Thirty minutes later, he was no worse for the wear and back out on his bicycle riding about the neighborhood, nary a spot of evidence to indicate the household trauma that just took save for an itty, bitty scratch just left of center of his nostril.

By the next day, a fair amount of his left cheek was puffy, like he’d been bitten by a bug or something. As day-three-after-the-accident began, the makings of a black eye were starting to appear. By nightfall, he had a full-fledged shiner.

The next day he came home from playschool talking about frozen peas. After much deliberation, I deducted this: His teacher Jane had mentioned something to him about having a “shiner” and that he should put a bag of frozen peas on it.

“What are peas?” he asked.

“Those little, round green things you hate to eat,” I said.

“Why would you put peas on your face?” He asked.

Clearly, I could see this was going down a road I was going to be unable to navigate; a road where questions arise like possums crossing the blacktop in the night. You know they are out there it’s just that you don’t ever expect to see them, much less hit one.

I was about to crash full-on into a serious dilemma of inexplicable dimensions.

By the time my wife came home from work that night, Spencer’s left eye socket was a marble of purple, blue, green and yellow hues. She asked him how school was and he told her about the frozen peas. She was as confused and I was at first mention of the frozen peas.

“Frozen peas?” she said. “What are you talking about?”

I stepped in and explained everything as best I could.

My wife beamed with excitement.

“Your first shiner!” she said.

“We’ve got to get a picture of that,” she said. “We’ve got to document that.”

“But why do they call it a shiner mom?” asked Spencer. “And why are you so excited about something that has caused me so much pain?”

Silence.

My wife turned to me with a look of astonishment on her face: “Uh, help me out here Greg,” she said.

“It’s like a rite of passage,” I began, “You will have painful things happen to you over the years that mark your path to becoming a young boy, and even, a man.”

This is precisely the wrong thing to do here, as most parenting textbooks will tell you; you should avoid at all costs giving existential lectures to children, much less children under the age of five. But I do it so often, and sometimes, I think I do it well.

I tried my best to explain the ratio of bruises and broken bones to a boy’s age. When I was younger I had amassed over 300 stitches by the time I was 15 I told him. I added that I also had my share of scrapes and bruised yet I somehow managed to avoid ever breaking any bones. I suspected I may have broken a rib and a toe over the years but they were never officially diagnosed by a doctor.

I then launched into a spiel about good and bad, trying my best to explain their differences, or in some cases, why using the term “bad” might actually mean good. Its times like this that I feel like I’m teaching an ESL class to my kids. “Some things, bad or good…” my wife wisely interrupted me before I ran off down the Philosophy 101 road.

“We’ll stop talking about your shiner now,” she said.

Another good example of teaching ESL to my kids happened just a few weeks before the “shiner” incident. It was the day I got blindsided by the “hurricane” fiasco.

As the days leading up to Hurricane Frances counted down, it was virtually impossible to avoid having the kids see/hear references to the big storm. Sometimes they spot the occasional gun-toting Iraqi or some cracked-out redneck while channel surfing past the evening news, but I usually do a good job of monitoring what goes in their eyes and ears.

Yes, my kids watch too much TV. But shit, what do you do when your son figures out how to operate the remote? In my case, I tell ‘em ESPN is channel 31.

Sports are good.

And there are all kinds of lessons to be learned through sportsmanship; through playing on teams. But, and there’s always a “but,” it can bite you in the ass.

Here’s my ass-biting anecdote: We are driving in the car listening to the local modern rock radio affiliate when an emergency broadcast bulletin is broadcast over the radio waves.

“Beep! Beep! Beep!” screamed the radio.

“A tornado warning has been issued for…” and blah, blah, blah the National Weather Service went on to warn residents of hurricane force winds and possible flooding. A voice spoke from the backseat.

“That was kind of scary dad,” said Spencer.

“Well, hurricanes can be kind of scary,” I said, “and dangerous.”

“If hurricanes are so bad, why is there a hockey team named the Hurricanes?” he asked.

“Damn!” I said to myself then dug deep and hard.

“Maybe the people who named the team just wanted to focus on the fact that hurricanes are strong and powerful,” I said in my best faux televangelist speak. “Maybe they just don’t want to think about the bad things a hurricane can do.”

I don’t think I dig a good job of saving my ass – my days are numbered.

*A version of this essay originally appeared in Raleigh's The Hatchet.

It's Tourney Time!

Yes folks, it is officially tournament time in my neck of the woods and that is some serious shit to some people (most people!). I live in ACC country where UNC, Duke and NC State all rub elbows and shoulders with each other on a regular basis.

Now I grew up in ACC territory and lived pretty much in the shadow of the University of Maryland but I was never a Terps fan as my old man went to Villanova so the Big East took priority over the ACC in my family's household.

People often toss around the cliche that basketball is like a religion around here, but it is pretty much true - much like Sunday mornings, everything stops when there is a basketball game on in Chapel Hill, Durham and Raleigh.

I first encountered this phenomenon when I moved to Carrboro - a small town east of Chapel Hill - from Los Angeles in 1995. Now I had been well-versed in the fact that the locals took their indie rock music scene very seriously and in the mid-'90s. The town would become a mecca for the indie scene; kids still come to worship it to this day.

But I was totally unprepared for the basketball fever.

It's an eerie feeling when you go to the grocery store in a college town and all the aisles are empty.

"What's going on today?" I asked the teller. "Carolina game," she said.

Of course I would should learn of the huge UNC/Duke rival, of the canonized State coach Jimmy V, and of how some people just purely can't get along with one another based on the color they wear.

When I worked in Raleigh at a weekly newspaper, one of my co-workers told me how in high school the teachers would just leave the ACC tournament on TVs in the classrooms all day and nobody was expected to do much of anything except for cheer on the Wolfpack. And of course it's perfectly understandable, if not downright acceptable, to play hooky from work on ACC Friday. If you are one of the unfortunate saps who has to work, everyone turns a blind eye to having the TV or radio on or obsessively looking at the sports ticker at the bottom of your computer screen.

In the 12 years that I have lived here, I have only had the opportunity to see two UNC games and one Duke game, the latter coming just last week.

I was working a Duke/Maryland pre-game party for a local catering company. We were set up in the Hall Of Fame room which is connected to Cameron Indoor Stadium where Duke plays. Cameron is legendary for many things, from its tiny size and intimate setting to giving birth to the Cameron Crazies - those over-enthusiastic fans who paint their faces, wave hands and bounce up and down for the entire duration of the game.

My co-worker had gone to Duke and was asking me if I'd ever seen a game at Cameron.

"Nope," I said. "But I've always wanted to."
"We could totally sneak in," he said. "I mean we're practically already in the building."

So he spent the better part of the two hour pre-game party schmoozing security guards with plates of food and endless sodas. But it was all for naught because when our shift wound down and the game got underway, the hostess of the party said she had two extra tickets and asked if anyone on our staff wanted to go.

An that's when it came down to me and my co-worker.

We didn't finished our breakdown until close to half time so he suggested we go over to the campus bar and pound some beers. "Sounds like a great idea," I said. At the bar he told everyone that we were going to the game and that it was going to be my first time at Cameron which was kind of like having some one who has gone to Spring Break three times nod at the fellow who was about to lose his Spring Break virginity - that look that said, "you have no idea what you are in for."

"I'm excited," I said. I never let on that I wasn't a Duke fan but then again I went in the spirit of competition not as a fan of either team. "This is just so random," I said to him.

"I was just watching this episode of Oprah about this whole positive thinking craze surrounding this movie The Secret and the book the Laws Of Attraction," I said trailing off as I looked at the big screen and half time stats.

"Dude," he said. "Never begin a conversation that starts with 'I was watching Oprah,'" he explained as he patted my shoulder.

With that, we finished our beers and watched the game.

And I have to say it was exciting; the place was filled with electricity and at only 7,000 seats it was downright intimate even though we had nosebleed seats.

Now if I could just see a Carolina/Duke game at Cameron, with Carolina winning, that would be utmost fulfilling...

Go Heels!!

Plight Of The At Home Dad

So I pulled into my son Cole's playschool parking lot this morning and it looked surprisingly empty.

He only goes Monday, Thursday and Friday from 9am to 1pm (so I tend to really look forward to those mornings).

I spent the better part of the morning listening to him cry and whine about how he didn't want to got to school... only to get to school and find out that it was a TEACHER WORK DAY!

Now, I came home and saw that it was clearly marked on the calendar. But Monday my wife works late so I took the boys to hang out with another couple with kids and had dinner. Tuesday night I had band practice and last night I had to work a catering gig (pre-game cocktail party at UNC's business school prior to tip off for the UNC/NC State game) only to find that my free morning had disappeared.

And I have to say I think that if I was a mom, I would have had a least two to three calls from other moms in my son's class setting up play dates for the teacher work day, especially since we're experiencing record temps here in the Carolinas this week (yesterday it was in the 70s!).

Which brings me to yesterday: Weather was warm and I suggested to my son that we go to the park. Bored of the park we usually go to, he suggested the "yellow" park which is the park in this faux village community called Meadowmont that he knows about because we went to the pool there last summer.

We get to the park and thee is one mom with an infant strapped to her chest and another child with long curly read hair (held in barrettes) and they are having a picnic of sorts ON THE PLAY STRUCTURE. Another group shows up comprised of two moms each with infants slash toddlers who appear to be sisters and with their mother (i.e. grandma).

Then me and my son.

The moms immediately interact with each other with "grandma" starting off the AHD smack down when she asked the redheaded woman if my son belongs to her. My son has brown hair and blue eyes and, ahem, looks just like me! The redheaded mom (now officially referred to as "hippy mom") said "no" while one of the sister moms sort of gave me that "sorry my mom's a kook" look.

Grandma and her daughters decided to have a picnic themselves ON THE PLAY STRUCTURE and - possibly realizing how rude this was - asked the hippy mom if her kids would care to join them.

It was like I didn't even exist.

Shortly thereafter, I noticed hippy mom standing over by the tree line watching her daughter go pee. I was duly impressed that she had taught her daughter to stand up and pee until I realized that her daughter was a boy. He ended up peeing on his pants by virtue of letting them land on the ground where he had just peed. Did hippy mom changed his pants? No. He spent the rest of the time there swinging on swings and sliding on slides with pee-stained sweat pants.

Now I can sorta roll with that - you got caught unprepared but it was a nice day and figured it would dry out quickly. But what I couldn't understand was putting barrettes in your boy's hair. Fine, let your kid grow his hair long, but don't make the boy look like a girl. Grandma added insult when she made some comment about being "an older sister" to which hippy mom replied "brother."

Hippy mom left a short while later (after her son ran around screaming in my son's face acting like some monster; I wanted my son to break out a wrestling move on him as he clearly had the size advantage but he proved even wiser by just saying, "Stop, I don't like that,").

Then, as I'm helping my son cross the monkey bars I heard grandma shriek, "Where's my purse?" and I saw that her purse was by the monkey bars. One of her daughter's pointed to the monkey bars and said "over there."

Grandma got up, walked over, picked up her purse and put it down by her side.

So in one trip to the park I got vibed as a pedophile, excommunicated from parental conversation and insinuated I was a thief.

And now today I got blindsided by the teacher work day and wonder if there's a play date with several moms' of my son's classmates going on at some park somewhere.

Pets: To Have Or Have Not*

It was my son’s third birthday and he got a little fish tank.

Both the wife and I grew up with fish tanks so delving into the issue of having a pet with a fish seemed like a reasonable idea.

Of course, we do have a proper pet - a cat named Ginger who has been with us since the early ‘90s. We got Ginger while we were living in Los Angeles. You see we had these friends who were real animal lovers. They lived in Tujunga, a small neighborhood above Glendale in the San Fernando Valley. And these people rescued just about any animal that they could; they had birds and cats and dogs and snakes and fish and hamsters and shit if you told me they had a flea circus I wouldn’t have been surprised.

So Ginger was rescued by them as a kitty from the netherworld streets of Los Angeles. She became ours by proxy; she was the only cat that ever warmed up to me and would always come to me whenever we were at their place. It was a no-brainer that when our group house situation dissolved in Glendale, that we would have this grey, short-legged Burmese come live with us in our Los Feliz apartment.

As the story goes, she was found by a dumpster near a Ford dealership in Tujunga. She turned out not to be neutered like we thought so we got her fixed. But that was after we discovered an infected sore underneath her fuzzy hair and had to have surgery for the nasty abscessed thing. She would also survive the great big rumble that was the Northridge earthquake and even traveled with us in our car during our exodus from Tinseltown and has been warming our hearts in North Carolina ever since.

But when the kids came along, she made herself scarce, occasionally showing her face after they went to bed. Friends and relatives often debated that she even existed becomes nobody but us ever saw the cat. They’d see the litter box in the bathroom or the food bowl in the kitchen and be like, “You guys have a cat?”

So to say that we didn’t have a pet would be a disservice to her.

Anyway, Spencer got one of those 2-gallon hexagon fish tank set-ups and we were off and running in pet fish land. I began to dream of a school of African cichlids brooding about in a wall-length aquarium but was quickly steered back to reality by my own memories of sticking my G.I. Joes’ in the family fish tank “scuba diving” only to contaminate the water and kill all the fish.

There was no way I was going to shell out top dollar for a bunch of fish that would be dead in a month’s time.

We tested the waters with some goldfish, but I don’t remember them lasting very long. We turned to a beta – the Japanese fighting fish. The fish had simple needs and could handle life as a loner. Spencer named him Blue, because, well the fucking fish was blue!

Blue had a good run of several months, maybe even half a year before he died during a 4-day trip to Maryland because we forgot to get someone to come over and feed it while we were gone. God bless cats, man. You just leave out some food, a little water and some fresh litter and they are good to go.

When Blue bit the dust, we had our first major trauma of having a pet: death. We had opted to flush the first batch of dead goldfish down the toilet to the Great Big Aquarium In The Sky, but with Blue Spencer wanted nothing to do with that – he wanted to give Blue a proper burial. He dug a hole, made a marker out of popsicles sticks and we had our moment of silence for Blue.

For a good year after that, every time Spencer drew a family picture he would include Blue. Of course the thing he scribbled on the paper looked nothing like a fish and I’d have to ask him what it was. “That’s Blue, dad,” he’d say emphatically.

I decided maybe we should get another beta for the kid. So we went to the local pet store and got a marble-colored beta for him. Spencer named him Lots Of Colors. He must have some Native American blood in him I thought after finding out the name of the new fish. I mean my wife was adopted so anything could be possible when we get to talking about bloodlines.

Lots Of Colors didn’t last very long. Spencer was older now and I didn’t supervise the feedings quite like I used to with Blue. I’d catch him feeding the fish three to four times of day, not the little pinch of flakes as instructed. We were talking gobs of food. The tank started getting dirty and green with algae. The fish would hide amongst the meager plastic plant and singular sea shell. This would cause Spencer to tap on the glass to see “if he was okay.”

Lots of Colors joined the other side a few days later. He lived long enough for us not to be able to get our refund back but short enough that we decided to bail on the idea of having a pet fish.

By this time, Spencer’s younger brother Cole had come along and Ginger sightings were more prevalent. I guess she started to figure out that if she wanted to get some attention she was going to have to come and get it.

In the mornings, both the boys would lay down with me in the morning on the floor of the family room and chill out to some Sesame Street. Ginger would waltz out from her nesting area under our bed and lay herself down next to us, allowing the boys to pet her while she groomed herself.

One day the phone rang.

I answered it.

It was some telemarketer and I quickly hung up and placed the phone back in the kitchen.

I came back into the family room and Cole was nowhere to be found. I called out his name. He didn’t answer. I went from room to room looking for him but didn’t see him anywhere.

I did this twice.

A slight panic set in.

I heard a noise in my bedroom. And again I walked in to find no child there.

“Cole, where are you?”

And then I heard a noise under my bed.

I figured it was the cat since she pretty much lives under there almost all day long every day. But then I saw a tuft of hair by the bed frame and under it a smiling face. And I realized that Cole had “followed” Ginger under the bed. I don’t know how he managed to get under there – it appeared I was going to have to lift the frame of our king size bed to help him get out because they was no way he was going to navigate his big head through it. Yet he did.

So he apparently chased the cat down the hallway and followed her under the bed to her secret safety zone.

I haven’t seen the cat in weeks and I’m thinking it’d be best to wait until the boys are a little older before talk of getting another family pet comes up again.

* a version of this essay originally appeared in Raleigh's The Hatchet.

When The Shit Hits The Fan... Er, Floor

So the shit storm came with a vengeance.

As I said in the previous post, my wife began to feel ill on Monday, calling off work because she felt "off" and nauseous. I wasn't feeling too bad myself and quite frankly was looking to tap into the uber gene most parents possess (usually moms) where I would be able to weather the storm and take care of everybody. I mean after almost seven years of daily exposure to the petri dish that is preschool/toddlers/kindergarten, surely I'd built up a tolerance to such nastiness.

I always marveled how my mother could manage to handle our sick family while being sick herself but then again my mother's motto always was that "she was too busy to be sick."

Anyway, so my wife came to me in the evening and said "that's twice," meaning that she had thrown up twice today. I left to pick up my oldest from elementary school. He got home and ate a Nutrigrain snack bar (which is par for the course). I still had the Hershey squirts and I didn't feel the slightest bit nauseous. But my tummy was rumbling. I hadn't had much of an appetite since the day before and barely touched any of the food we had made for the Super Bowl.

I dug through the cupboards and found a can of chicken noodle soup and ate that with liberal amounts of Ritz Crackers sprinkled on top. When I finished, my 6-year-old came up to me and said that his stomach hurt and I quizzed him on the status of his tummy ache.

Shortly thereafter the fun began.

My belly had been percolating vigorously since the soup. I began to feel flush and walked back to my bathroom where - with little warning - the contents of my stomach erupted into the toilet. I'm talking power vomiting with all the velocity of a fire hose. The kind of puke session where you are lucky to catch your breath between upchucks.

Before I could leave the bathroom, I could hear my oldest throwing up in the kids' bathroom.

The rest of the night was spent with buckets and towels by beds and keeping your fingers crossed that the bathroom wouldn't be occupied when you needed it. And even if it wasn't occupied, there was always the chance that the water hadn't refilled in time for flushing - which is always a pleasant thing to be greeted with in this frame of mind.

At one point during the night, there was a juggling of sleeping arrangements which found both boys in bed with my wife and me in my youngest son's bed.

I felt the rumble and sat up, grabbed the bucket, wretched into it and began my way to my bathroom. The second heave unleashed a torrent of shit down my leg and I made a mental note to put on socks as a buffer after this round.

When I got to the bathroom I found my oldest asleep on the floor, wrapped in towels with his head next to the toilet. I stepped over him, sat, shat and puked. At some point I had to pull my pants off and clean my legs yet still managed to hover my ass above the toilet when my stomach erupted.

I can honestly say it was one of the most heinous smells.

I cracked the window but a record cold spell was in effect and 8 degree wind blew across my clammy body. I closed the window.

Then my son woke and threw up on the floor in front of himself, waking my wife who walked in, squeezed her nose and said, "did you shit yourself?"

My house was beginning to look like the aftermath of one of my rugby parties in college, with bodies strewn about the bathroom and vomit in the air.

I took a hot shower and tried to conjure up some yogi mojo; some sort of mind-over-matter mantra to get me through the night.

And that's pretty much how the next several hours went: my son puking, my wife puking, and me shitting and puking myself.

So much for the uber parenting gene.

At least for me.

I've since concluded it may be the sole possession of the female species as my wife managed to tend to me and our son while still dealing with it all herself.

After we all were tapped out, my son passed out but my wife and I were overcome with muscle cramps and joint pain. I laid as still as possible in bed doing my best birth-breathing impressions, still searching for a mantra.

We couldn't sleep.

This actually proved beneficial as we took this sleepless time to tackle a few loads of laundry and some general disinfecting.

Then we tried to sleep again.

But I just couldn't. TiVo sure would have come in handy and I was forced to prop myself up in a chair with pillows and a blanket (and yes, a bucket) and stave off the urge to puke and shit.

Sunrise came and my wife called in sick for her and our son and the family spent the better part of the next day nodding off like junkies.

Today is Wednesday.

My wife has returned to work but the boys are both home with me.

I still don't feel too good.

I would like to find the cold side of a pillow, a dark room, and several hours of sleep...