Put On Your Big Boy Pants

Get a Free Spirit, My Man

My wife Carrie talked to our neighbors yesterday evening as they were getting in their car on their way to dinner. They were on a date night as their two daughters were vacationing with their grandparents. 

Carrie asked them what restaurant they were going to. They didn't know, they said. They would just get in the car, drive around, and figure it out. 

Carrie said to me, "I can't imagine you doing that." 

Hell no. I'm the guy who decides on a restaurant two months in advance, studies the online menu and after torturing himself over all the possible options and changing his mind several times, writes down his final choice a week before the meal. 

Man, if only I had a free spirit then I could drive around and come up with a restaurant on a whim. I'm not hard-wired for it, but I admire it in a way. 

Sometimes We’re Pissed at Life But No Person in Particular

Yesterday, I awoke, as I usually do, at 5:30 A.M., made coffee, got out the twins’ milk cups, cut their fruit, made them toast, fed them, changed their diapers, put on their clothes, worked out for 45 minutes, walked the girls in their wagon for over an hour, shopped with the twins at Fresh and Easy, returned to wash my wife’s Honda Fit, used a toothbrush to get grime out of the Fit’s alloy wheels.

I was now at last ready to eat my lunch, a chicken salad, when Carrie said that Natalie had thrown one of her shoes off during my wagon walk and did I know where the shoe was? I had walked the girls to the park and Fresh and Easy and back home. The trajectory was about three miles all over town. I’d have to retrace my footsteps to look for a shoe that Natalie might throw again. Talk about the Myth of Sisyphus.

As I prepared to walk the streets of Torrance for a shoe search (sunglasses on, baseball cap, sunscreen applied), Carrie noticed I looked pissed and she was concerned. Was I mad at her? Was I mad at Natalie? Hell no, I explained. I’m pissed off at the situation. Let me be pissed off at the situation without suspecting me of being pissed off at individuals and my Pissed Off Quotient will be kept in check.  I think she understood. 

Oh, and the search proved fruitless. 

 

Jim Rome Isn't Afraid to Ask the Right Question

Is David Stern deluding himself into believing the public doesn't ask questions about corruption in the NBA? Jim Rome is simply asking what's in the hearts and minds of sports fans, so Stern looks defensive and thuggish asking Rome if he beats his wife. 

(Thanks, Angelo, for the link)

Alas, This Is a Microcosm of My Existence

People who know me have a clear grasp of my radio obsession, my tendency to do side-by-side radio comparisons, my need to use different radios for different radio stations, etc. Last night my dream evidenced this obsession. Dinner guests capriciously and wantonly fiddled with the telescopic FM antenna on my CCR-2 and I scolded them for compromising the reception that I so fastidiously pinpointed. The more I scolded, the more they scoffed, and the greater their mockery the more heated my vituperation. 

Alas, the episode was a microcosm of my existence. 

Men Establish Their Self-Regard When They Say Things Like "My Game Is On"

Referring to the 6PM NBA Finals, I said to Carrie about two hours before, "My game is on at six," upon which she said, "Your game? You're playing?"

Men say stuff like that. Phrases like "my game" make us sound like we're about to embark upon something important, so important that our valuable time will be taken by this significant event. In other words, we're laying stake to laziness in a front of a TV while suggesting a certain athletic self-aggrandizement.

I stand guilty as charged. 

When You Spend All Your Time Whining, You Lose Perspective

On this vacation to Albany, California (staying with my brother who has 8-year-old twin daughters), I spent too much time whining and complaining about the "military operation" of keeping an eye on our 27-month-old twin daughters, Julia and Natalie.

"We're always chasing them so we're not really visiting with the very people we intended the visit," was my surly, repititious groan. 

But my wife said something that stopped me in my tracks: "Of course it's hard, but we're not doing this for us. We're doing this for our children, so they'll have memories of visiting their cousins. We're not going to keep them cooped up in our house just because it's difficult to take them places."

Well said. Another "put on your big boy pants" moment. 

Neutralizing the Loss of Wife Points

When my brother watches sports on TV, he loses Wife Points, but he neutralizes that loss by folding clothes while he watches. No points lost or gained but he enjoys TV privileges. 

These negotiations, either implicit or otherwise, are ongoing and define the power play that is part of all marriages. 

The First Rule About Wife Points Is That You Must Never Mention Them

While staying at my brother’s in Albany, California, I helped him unload the dishwasher, part of a multi-task involving barbecue, salad and roasted vegetable preparations. Under his breath, my brother Brian said, referring to the unloading, “My wife will give me points for this.”

I warned him, “In a marriage, you never get as many points for good deeds as you think you’ll get and you’ll always lose more points for mistakes than you think you deserve to lose, so that you’re always suffering from a point deficit.”

My brother credited me for defining the essence of marriage and man’s insatiable appetite for a protracted ego massage.

I wasn’t finished with my lecture. “Also let it be understood,” I continued, “that when you want Wife Points, you lose Wife Points and when you do things with indifference to Wife Points, you gain them. Therefore, the first rule about Wife Points is that you never talk about them.” 

 

Fewer Things in Life Feel Better Than Realizing You’re Not a Freak

A couple of weeks ago, my wife Carrie and I were in the living room, trying to calm down twenty-seven-month Julia who wakes up like a demon-possessed Linda Blair for close to an hour after her afternoon naps. During the fracas, Carrie was on the phone with her sister, Jenny, a woman who loves mothering and parenting, a woman who believes in these things at the core of her being. Carrie managed a conversation over Julia’s howls and gurgles and when she got off the phone she said to me that her sister asked, “What’s that noise?”

“Oh, that’s Julia. She just woke up from her nap. She does that every day.”

“Oh my God! If one of my children did that, I’d want someone to blow my brains out!”

“That’s what my husband has felt like for the last twenty-seven months,” my wife said.

Jenny, you are my hero. You, a believer in motherhood and parenting (I’m still agnostic on the matter but hope to grow in the faith of parenting), sharing my agony and my hyperbolic reactions to adversity.

So I’m not a freak after all. Or at least not in this instance. 

 

 

Herculodge Hiatus Till Tuesday for College Summer Break

 

With my students graduating from my 1C classes, I'm taking my family on a strenuous operation for the next few days. I dare not call it a vacation. My wife and I will be in the car for six hours with twin two-year-olds, a very formidable situation. 

I'm already tired and the "vacation" hasn't even started. 

Wish us luck.