Frenzied Daddy

Sometimes when I walk from the car to the office, I go past a huge child care place, down on first and oak (and second and oak, it takes up most of the first floor of this particular building). I like to watch the kids playing in there. One day, as I marched past, head down so I didn’t get rain in my eyes, I noticed something strange. There was one boy and two girls away from the rest of the kids, kind of tucked around behind a wooden play set. The girls were facing the boy and he was facing them. Behind them was the window past which I was walking purposefully, behind him was the wooden play thing. Kitchen? Yeah maybe a play kitchen. The teachers were on the other side of the room doing something with the rest of the kids and hadn’t noticed anything amiss.

The look on the boy’s face sent me back; way back to when I was cross country skiing* in Anchorage…

I went past a friend’s house. Her name was Katrina. We were freshmen in High School together. She was cute and I liked to pass notes back and forth with her in Social Studies. And, uh, math. Maybe some in english too. Bah, I liked flirting with her, and she never said “get lost.” The main problem was that I had a girlfriend at the time, Stacy. Stacy was pretty much my first “real girlfriend.” The first girl I kissed, and meant it. She went to a different school though, and Katrina was closer to home. As I passed her house, Katrina came out and waved me to a stop. She invited me into her garage where we could “talk” without her parents butting into our conversation. I took off the skiis, put them and the poles up against the wall (leaving would be more of a production now than just running off). And I went into the dark garage with Katrina, not knowing what to expect, but thinking it couldn’t be too bad.

This is where I learned that Katrina and Stacy knew each other. A sinking feeling, then some fifteen or thirty minutes of “discussion,” after which I was supposed to “choose.” And then, of course, both of them telling me to go away and not talk to either of them any more. I knew it was a foregone conclusion when I found Stacy at Katrinas. The Jig, as they say, was up.

The look on this poor kid’s face looked just like I imagine mine did when I was cornered like a dirty, lying, dog-faced, two-timing rat.

So, some advice for you, kid. Hang tough. Apologize to the women and hold your head high. Don’t make unnecessary choices. It’s not really “either x or y” — it’s more likely “neither” than “both.”

* Don’t mistake me. We didn’t get to ski a lot in Anchorage. I just happened to be tooling around on my skis.

I hate stuff in the road.

I don’t know where it comes from, probably my socialist side, but I hate that when there’s a big thing in the road (bag of trash, et cetera), people just swerve into the other lanes and cause traffic problems rather than just move it. I don’t think you should put it in your car, or whatever, just get it out of the way. And I remember seeing things along the freeways as a kid, wondering where they came from and what their stories were.

Maybe it was the crowbar that came flying at me and stuck in my car so long ago. I don’t really know.

Last year it was a big five gallon tank that looked like it fell off a jeep or something. I was surprised how heavy it was as I dragged it off the highway. Last week, I pulled a big bag of trash out of one lane on Columbia. And today, there was a road sign (“steel plate in roadway”) that had fallen over and the sticklike supports were in the road just ready to be jammed into someone’s wheels or under their suspension. So when I pulled around at 42nd at the construction, I went up the hill a little way (it doubles back) and pulled over.

I thought I successfully navigated down the hill and to the sign but, alas, a sneaky (and thick!) blackberry runner caught me around the ankle and I fell down the rest of the hill, landing on my knees and hands in the muddy gravel. Not an image I like to present. But I dragged it out of the road and stuck it in the construction area anyway. Bah. Maybe I saved someone’s wheel. Maybe not. Just wonder where this hatred comes from.

This is the most lights I’ve put on the house in … Well, ever. There’s a strand along the roof, one in the window, one on the Japanese Maple and even a little net of lights on the Rhody in front. Not to mention the tree.

Oh, Krampus, the tree. We went up to our new favorite lot; ($20 per tree, u-cut) SkyLine Tree Farm. It was surprisingly muddy; I should have worn shoes with better traction. I slipped and … “got mud on my butt” is an understatement. It was still wet an hour later and when I got into the car I sat on my coat. I fell on my hand and after the mud treatment my palm is nice and soft.

finally we settled on a tree. It was cute, and about 8 feet tall. Nice and bushy Noble Fir, with places for bigger ornaments. A great little tree. I crawled under the branches and got to work with the tree saw. And worked, and worked. The wii fit wasn’t much help. I was laying down to get to the trunk, so my angle of attack wasn’t so great and my shoulder still hurts (two days later) from having to hold the saw up. The tree was very wide down at the base and after forty five minutes of sawing I realized the cut was all twisted and wouldn’t match up anyway.

Ms B gave me permission to start again; so I went up a foot and cut it again. It only took about 15 minutes after starting that cut. Tied our kill to the roof of the Ford and drove home.

When we got it home, we realized a flaw in our plan. The base wasn’t long enough to touch the bottom of the stand while the branches sat on the ring at the top of the stand. After trying to “just screw it in” (the cats knocked it over) and then trying some blocks under the tree to hold it up (Ima gonna put this tree up on blocks in my yard and fix it right up) (the cats knocked it over again), Ms B decided that a straight, shorter tree with fewer branches was better than a taller tree tilted at at 45 degree angle. Honest, I thought the angle tree was nice. But I pulled it out and lopped off the ring of bottom branches with the circular saw.

Now, it’s about 6 feet tall and actually kind of cute, in a “why did we buy a 4 foot tree” sort of way.

The kittens adore it, but most importantly, the girls love it. With the lights on the house, it’s been pretty fantastic. Now I’m ready for hibernation- I’m tired and sore and my knuckles are all scratched up.

Am I strange? Am I the only one who reads “Work – kick your butt into line- self -help” books and thinks how they apply to family life?

This guy, Larry Winget, has this to say…. “It’s your fault. It’s not your coworkers that make your work suck. If sales suck, it’s because you suck (as a salesman).” This really led itself to reflection on my life as a father- “The house sucks because you suck as a house cleaner / house maintainer.” or “The kids’ work ethic sucks because you suck at teaching kids work ethic.” And then the corollary to this, once you’ve acknowledged that it’s your fault, is “You like it like this.” Because it’s your fault and it’s not changing. This also applies, once the kid is old enough to examine their lives, to the kid. Miss B must like getting yelled at, being ordered to do her practicing, and being embarrassed at school when I walk her to school to turn in her homework.

Actually, as just an training/observation thing, it works for the five year old too. I can observe her and consider if she’s doing a particular thing because she likes the result.

Interesting book so far. I’m only on chapter 5, I’m skimming through it pretty quickly (he repeats himself a lot).

Miss K is at a stressful age for a father who sometimes just wants to be left alone. She’s determined to get her fair share of time, attention, candy and presents. Sometimes she drives me to the city limits of insanity by climbing into my lap, pushing on me with her feet on my legs and her head under my chin so the chair reclines (either the office chair or the recliner), or asking me to color with her, read her a book, get her some food, find her a kitten, whatever.

Yes, even when I’ve just arrived home from work! Yes, when I’m trying to get some “down time” — yes! When I tell her to go bug someone else! I love her, and I love doing all that stuff with her, but seriously, sometimes daddy’s lap is daddy’s lap!

Anyway, she gets me to the suburbs of insanity, and then she looks up at me and tells me she’s got a secret to tell me. She wants to whisper it in my ear. Gritting my teeth, I bend forward to hear it and what does she say?

“Daddy, I love you. You’re very special to me. Don’t tell anyone else- this is a secret.”

Jeez. Make me cry why dontcha.

As the nights grow colder and I start to shiver (not likely), I’m considering pajamas. Usually I call it good, with a pair of sweatpant shorts and some socks, and maybe a t-shirt. But I have a friend over at Big Feet PJs who sells Adult footed pajamas — they’d be perfect for lounging around the house, especially if I weren’t going to work (and just hanging out in the basement). For me, however, they might be a little too warm. On the other hand, you can order them with the butt-flap, so they’ve got that going for them.

I noticed on Reddit this link: now that Canada has Google Street View, we can show you the horrible truth. Don’t let stoners work in your public signs department. I shared it with my 4 friends on Facebook, and then shared it with Miss B. Her response? “Haha. Someone probably slapped a decal on it.”

She’s so smart!

Here’s a great thread where someone had a typepad blog where they celebrated their baseball team, switched teams, and the good folks at typepad gave her blog to someone else.

Note that typepad later fixed the situation.

Any time you have your stuff on someone else’s service, you run this risk. This site is on Site 5′s servers, and it’s theoretically possible that someone could pretend they’re me and take control. I can only hope that site5′s support would quickly resolve the issue.

Miss K was superthrilled today to go to Kindergarten. She’s going to our neighborhood school, because she didn’t get into Alameda (there weren’t enough slots open for her). She doesn’t know the difference, but Miss B was extolling the virtues of not following in your sister’s footsteps to school. “And you won’t get compared with me by all your teachers…” … uh, humble much? ( Actually, I’m thrilled that her self-confidence is so high ).

We dropped her off with her backpack full of supplies. She might get a backpack from SchoolhouseSupplies.Org, but she may not. Again, it’s only her first day of kindergarten; she doesn’t have high expectations to compare her experience with. An interesting thing I noticed is that the neighborhood school didn’t require as many supplies as Alameda did- fewer overall supplies, and everything into the community buckets. I was originally thinking it was because that school is getting a lot more federal funds ( because of the no child left behind act) but it might be a difference expectation on the local kids.