Frenzied Daddy

Coming down to the last week before Christmas. It’s a secular holiday in this household – more fun because of the music (I happen to really love Christmas Carols) and more fun to have an excuse to give presents to people. Of course it’d be more fun if they weren’t expecting these gifts, but a guy’s gotta go with his strengths.

Christmas puzzles me. For eleven months of the year we tell our kids not to be greedy and that we don’t have the money to spend on this trinket or that video game. But then, the last month of the year, we tell them to tell the world what great things they want. I’m sure it confuses them too. I wonder, though, what would happen if we established about a seventy dollar budget per month to buy trinkets and games throughout the year, and then downplayed the presents in December.

It also puzzles me because of the threats- “I’ll take back all your presents!” or “I’ll tell Santa you’ve been a bad kid!” (Never mind that he’s watching, and he knows if you’ve been bad or good.) Obviously the kids believe this, more or less, but why? I mean, we wouldn’t really take their presents back, would we?

I find myself, though excited, somewhat ambivalent about Christmas. I’m human, I’m allowed to have complex emotions. We have a gorgeous tree from Skyline Tree farm, some lovely presents under it. Some more presents in the mail.

I’m glad the kids will be having a great Christmas.

And I hope you have one too.

I’m sitting beneath a tree at Portsmouth Park watching Ms K at soccer practice. It’s nice to watch her, reflect on how much she’s improved over the last month, an examine my own life to see if I can see any improvement over the same span of time.

I always wonder if I stagnating at work; I’ve been writing php websites for ten years and sometimes it seems like I’m doing the same things over and over. My work life is full enough that i haven’t had time to learn much about HTML5 or some neat CSS3 tricks. But on the other hand, I’ve been stretching and learning more about project management. Basically the interface between the client and the programmer. It’s a similar role to my normal one of main programmer but there’s less context switching, both for me and for the programmer on the project. This is good because they can stay in their flow state and keep chugging through the work.

It’s a challenging role. And when I come home, I’m learning that the family doesn’t really want me to just run into the kitchen and start their dinner. Sure, they’re hungry, but they want to see me too. That’s nice because if I go spend some time with them first, I feel less like I bring home the bacon, fry it up in a pan and then go hide in the basement and try to make more bacon. I feel less frustrated, less heavy, when i can get those few moments of chatter.

Speaking of “less heavy” both Ms B and I are giving Weight Watchers another chance. It has been about three three and we’ve each lost almost ten pounds. Most of it for me has been the portion size, and maybe less snackery. I was already eating at the food carts less… Delicious food but a little more than i want to spend every day (and a little more food than i should eat, as I realize now). My favorite cart is probably Built to Grill – they serve some fantastic authentic italian pasta and sandwiches. I think I can hit there about once every other week, though, and eat things that don’t have cream sauce.

Miss K’s doing a drill where they bounce the soccer ball on their knees. Its a nice evening, as the sun goes down, its not raining, and the park is filled with happy yelling kids. Kind of relaxing, though its not very soccerish. There should be more rain and mud. I guess we’ve got about three more weeks to get that.

It’s good to reflect now and then. I wasn’t to sure until i sat and started thinking about this that I’ve been doing enough lately.

Hopefully this change in the weather sticks around a while. The rain, the constant drizzling punctuated by the hammer strikes of thunderstorm drops — has been getting to me. I need a variety. I thrive on a variety. That’s why I’m here in the Pacific North West.

I don’t remember the last game K actually got to play; it must have been two weeks ago. It’s been wet and windy for way too long. And it’s reflecting in my work; I’m snarly and lethargic. Well, more so than usual. And hyper-critical of myself. Ms B took me to task last night for taking my faults too seriously and ignoring my not-faults. She’s good to me like that. She recommended I go back to taking my medicines but since I’d have to get them refilled first and then it’d take a couple of weeks for them to kick in, I suspect my plot of starting to go for walks/runs again would do better.

Anyway; it’s been a crummy couple of weeks. More wet than even I like, and I’m hoping for some grey skies.

I really liked my doctor over in northeast Portland when I started seeing him. He was youthful, chipper, he took some great photos up in Forest Park. And he was more or less in my mothers’ neighborhood, so a trip to the doctor could be easily combined with a short visit with them.

Then I managed to smash a fingernail. I don’t remember how it happened, but I hadn’t done it before, and I kind of wanted him to look at it and say “oh that’s normal.” I also needed to check on my allergy meds. So I made an appointment. When the day came to visit, I showed it to the receptionist, who was about five years older than me. Her response was kind of a condescending “Oh, honey, I think you’ll live.” I mean it was a smashed fingernail, it was growing out, right? I knew it was going to grow out but I just wanted be seen. It was my money, right? I saw him and he looked at it and said what I imagined he’d say, and our lives went on.

Then came the day a few weeks after I got my shoulder pulped at SCA fighter practice. My pauldron flipped up and the other fighter plowed full force into my shoulder. It got really purple and black; one of those big, deep tissue bruises that I’m sure you’ve had too (You can see a brief shot of this kind of bruise in “Whip It” directed by Drew Barrymore). I’d had some, usually on my butt cheeks, but as this one healed it felt kind of gritty inside the muscle. And while I knew it was going to take a while to heal, I wasn’t sure on the pattern; was this “grit” inside the muscle normal? Were they clots? Clumps of muscle? I didn’t know, so I made an appointment.

Yeah, he was impressed at the bruise but totally shocked that I let someone do that to me. His response was along the lines of “yeah it’ll take 4 to 6 weeks to heal a deep tissue bruise like that, now go away because you’re scaring me.” Not particularly helpful, and he didn’t seem to think the “grit” was important. For the record, it hurt like hell for six months and I could still feel it a year later. I still thought of him as my doctor, but for the record we were no longer within the “honeymoon.” No matter how cute his assistants were.

The real severance came when Ms B and I were pregnant with Miss B. Yeah, 13 years ago. Ms B and I went to the doctor and had an interview- the place is a Family Medicine place, and we were looking for a pediatrician. And while I don’t remember exactly he said, he was pretty condescending to my wife and to my unborn daughter. At that point, I reflected on all the other times we had talked and suddenly it was in a different light. We never went back, and found a great pediatrician at OHSU (and followed her to Evergreen Pediatric in Vancouver), then I started going to SWMC for my doctor appointments.

So there’s a reason to be polite to your customers Video not required.

I strolled into the house today after a long day of slaving over a hot keyboard. I was all fired up to make stirfry wraps for dinner and then get back to work in my basement, slaving over the hot keyboard again. Until I met up with the girls.

Ms K immediately asked me what time it was. (“uhhh six.”). She panicked and started to babble. Ms B lifted her head and said “Miss K has an art show tonight at her school.” Whoa? One of the nice things about Miss K going to the neighborhood school is that it’s ..well, in the neighborhood. So I could turn to her and say “Well, what time is the show?” And I hear that it started at 5:30. I think to myself “It’d be nice to say yes more often. And how long could it take, anyway?” So I say “Let’s go!” Miss K runs to get her shoes and her jacket on. She was all fired up. Ms B says “It’s something about ‘paint mumble bumble’.. there’s a flier on the table. I don’t mumble bumble she has any mumble in the mumble.” By the time Ms B got these three sentence fragments out of her mouth, Miss K had her shoes on and was waiting expectantly by the door. Miss K said something about “we can make art.”

With no knowledge at all of what I was getting in to. But I figured I had a check if they wanted money — we could figure it out. K and I parked back around by the cafeteria where we usually go to drop her off in the mornings and she pulled me feverishly to the front entrance. We walked in, where Miss K was greeted by name. Everybody knew her and was delighted to see her. They give us pizza tickets and we go have pizza, soda, cookies and salad. Then they give her a bag of art supplies: pencils, crayons, water colors and a Strathmore notepad. Then they give her some raffle tickets with her name on them and we take them over to the gym where there’s art on the walls. Real art in frames, or not – photographs, paintings, sketches, blown glass, pottery. There was some really amazing stuff. Her instructions were to put her raffle tickets in envelopes for different pieces, or all for one, or whatever she wanted.

There was enough art for all the kids there; a raucous crazy bunch of kids.

She put all five tickets on a nice mosaic peace sign hanging, and we went back to the cafeteria where we made some more art (we did some landscapes with paper scraps).

Later, they gave Miss K the mosaic to take home – the first “official art” she picked out herself and brought home.

It was a neat evening. I’m glad I said yes. Of course, now, I feel like I should be working and not telling you about all of this; but that’s ok.

How do I tell the universe that it’s ok, I’ve learned that lesson and could we please make this less painful? Specifically finances. I keep shouting on the inside but nobody’s listening!

The kitchen cabinets in front of the sink are messed up. Basically they’re cut from one hunk of plywood. There’s a square “C” and then the center of the “C” is cut in half. Then the whole thing is turned on its side, so the two doors are part of the plywood. The main problem with this is that on both sides of the “C” the hinges have caused the wood to split, and so the cabinet is difficult to open or shut and always feels like it’s going to fall off. Basically I need to replace this front piece, I don’t think reinforcing the wood and using wood putty will do the job I need it to.

Also, the part above the doors is a separate hunk of wood; there’s a seam where it meets the side parts.

It might be easiest to replace this if I cut a new top part, new side parts and attach the side parts back to the top part with those metal brace things you can get to brace wood pieces together. That might be how they did it in the first place, although without the braces. Then re-add the cabinet doors. Although I’d be losing a bit of wood due to the saw blade turning the wood to sawdust in the cut, I think I can accomodate that. However, it wouldn’t give an easy way to keep them closed (I could add those magnetic closers at the top I suppose.

What do you think? Do I need a new tool to fix this?

My favorite joke this year has to be “yeah well in 10 years we’ll be looking back with 2020 hindsight.”

With Miss B turning 13 this year, gifts from relatives have changed dramatically. People have stopped asking me what she wants, have stopped shopping from her Amazon wish list, and have started giving her cash. I’m not sure what I think of this new trend. On one hand, it’s great for the giver and for the thirteen year old. But on the other, it’s annoying to hear “please drive me to Barnes and Noble” when I can barely consider getting myself a haircut. Is that why the cliche for parents is to resent the incessant requests for driving your teenager somewhere? Because the parents are jealous of having some money to spend on yourself? Hmm, maybe more research is required

I’ve also been considering a few things. As Ms B gave me her old iPod when hers got upgraded, I’m listening to more music and even some neat podcasts. I could totally do a podcast — maybe I should give it a shot. But I’m sure it’d be difficult coming up with interesting content for it. On the otherhand, maybe I should read kid’s books and podcast those (hey Mike Mulligan’s Steam Shovel would be a fun little book to read), for .. uh, kids to read along with. Yeah, I know it’s a dumb idea. I’m just not sure where to take it… ESL, maybe?

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.