You don’t realize how much goddamn noise there is everywhere until you have a baby that hates to sleep. Airplanes and motorcycles and cars without mufflers and screaming and breaking of trash and always some kind of infernal cutting, mowing, trimming, blowing everywhere. It’s as if we are being overrun by some ever-creeping pestilence, the way everyone hacks…
WE CAN SUCK THE FUN OUT OF EVERYTHING
Take the most fun thing we did as kids. Whatever it was. For me at age 10, it was playing baseball with my friends until dark with a tennis ball that you never play tennis with, or some raggedy foul ball you were lucky enough to chase down at a minor league game. And you play for 4 hours, from…
GIRLS AND BOYS, BOYS AND GIRLS
Well, it’s officially been ten years of raising little girls now, a decade at the front lines of staying at home. It went so slowly at times, yet so quickly overall. I’ve learned so much, yet remain an idiot. I gave up a lot, but got so much more in return. I’ve been overjoyed, befuddled, amazed, frustrated, and enlightened. One…
OLD PEOPLE TEARS
I’m a very emotional person but not much of a crier. At least I didn’t used to be one. Before I had kids, I was more of an appropriate, functional male. Cry when I was drunk, leaving my Mom on an airplane, thinking about the good old days and girlfriends gone by, a really touching scene in a movie.…
CARTOON ADVICE IS JUST WHAT YOU’D EXPECT
Disney is a manufactured place of wonder and magic. Meticulously so. Magical, yet imminently predictable at the same time. Once you’ve been going for awhile, great God almighty like we have, you pretty much know what’s going to happen. The enchantment of new discoveries around every corner, characters come to life, cartoon villages you are suddenly thrust in, music and…
BEWARE THE AGENDA
I was done with all the copying and cutting and gluing of the adorable, annoying, fall-themed projects I had been helping Mrs. McConnell prep for the next week in my first volunteer session. A botched nightmare of red, yellow, and brown construction paper. The children suddenly put all of their work away at the same time, without being told,…
IT’S ALMOST CHRISTMAS AND SHE DOESN’T WANT HER TWO FRONT TEETH
Lilah loves losing her teeth. Always has. Both girls have, although Sophie’s have come out so slooooowly. A couple times under anesthesia, emerging woozy with an entire handful of them for the tooth fairy to appraise their fair street value. What is a clutch of forcibly removed teeth worth these days? Apparently more than just a few coins. She gives…
THE LOCK THIEF
I continue to be surprised as my life unfurls, unfolds, and unravels. Still surprised, with the Talking Heads blaring in the back of my psyche… How did I get here. Fighting for…this is what I want? Fighting with…this person? How the hell did I get here? Who am I anyway? This week I am a soccer coach, and I am…
IN LOVE WITH THE BAD GUY
Your kids teach you a lot. About what they start out with, and what we put into them. And it happens all the time if you’re able to keep listening. And some of it is shit you seriously did not want to know. Like loving the bad guy. Lilah loves the villians. Whatever the story or movie or play,…
GET BACK IN YOUR PLACE
One of the things kids are very best things is putting you back in your place. Sometimes it seems to be their entire function on earth. Pricking the swollen balloon of your ego at the perfect time. The most painful time, often, but there is no more perfect time than that one. When you don’t want it, but you…