15 posts tagged “diary of a desperate dad”
Note: I started this post about 8 weeks ago contemporaneous with the actual event. Vox ate my first attempt. I wept bitterly, and did a partial reconstruction. I then promptly forgot about it. But it's still a story I want to tell. And you'll be pleased (I hope) to know that I've continued to improve my fitness and that The Artist has also. She even inspired her teammates to get it in gear.
Yesterday after over a 2 month layoff, I went to see Killer, my friend the personal trainer. The assessment, it was not pretty. I am inconsistent. My body has become a stranger to me. No longer the smoother performing engine of exercise it was developing into at the end of last year. Not that I was anywhere near Michael Phelps/Terrel Owens levels of performance. But I was improving, making progress, changing the shape of my body and improving its efficiency.
But yesterday? I was a mess. My body seized up at nowhere the limits I'd reached before. To be fair there were extenuating circumstances. During the month of January my home was a petri dish of communicable diseases. Everybody was sick, for weeks. We all missed days from work and school. In February Hell - or rather Michigan - froze over. We had several days when our daily "high" didn't climb out of single digits. Couple that with recovering from The January Pox and the mental stress of our Economic Apocalypse and I hope you understand why exercising was not at the top of my agenda.
Killer was unmoved. I'd welched on our bargain and dropped off the face of the earth (see my previous comment about inconsistency). As I'd already surmised I'd missed the training window for this year's triathalons (see previous post.. somewhere).
Once we'd had a come to Jesus talk and I had renounced my evil ways, we got to work. Grueling does not begin to describe it. Like I said, I was completely out of sync with my body. Almost immediately I was in a world of pain, straining through movements that usually were much more accessible. Killer gave no quarter and I asked for none.
As luck would have it, my daughter was there to witness the whole unruly spectacle. She didn't seem to be particularly interested in the proceedings, but afterward she said to me "Daddy that looked hard." I replied through a near death haze, "Yeah it sure (as hell) was." "But you didn't give up," she offered. "Nope," I replied, "Now get daddy some oxygen."
Today my daughter's soccer team got slaughtered. No shame really. The other team was better. In every aspect of the game. They were faster, had better foot skills, and they had a game plan. And they worked the game plan, furiously, methodically, with precision and skill. The final score was a whole lot to nothing. Our girls never really had a chance. And to make matters worse, all of them were sucking wind at the end. Their opposition? They pranced around like they'd just had a refreshing walk in the park.
Now my daughter's coach had admonished our girls at the beginning of the season to to do their own conditioning offline. She explained that because this team was pretty heavily biased with first time players, that she was going to have to place a lot of emphasis on basic skills at the expense of conditioning. She even came up with a written plan of attack.
Nobody took her up on it. Least of all my little soccer star. My wife and I encouraged and reminded, but we left it up to her. So to add insult to injury at the end of today's game, she and her teammates looked like a group of geriatric smokers in comparison to the team that had just humiliated them on the field.
When we got home from the game this evening the first thing out of The Artist's mouth was, "I wanna go for a run." And she did. She did about a mile with her mother trailing on her bike.
Color me impressed.
Color me shocked to hear her inspiration later over dinner. I just assumed it was the humiliation of the loss. And that she needed to do something to blunt the embarrassment. "No dad," she explained, "it was you. You didn't give up yesterday when it was obvious you wanted to. If you won't quit, neither will I."
Guess who's going running tomorrow?
The little guy to the left there turned 5 this week. On the one hand, nothing spectacular right? Somebody turns 5 every day. On the other hand he's family. My first cousin's son. His great-grandfather was my grandfather. I keep trying to figure out if that makes him my second cousin or my fist cousin, one time removed.
Which is neither here nor there.
He has a great smile, just like Valerie, his mother. I was 16 when Valerie turned 5, being that I was 11 when she born.
Do you see where I'm going here? Someone whose diapers I used to change, whose very first steps I witnessed, who my dad slipped a little wine when she was teething (and screaming her head off) so she'd sleep... has a 5 year old. She also has a college degree and a husband and some new fangly adjunct professorship or something.
Good God I'm old. Terrifyingly old, careening in quick fashion for my inevitable date with The Reaper.
Which again, is neither here nor there, right? Every day somebody dies, somebody is born, and somebody turns 5. We try to mark the days and make the best of all of them.
So, happy birthday Jonathan. And many happy returns.
Make sure your grandmother never hears about that wine thing.
Then there's missing work. I'm no company man by any stretch but... I dunno... unless I'm incoherent and near death's door I feel "bad" for calling in sick (as opposed to "calling in slick" once a year to frolic and detour with S.O.). It feels like I'm "cheating", like I'm not pulling my weight.
Then there's the lousy disposition I develop when I'm sick. My wife says that I get a bit grizzly and more than a little whiny. Part of it is that, being a Mama's Boy, no one can pamper me like Mama used to. She used to fluff the pillow just so and feed me crushed ice and 7 Up. She used to read me stories and sing me to sleep.
Yeah I know it's an unfair comparison and I'm a grown man who ought to know better. But I'm sick. Remember? I'm not thinking clearly.
The other part? Well that has to do with wasting a perfectly good day off being sick. Simple as that. Who can enjoy a day off when they're half drugged and achy with a nose that's all slimy and runny? Can't even get into the eleventy fifth viewing of "The Empire Strikes Back."
Anyway. I called in sick today after spending half of last night with chills and a low grade fever. The doctor says it's a virus and "it'll run its course soon enough." But my ears are inflamed and my nose is sore from wiping and I've about sneezed my head off. I'm taking the vitamins and drinking the tea and my wife is taking good care of me.
But man I'd offer a vestal virgin for a glass of crushed ice and 7 Up and a bed time story.
In response to some quiz or another or on a FAQ page Cecily once opined that children are "best served in a light cream sauce". Or was it butter?
George Benson once sang that "I believe that children are our future" and then devolved into several treacly verses of "loving yourself" and how great that was. As I recall, we all nodded our heads and agreed with George and marveled at how "deep" he was (once we realized it wasn't Stevie Wonder singing). I imagine he sold a lot of copies of that song.
Well it stands to reason that children are our future assuming that they grow up and all, but beyond that I find nothing particularly warm and fuzzy at the prospect. Considering that children are just people after all; cute, little people to be sure, but merely people all the same. Which follows that the future is fraught with as much peril and foolishness and promise as at least the present.
By now you've guessed that I'm more like Cecily than George? Well at least tonight I am. My child has spent the day in full person-hood, displaying as much peril, foolishness, and promise as anyone else I guess. Good thing she's cute and little. Good thing she's mine.
Otherwise I'd be bugging Cecily for that cream sauce recipe.
The Artist turned 9 today. I barely survived. Not because of the festivities.
Goodness no.
This year was tame compared to previous years. In previous years, we've done "The Scavenger Hunt Party", "The Garden Party", "The Olympics". Last year, "The Soccer Party". No this year we toned it way down. Just 6 of us. Close family. Some pasta. Cake and cream. A snap right?
Well... no....
Not when Dad decides to watch the James Blake 4 setter last night, getting to bed after 1:00 and then The Artist decides to starts waking up at 3:30 and only lightly dozes thereafter. Birthdays being second only to Christmas around here for destroying a good night's sleep. I've been trying to avoid crankiness all day.
I've been moderately successful.
The inside of my head feel like a hornets nest, containing drunken, surly, crack-head hornets. I should NOT have had that last piece of cake by the way. The sugar crash is proceeding nicely. Ever been too tired to sleep?
Thankfully we didn't have a yard full of squealing elementary school girls to contend with this year. Otherwise I might've made the papers.
I think The Artist is happy with her swag: pearl earrings, soccer gear, a Webkinz (dear God finally), DVD's of "High School Musical 1 and "Jumpin In" ("squeal, Corbin Bleu!"), and sundry other frilly girly stuff.
Fortunately tomorrow is a holiday and I'm taking Tuesday as a vacation day. So I should be able to catch up.
There, I've jinxed it.
... which is in September
- Barry
(from the Treo)
So it's a rainy Sunday afternoon, and I'm making the doughnuts on the work machine and The Artist is typing at something on the iBook. And since Mom - who can't stand the distraction when she's working - is upstairs, we fire up iTunes. I have a special Artist mix in place for occasions such as this.
"I Wanna Be Where You Are" spins up and I'm all in. This is pre-Nose Job/Hair Transplant/And Whatever He's Done To His Skin Michael. Before the bizarre behavior and embarrassing court cases. Before the incredibly strange (and likely unethical) relationship with Debbie Rowe. Before Lisa Marie and "The Who's He Kidding Kiss At The Grammys" (are you listening Al Gore?). Sure my buddies and I made fun of his falsetto, his big fro and earnest eyes back in those days.
We were jealous after all.
The Artist glances over shyly at me. "Show me how to dance daddy." As if I know. But I get up and twirl her around the kitchen anyway.
I can't begin to tell you how much fun it was. Kerrytown House is a very intimate setting with a seating capacity of perhaps 50. And we had front row seats... for $20/ticket.
Yeah you heard me
I wasn't sure how well The Artist would do. She's usually pretty good "out amongst the English" and very patient. But she got a little fidgety at the Ramsey Lewis concert a few weeks ago. She did her best to be polite and all but it's tough when you're 8 and your parents are all into something that might be a wee bit over your head.
Watching Robert Hurst on bass was like watching someone caught up in Rapture. I felt like he would burst. Or I would.
When I saw Donald Walden walk in before the show, I had no inkling that he might be a musician, let alone the leader. Very unassuming guy. In truth they all were, but Walden gave the impression that he was just there to catch the show. He peeked around the corner at the stage at first. Didn't even ascend it until a couple other musicians had. I heard him joking with pianist, Barry Harris, that he "liked to play fast." Fortunately nothing was lost in translation. His phrasing was precise and clear.
I love this music. Though I didn't always appreciate it. In my younger days, it was just "that old time-y dance music" my dad and uncle used to listen to, especially Uncle Bo. Let Basie get to swinging and he'd grab the closest female in range for a trip around his basement floor. God that man could dance. It hit me Saturday night that this music is dance music. Hell my feet couldn't keep still. Room full of obviously (I'm assuming) left-leaning college intellectual types and I could barely keep still. Chair danced my natural behind off. I had to. Randy Gelispie's enthusiasm was infectious.
I couldn't stop thanking him.
My Little Reason For Living has informed me that she really doesn't care for the pseudonym I've been using for her. For that matter, neither does her mother (My Other Reason For Living).
So from here on she'll be referred to as either Little Person (which she came up with) or simply, The Artist.
That is all.
Rugrat: (reading her section of the paper) Daddy? What's "hot flashes?"
Me: (realizing in horror that I gave her the wrong section of the paper to read) Huh?
Rugrat: What's hot flashes?
Me: (in a certain burst of "only answer what's asked") It's like a fever only more intense.
Rugrat: Oh.
