next year is for sissies

People often ask me how things are going now, which is fine, because I know that most of them are genuinely curious and would like to know about our lives since our family grew to five. Mostly I answer that I am more tired than I used to be, which is very true. It is amazing how quickly the members of this household fall asleep now (except for Andres, who lays there awake and squints his eyes pretending to be asleep when we check on him). We have been helped along by moments of late nights with sick kids, though, which has not always been all that pleasant. It is not fun to catch the splash of puke in a garbage can as you hold it up for your child to vomit in. I am not a big fan of that. But I am a parent, and the things that Janine and I now do are labors of love that we do not complain about in any serious sense. It is amazing what kids can do to change one's position on the gross factor continuum.

So we continue to adjust as a family, something that we will do for a while, I believe, and it isn't always easy. The kids test limits often, and we have been doing our best to be consistent about how we deal with every situation, trying to figure out what works best in our house with our kids. We learn as we go and are certainly not always successful, but we know that this is something that will take time.

Yesterday was fun, as we met with some of our friends from church at a park. The kids were able to get out and play on the playground with other kids, and it was nice to sit there and watch them having a good time and interacting with our friends and their children. Afterward, we went to IHOP to get lunch and had an enjoyable meal there with our friends. Frog Brotha, Jr. stopped by when we got home and we monkeyed around with the recording equipment for a while as the boys napped. It was a very relaxed day.

My buddy Lee (heh-heh...Buddy Lee, like the character on Lee Jeans) told me a while ago that after we get our kids that I still need to do the things that are part of who I am and that I enjoy, even if it is less time than I might normally spend (read: pre-kids) doing them. His thing is video games, and I used to laugh at him and question his sanity when he would tell me that he would start playing video games after he put his kids to bed and then stay up to 2 in the morning gaming. Now I understand. I have been recording music quite a bit in the last few weeks, all after 9 PM, sometimes staying up until 1 AM. It has been a lot of fun, to say the least, and a way for me to relax. Hats off to you, Buddy Lee. Thanks for the advice. The music I make is questionable in quality, but it is fun.

Today Shirley has been sick. It is difficult to watch your sick child and know that you can't do anything about it, but fortunately she has been well enough (at times) to watch some videos and enjoy that part of the day. We actually all made it to church this morning, but she was feeling terrible by the end of the service, so they all came back and she has been resting/sleeping off and on since. We missed out nightly walk (Brad and Traci and Joel, as well as our family usually walk a few blocks with the dogs nightly), but the kids have been enjoying Shrek in Spanish. By the way, still humorous in Spanish, for all you Shrek fans out there.

I have been watching some basketball during tournament time, and was very excited about it all, what with both Oregon and North Carolina advancing to the Elite Eight. But today they both lost. I am not too thrilled about the tournament now, but I am happy that my two teams had a good run. I know that my criticisms have been harsh on Ernie Kent this year, but he did well in proving me wrong. Roy Williams did another fabulous job with Carolina, but without good outside shooting this one dimensional team could not seal the deal. Pretty good for an inside/fast breaking team, though. Still, I am disappointed. I don't want to hear anything about next year, either. Next year is for sissies.

Well, I will try to be more consistent with writing. Hopefully I will discipline myself enough to get on here, as my hit count on the web site has gone down drastically in recent weeks. I need to write more, I know. I will try.

Back to sixty hour weeks at work again. I feel like things are settling down, though, and that we are making good progress for both our client and our company. I am such a dorky company guy now, and it is quite embarrassing. What can you do, though, as they give me room to work, room to grow, and have been very "hands off" with this particular project (which I am not at liberty to discuss, as I am a secret agent as well as having my regular communist leanings). I wrote about work...that is lame. I should go now.

"I don't like pickles!"

I think that vegetables are a challenge for anybody. Recently a co-worker of mine has been somehow brought around to eating healthier (which is always a good thing) and has been bringing in vegetables every day. He has not had the best of times eating cauliflower and broccoli, and hasn't really enjoyed the celery (he makes faces every time he eats celery).

**I remember my own vegetable shortcoming, my misgivings about what spinach actually is (and it doesn't come in cans all soggy-like). It took many years before I discovered the joy of many vegetables, mostly dominated by celery and green peppers. To this day, however, the choice of greens are limited in selection, not because I don't like them, but mostly because I am lazy and don't want to wash and slice and clean. Snickers is so much easier. I am not sure why they don't market 340 calories worth of celery in a plastic wrapper and offer it for 59 cents (by the way...remember cheap candy?). That would be a large wrapper of celery.**

Anyhow, our kids are no less trouble with vegetables than anyone else. It has been a challenge for us to get them to eat anything green at all. We are just lucky that they actually enjoy fruit, or else we would really have trouble. So we went out to eat the other night, choosing one of my new favorite chain sandwich places (Jason's Deli...THEY EVEN GIVE YOU A DILL PICKLE! now that's a deli!). Everyone was enjoying their respective meals; my club sandwich was divine, to say the least, and ever-so-filling. It came around to the time when I had sufficiently stuffed my face and began to help the boys eat their fruit servings. To help expedite this process, Jason (who I assume came up with all this marvelous food, after all it is named after him) provided us with a sweet, plain yogurt to compromise the natural and delicious taste of the strawberries and melon. The boys loved it, though, eating piece after piece bathed in this sweet yogurt. Shirley even gave up on her potato chips to join the fracas, and soon all three kids were having the wool pulled over their eyes and unsuspectingly eating at least somewhat healthy (especially compared to the chips). Then comes the light bulb...
...I think to myself, "wouldn't a pickle disguised in this yogurt be the ultimate funny gag?"
So I said to Janine, "Watch this," and proceeded to dip a minuscule slice of dill pickle in the sweet yogurt dip and offer it to my trusting daughter. The fork with foulness made its way incognito to the mouth of my daughter and her eagerness to discover once again the wonderful fresh fruit taste that she had been periodically enjoying for the previous five minutes.
Then, the truth. No sooner than she took one bite, her eyes watered rapidly, her face looked repulsed, her mouth, agape, looking to propel anything and everything that was inside outward. Our faces, waiting in anticipation of a sour face and a quick spit or half chewed sliver of pickle, quickly turned to horror as Shirley began to heave. The laughter that had accompanied this amazingly not thought out moment of trickery quickly segued into multiple apologies as Shirley continued to heave out matter that once was a mixture of fruit juice, water, hot dog, and sweet yogurt.
Oh man. Maybe it wasn't a good idea.
And then the tears. And the tears. And more apologies. And more tears.
I am the world's worst dad.
And then the sly smile. And the dissipation of the tears, the wiping away of any evidence (and covering of other evidence that splashed out square on her plate), and the nervous chuckles of a father who was afraid of being taken out back and slapped around by onlookers who were of no relation. But no, we were all safe.

We learned something that night, as my brother in law Brad taught Shirley to say in English, "I don't like pickles!"

I could say that this is the last of my tormenting of my kids, but I know it isn't. It is how my dad related to us, how we knew he cared for us, as he would flick our rumps as we walked by, or tease us about our unkempt hair or inability to see the point of brushing one's teeth, he made sure we were teased and tormented accordingly and justly. None of my siblings made it outside his sharp wit and sharper tongue (although if you ask my sisters, I may have received some favor being the only boy), but we all knew that was his way of interacting, of saying that he cared, and in spite of the tears, in spite of the getting angry, we all craved that attention to some degree, and we all knew that he loved us. So I know that I will be that foil to my children, in between the hugs, the affirmation, the playing, the disciplining, the living and growing that we will all do together, much in the same way that my pops did for me.

the return of the 4H...

It feels late. It is only 8:35, but I am dog tired. The week has seemingly flown by, as work has been dominating much of my time. After five weeks off, the 54 hour week (with tomorrow yet to count) is somewhat overwhelming. I finally feel like we are getting into routines, though, and it is nice to be making money again. I do wish that it was like Shirley's first week of school, though, in that she had a half day yesterday and today off. Oh well. Got to pay the bills somehow, I guess. I am happy to have a job.

So Janine's parents arrived yesterday. It has been fun to have them here, especially for the kids, I think. I guess they warmed up to them pretty quickly, as they barely seemed to notice me come home either yesterday or today. It is nice to see them all getting to know each other and enjoying the time together already. Hopefully they will all continue to have a good time. They went to the zoo today, and Juancho, who we thought loved elephants, would not get near the elephants. Kind of funny how that works. And as a side note, Andres and Juancho are obsessed with the Chick Fil-a' cow that was there the other day. They are both enamored and frightened of the dumb thing, but it makes us laugh. Every time we are in the car now, they both begin to talk about the vaca...we know exactly what they are thinking. Strange.

I got Son Volt's new album the other day. The first listen did not yield great results, and to say the least, I was bitterly disappointed. It will not make my top albums of the year as of now; we'll have to see if it grows on me at all. So far the Shins' "Wincing the Night Away" is the best album of 2007. My picks for 2006: Neko Case's "Fox Confessor Brings the Flood" and Ray Lamontagne's "Till the Sun Turns Black" with an honerable mention to Built to Spill's album "You in Reverse." I did pick up the Best of Sam and Dave, though, which is incredible. I don't know if anyone could call Sam and Dave underrated, but I think they are.

Shirley's first week of school has been nuts. She was place in an "age appropriate" class, which means that she is in 3rd grade instead of joining second grade (she just completed first in Colombia). Essentially it means that she is skipping 2 grade levels as she enters a new country/culture. The only good thing is that she is in a dual language class, but even with that benefit she is finding it difficult to do the school work that the other kids are doing. TWO GRADE LEVELS!!! Are these people idiots or what?!? My politics remind me that it is that knucklehead W's "no child left behind" nonsense, which irritates me to no end. Yeah, that's a good idea...put her two grade levels too high and see how she does. While you are at it, why not give her a papercut and pour lemon juice all over it, morons. I am not happy with the system and am ready to fight it.

The boys have been continuing to adjust well. They seem to have been having fun during the day and have been pretty good about everything. Two year olds just demand a lot of attention whether they mean to or not (and they would really rather not have my attention when they are trying to not sleep at night), but they are joys. All three kids have different ways of making us laugh, of making us smile, and though they are work and can frustrate us at times, they are so wonderful.

I think Gerald Henderson did it on purpose.

I think Chris Simon should be suspended for the remainder of the season, the playoffs, and the first 15 games of next season. And undergo anger management. What an idiot.

I located a 1982 Nissan/Datsun 210 in Fort Collins, CO. I really want to check it out. Maybe it has four horns. Maybe it is blue. Maybe it has off-colored fuzzy dice in the mirror. It supposedly has only 32,000 original miles on it, which would be absolutely amazing and would take some of the edge off the numbing, pride-depleting, recent purchase of the now infamous minivan.

One time, in a mid-70's renovated cargo van, my friend bolted a lazy-boy to the frame of the cargo area for a nice extra-padded seat. So three of us piled into the van and decided to take it off road. It was a very comfortable ride. It reminds me of the time that a couple of buddies of mine and I piled a couch into the back of a large pickup and took it out to the roadside to relax and watch traffic. We also had lemonade.

Tournament time. March Madness. Anyone interested in a bracket? Let me know and make sure I have your email and I will get one going. More news later.

The song for the day is "I Take What I Want" by Sam and Dave...

I am a sellout...

It was in Boston, several years ago, that three young men would cruise in a minvan. It was, for all intents and purposes, not my coolest moment. I laughed often when I thought of my buddy-- a senior at UMass working his internship to his best ability, clean- shaved, dressed to a "T", enlightening us to the finer points of white zinfandel--getting into his minivan in the morning to go to work. The epitome of uncool was one mode of transportation for us, a "so uncool it's almost cool" kind of thing that we almost cherished. It was an interesting few months.

There was a day, almost immediately following a raging nor'easter, that Nate came barrelling through the front door letting me know that he had slid off our hillside parking space and was stuck on the side of the hill. We woke our other roommate (sleeping, as always) to address the situation. The three of us, I'm sure, looked like idiots as we shoveled with sticks and hands and maybe a cooking pan or two to try to loosen the frozen grasp the snow had on this fine piece of machinery. Soon enough we found that he was not just stuck in the snow, but high-centered on a large rock that had seemed so innocent and an unable adversary just days before. We were perplexed, dumbfounded, unable to come up with a viable solution to our new found quandary. We thought of a tow truck, until we thought of the heating bill after Nate decided we needed to crank the heat all day, every day for a week (the price of heating oil coincidentally going up the same week...I am thinking he had some stock money involved somewhere). We were as stuck as the minivan.

In a time of crisis, one never knows from where help will arrive. Our help this time came from above. Our upstairs neighbor, whom we had written off as crazy and who had written us off as attempted dog killers (a tainted piece of meat, a backyard barbecue, and a black lab...you fill in the details), soon meandered out of her cave of hiding.

"What happened?"

"He drove the car off the side..."

"It slid on the ice, jerk!"

"Well it can't stay there. I'll call AAA."

And twenty minutes later a tow truck arrived. Five minutes later we were ridiculed by the driver for our predicament and ridiculed more for our feeble attempts at freeing the minivan and then ridiculed even more for being three young bachelors who considered a minivan an acceptable way to travel. He drove away, no charges paid, a thanks to the crazy lady, and a day off for the three of us (two planned, one not). So we did the only thing we could think of doing: we got a dozen donuts and hit a coffee shop for some much needed nourishment.

___________________________________________________________________

So I have no dignity left. I am more uncool than I could have ever imagined. Leather seats, automatic doors, tinted windows, and a good sound system do not erase the fact that I now drive a minivan. I am unable to make this thing cool. I have stickers. I have paint. I have a selection of music that public radio stations would hold a fund-raiser for...but I cannot make this minivan cool. I really wanted to avoid this. I really would have taken a conversion van, a VW Vanagon form the mid-seventies, an old model station wagon, some scooters with side cars with room for four...but I have a minivan. I have been consoled by friends (after being made fun of, of course) who say things like "at least it's a Honda...it's a nice color...I guess you'll be driving to the hockey game now." None of these things can cover the looks on their faces, though. The looks that tell me that I have stepped one step beyond the point of no return on the cool charts. The looks that tell me that they might now want to associate with me anymore. The looks that are pained, as the statements written above sound more like questions as they seek to find the salve that soothes.

I could make it big with my music now, a breakthrough, unprecedented skyrocket to the top of the music business: I still drive a minivan. I could actually sell my thesis and get a book deal: I still drive a minivan. I could be recognized by the screen actor's guild for my incomprehensible talents: I still drive a minivan. I could produce a great hip-hop album by my protege' FBJ: I still drive a minivan. I could hit the million dollar shot from half court: I still drive a minivan. I could do anything, do the impossible, do the improbable: I still drive a minivan.

My quest is still alive, though, to find the one thing that could bring me out of such depths, the one thing that could free me from my life sentence of uncoolness, the one thing that continues to escape my grasp, though I reach for it continuously: a 1982 Datsun B210.

From where does my help come now?

********************************by the way, it is a 2003 Honda Odyssey ELX with 53,000 miles...and it rocks!*****************************