"Only The Lonely"

This is not necessarily an anti-daycare screed, but if you find yourself especially sensitive about other people taking care of your kids, come back tomorrow.

Today, Connor and I went to a nearby playground to lose some water weight in the oppressive heat and burn off the Cookie Crisp we ate for breakfast. (We've been eating GREAT since Stacey started coupon shopping.) Apparently, a local daycare had the same idea because the playground was swarming with kids, most of whom were too old to be playing on slides, swings and sand.

The daycare's two workers who had accompanied the 30-or-so kids to the park — terrible odds should there be a Lord of the Flies-type uprising, don't ya think? — were squeezed in together at a picnic table off in the shade, while the kids wore themselves out in the sun. When Connor and I got there, we were swarmed faster than a discarded piece of hotdog on an anthill.

CanIplaywiththoseshovels? Doeshewanttoplaytag? Whyisn'therunningaround? What'syourname? Pushmeontheswing? Arethosetattoosreal? Areyouhisdaddy? Whyishestaringatme?

To his credit, overwhelmed though he obviously was, Connor never lashed out at these overly enthusiastic kids. Me? I may or may not have intentionally tripped one or ten of them. I ain't sayin'.

Another dad who also had the unfortunate luck of choosing this day to go to this playground had to sit with his two children while the daycare kids ran off with their toys. He lasted about 15 minutes before deciding to pack it in and head home, defeated by a horde of wild kids hungry for attention of any kind.

When it was time for the group of kids to leave, the two daycare workers tried to assemble them in an orderly fashion, but the kids seemed to be having trouble shutting off their overdrive function, much like a car with a cinder block lying on the gas pedal.

Hellooooooooo," one of them said sarcastically. "I don't have eyes in the back of my head. Get where I can see you. And quit making all that noise so I can think!"

Nice.

We have been planning on having Connor start a "school" program in the fall, which he would attend two days a week for four hours each day — though mainly for socialization benefits.

Now I'm having second thoughts about it.

"You're Gonna Change (Or I'm Gonna Leave)"

At what point does making a mess while eating become a battle that must be fought – lest a certain little boy grow into a man thinking it's okay to dunk his fingers in his soymilk, fling his lettuce at the wall or toss his plate off the table when he's ready for dessert?

Everyone who has witnessed the trainwreck that is mealtime with Connor consistently comments to us that he is, by far, the messiest eater he or she has ever seen. By the end of the meal, what he hasn't managed to get into his mouth, is smashed up on the table, squished between his butt and his booster chair or lying on the floor beneath him. I've had to start kicking Murphy out of the kitchen when we're eating because he was gaining weight at an alarming rate.

Also, Connor often demands to eat with a toy in one hand — usually a Matchbox car. As a result, the car gets a pretty good dousing of whatever we're trying to get him to eat. (Refer to the bed of the pickup truck in the picture above.)

It was cute at first. Awww. Look. He got more on him than in him. Ha ha. But now it's becoming a tad embarassing. On those rare occasions when we eat in a restaurant, Stacey and I are usually scraping up whatever remnants of his food that we can from off of the floor and table before the server comes back and sees the mess waiting to be cleaned up once we leave — thus dramatically increasing our chances of receiving a plate of food contaminated with some type of bodily fluid.

Of course, I'm sure Stacey and I are both partly to blame. Our table manners have pretty much vanished ever since Connor came along. We've become quite adept at shoveling food into our own mouths as quickly as possible so that we can tend to Connor's needs and keep him from flinging his food willy-nilly across the room.

Then there's Stacey's incessant farting at the table.

Kidding. That, of course, is me.

"Couldn't Stand The Weather"

When I returned home from my recent two-week vacation, my car decided to punish me for neglecting it by burning out the motor that controls the windshield wipers, thus preventing me from defending myself from stray raindrops, bird poop, that pine straw/pollen glop that seems to favor my car, or anything else that might get stuck there.

I do plan on having this matter attended to by a qualified professional, but since I know of no such place out here (and it's hard to set up times to drop off and pick up the car since Stacey leaves for work before most places open and gets home after they've closed up for the day), I'm waiting until we move back to the suburbs of Atlanta next month to take it to a mechanic I know and trust.

But, given this mild inconvenience, it's been difficult to get far from home when there's even the threat of rain especially when there's a kid in the backseat who needs his two-hour nap every day or...well, there is no "or." Comprende?

Since it was raining almost all day yesterday, Connor and I amused ourselves with every possible indoor activity. But, by today, he was obviously itching to get out and about. Since the local TV meteorologist told us to expect torrential rains again for most of the day today, I knew we couldn't get far. So, we headed to our old standby — the dump — and even dared to drive as far as the Dollar General, which I've heard some locals refer to as "the mall" — a statement which qualifies for its own post on another day.

We rushed home, so as not to tempt fate any more than we already had, but Connor knew that I'd cut his 'out of the house time' well short of his required daily dosage. There was nothing he could do about it, but that didn't stop him from flinging his wooden Thomas the Tank Engine trains at the back of my head as we drove home.

So, in total, how much rain did we get today? None. How overcast was the sky? Barely.

I'm starting to lose faith in my firm belief that everything on TV is true.

"Drive Slow"

This weekend, Stacey and I went to a wedding. Well, perhaps "went to" is a poor choice of words. We were really only at the reception. Well, we never went in, and we didn't get any cake, but we were still totally there, man! Well, sort of.

In truth, we spent our Saturday evening each behind the steering wheel of a 15-passenger van shuttling wedding reception guests between a nearby parking lot and the home where the reception was being held. Despite the potential for disaster, the worst thing that happened was that the vans didn't have a tape deck for me plug my iPod into, thus rendering me unable to subject my passengers to the soothing sounds of Van Halen's "Eruption" pumped up to 11 on the stereo. Instead, we opted for a local radio station that played what I can sensitively describe as Mexican circus music.

Actually, I just remembered that Stacey hit a wheelbarrow right as we were parking the vans at the end of the night. Way to end the night on a high note, baby!

The job itself — driving from point A to point B, and back again...and again...and again — wasn't that taxing, but by the end of the evening, I was wishing I had taken Stacey's semi-joking suggestion to heart and put up a sign that said "NO SMALL TALK ALLOWED!"

I'm an introvert and often just holding conversations with random people at any given length of time sucks more energy out of me than trying to lift a two-ton car with nothing but my bare hands. Every time I'd pass Stacey on the road between the house and the office park where the guests' cars were, she'd be waving her hands around and yammering away, as if in the middle of an enthralling conversation with old friends, while I'd be clutching the steering wheel and trying my best to be polite. I managed a few jokes (telling one vanload of folks that I'd only had two wrecks all evening!), but I'm sure I wasn't the highlight of their night.

In the end, we got paid (the impetus causing us to take this random odd job), and nobody died. Maybe it wasn't a "good" night, but it was a success.

After all, the last time someone in my family drove a 15-passenger van, my older brother ended up in the hospital.

"We People Who Are Darker Than Blue"

Somewhere in my many boxes of old photos, is a picture of me when I was 17. Taken during the summer, this particular snapshot probably captured my skin at its most dark state — as I apparently spent a lot of time out of doors that year. Being a descendent of Swedes and Scotch-Irish folk, I'm hardly the swarthy beast that many of you surely assume me to be purely by how badass I come across on this blog, right? Rest assured, though, I'm every bit the man-beast that you've come to expect on the inside...somewhere...maybe.

I'm not nearly Johnny Winter pale, but I would never, ever be confused for anything other than a white guy – a very white guy.

This summer, though, I may be giving the 17-year-old me a run for its money in the sun tan department. After a two-week vacation to Florida and South Carolina beaches, I had already accumulated a fair amount of sun, but since we returned home, it's become quite apparent that I'm developing an actual tan — despite a very unhealthy addiction to suncreen, which stops just short of me eating the stuff. Connor is even getting darker, despite never wearing a sunscreen with an SPF rating of less than a 50 while out of doors.

Even my Italian wife, who usually makes me look jaundiced when comparing our skin tones, is looking a bit sickly. To be fair though, she — who can transform the tint of her skin to a hue befitting even Hulk Hogan simply by watching a documentary about the sun — spent a fair portion of her two-week vacation sick at the condo or laid up in the hospital. Plus, she's got a 9-to-5 that keeps her indoors for most of the day, the poor lass.

Now that I have an entire summer to bake in the sun, I'm wondering if I'll know whether I've gotten too much sun.

Uhhhh, maybe I'll spend the rest of the summer inside instead.

"The Positive Aspect of Negative Thinking"

As I've mentioned at least 30 times in this space before, we live in what I consider to be the middle of nowhere. Although I've adjusted to the lack of ameneties in our community (in that there's very little development less than ten miles from our house, at least), I'll probably never conquer my fear of hillbilly folk.

For example, we have neighbors who live spread out over at least three trailers with four times as many vehicles scattered throughout the property — all broken down with weeds pulling them into the earth. There is probably more junk on this one acre of property than in all of the Smithsonian museums combined.

Everytime I drive past this particular compound (again, our "neighborhood" has several, so you gotta be specific when referring to them) whoever is out on the property stops what they're doing and stares, mouth agape, as if the sight of a car is completely unexpected on this regularly trafficked stretch of road. It's downright creepy. I'm trying my best not to judge these people, because there's nothing that says my style of life is better than theirs — just different...really really different — but it's hard, to say the least to not think that I'm better'n 'em.

Today, Connor and I spent a few hours at the lake, swimming at a nearby recreation area that has a beach, picnic tables and a newly erected playground. Surrounding us, were at least 20 of the very same, reclusive mountain folk that scare the shit out of me. Two kids were "fishing" with sticks, string and Wonderbread. Two kids were playing "drown the other one before he gets you first." Several parents were huddled around the concrete picnic tables, chain smoking, along with a few kids who looked all of 16 years old.

Also, several parents were floating carelessly into deep water on half-inflated pool floats while their kids (the oldest of whom couldn't have been more than four) played at the water's edge, occasionally venturing far enough into the water to warrant a scolding from a half-interested parent. I must have looked like the overprotective father to these people, never getting more than a foot or two away from Connor — especially when he started trying to swim in water over his head.

By the way, how do parents who let small children get so far away from them AT THE LAKE still have children in the first place?! Am I really that out of touch?

Anyway, I'm scared of white people. It doesn't make the the first, I guess.

"Nobody Weird Like Me"

For those who know both me and Stacey, it might seem safe to characterize me as the zanier parent of the two. She, the PhD candidate who has been in school for most of her life, is surely a more straightlaced parent than I, the class clown who was perpetually in trouble for the few years I could manage to stay in school, right?

Turns out, such an characterization would be dead wrong.

Sure, I've used Connor to deliver the punchlines to many a joke ("How does Connor do a pooper?" His answer: a very long and loud grunt — a gag used to its greatest effect in very public places such as libraries and restaurants) but his mother has gone off the deep end.

A few weeks ago, Connor and I were driving somewhere (either the dump, the playground or the dump, probably) and he pointed out the window at the randomly placed rolls of hay in an adjacent field.

"Look, Daddy," he shouted. "Dinosaur poop!!"

Yeah, that's his mom's handiwork.

A few months ago, when I was putting Connor down for his nap he got the giggles and started singing, instead of drifting off in my arms.

Instead of singing the familiar hook to Elmo's theme song ("that's Elmo's world!!!"), he instead sang, at loud as his tiny lungs would allow: "That's Elmo's UNDERWEAR!!!"

Again, that one was all Stacey.

So, remember this when you're chastising me for teaching Connor to jiggle the breasts of women at the mall, for helping him figure out how to light his farts on fire, or for showing him how to give wedgies to other kids on the playground. Believe it or not, he might have learned these things from that well-read, deceptively normal woman that he calls Mama.

"Lazy Sunday"

This year for Father's Day (my third such occasion), instead of getting an ill-fitting dress shirt, socks or a tie that I'd never wear anyway as so many of you poor dads did yesterday, I was afforded the luxury of doing absolutely nothing — simply because LBJ made the day a holiday in 1966, which Nixon signed into law in '72. (Who needs a formal education when we have Google?)

So, this weekend, I sat by the pool, watched World Cup soccer all day both days and spent about an hour-and-a-half on the treadmill on both Saturday and Sunday while watching World Cup soccer. The only thing that could have made the weekend better would have been a complete Led Zeppelin reunion in my den.

Becoming a parent is probably the coolest thing I've ever done in my life, but that doesn't mean that I want to spend every waking moment with my son.

-This concludes our daily attempt to make Stacey feel like I don't fully appreciate staying home with our son.

"Wanna Be Startin' Something"

For all you germophobes — if you weren't already justifiably frightened enough to enter a house where small children live — allow me to impart a piece of advice to you: never, ever cross the threshold of the home in which children are being potty trained.

Although we've been saying that Connor is "potty aware" for more than a year now (he can pee on command, though he often refuses to perform, and makes a huge show when he's dropping a SCUD in his diaper), we've only recently begun to seriously make a stab at teaching him the finer points of being a grown-up, including the whole nose-blowing thing. (Tonight, I got a snotty kiss on the cheek that was nastier than a heavy make-out session with Barbara Walters.)

If, instead of drying basically clear, urine turned a garish shade of pink once it left the body, our house would look like the Barbie Dream House. I'm sure the stuff is everywhere. Now I know why we have that huge tub of hand sanitizer ever at the ready.

When Connor is sitting on his tiny toilet, tinkling away, he usually likes to dip his fingers in the cup between his legs and swirl the pee around a bit. He's even starting to threaten to then touch his fingers to his lips. I guess it's a two-year-old's version of sniffing the wine before drinking it — gotta make sure it's a good batch, I guess.

When he's done conducting his business, I'm left with a serious decision: do I immediately wash his hands, or tend to the open vat of urine in the den? Either way, I've got a two-year-old boy with a loose bladder and no diaper on running around the house. No matter which choice I make, there is always some pee on the floor, walls or both.

By the way, I hope none of you reading this blog are sitting on the fence about having kids, because I don't think I'm doing such a good job of selling the concept, huh?

"Victim in Pain"

I was in as deep a sleep as I could possibly be in, without being buried six feet beneath the earth. But, as quickly as a two-year-old boy can fall down while running down a steep driveway, my state of bliss was over.

"Carter," Stacey said in a hushed, but strained voice.

With that one word sentence, and after a few moments of "coming to," I was awake.

Seeing my wife doubled over in the bed, clutching her midsection while her eyeballs strained against the lids which were pulled tightly shut, I somehow sensed that something was wrong. (Male intuition, baby!) With sleep still calling my name, and wishing desperately that she could somehow stomach the pain (ba-dum-dum) until morning, I instead did the only thing I could in that situation and gingerly helped Stacey downstairs and into the car so that we could make for the hospital. Keep in mind, this is a woman who has undergone natural childbirth, so to say she has phenomenal pain tolerance would be as big an understatement as saying that Katrina dropped a bit of rain on New Orleans. If she says "it hurts," don't ask questions or someone is gonna die.

Nearly ten hours and one removed gangrenous appendix later, Stacey was coming out of the anesthesia with all of the grace of a hungover co-ed on Sunday morning.

"How much do you think it weighed," she asked clumsily, referencing her erstwhile infected organ, hoping that she at least earned the benefit of losing a few pounds of unwanted weight for her suffering.

My wife, ever the comedian, was trying to make me laugh after undergoing a routine, but serious procedure. Being as I hadn't really slept in two days, and put aside my desire to sleep to get her to the hospital (whatta guy) I appreciated the gesture.

In retrospect, having appendicitis while on vacation certainly wasn't the worst way to spend a couple of days (although Stacey might disagree just a tad).

Besides, who else can say... "I had my appendix taken out on vacation, and all I got was this crappy mug."

"Possessed to Skate"

As I mentioned in yesterday's post, rather than parking myself at the beach or pool all day during my two-week vacation, I tried to spend as much time as possible at the nearby skateparks. (St. Augustine is above; Hilton Head below...click on the pictures if you wanna see 'em bigger.)

Until I discovered the guitar, the only thing in the world that I cared about was skateboarding. After the guitar's introduction into my life, however, my time would forever be divided — forcing me to ultimately dedicate my undying devotion to the latter. After all, it was skateboarding that put my left arm in a cast for nearly six months, and broke at least one of every type of bone in my body at least once. Aside from a few bloody fingertips, what did my guitar ever do to me?

Although I never really "quit" skating, calling me a skater would definitely be a stretch. I've gotten in and out of it over the years, but haven't lived near any of my skating friends in quite some time (most of whom have long since quit, anyway). Plus, I'm too old to run from the cops anymore.

With free skateparks so close by to our vacation spots, though, I knew I had to take advantage, and I managed to spend probably 10 hours at each park over the course of several days each week. I was incredibly surprised at how quickly everything came back, and how much more in-tune with my body's capabilities I am now than I was when I was 15. Before long, I was doing tricks I couldn't do when I was a teenager. Maybe I'll try out for the NFL next.

At both parks, usually it was me and a bunch of pre-teen kids whose parents had found a convenient babysitter in the form of a city-run skatepark or a few teenagers who were too preoccupied with the ever present skate groupies to bother skating much, so I mostly had the places to myself.

A few of the older kids talked to me (one even asked me if I was sponsored...get that kid's vision checked ASAP), but mostly, everyone steered well clear of the dude with the tattoos and black wraparound sunglasses. If only they'd known that the sunglasses contained prescription lenses and that I have a low tolerance for bright light, perhaps I'd have seemed a bit more approachable?

"Road Trippin"

Ahhhhhh. Two weeks of vacation. Can you sense the relaxtion oozing out of my pores? No? Well, that's probably since the last ten months have basically been a vaction for me, and believe me, I'm enjoying it.


For those of you who don't know, I have been, in fact, on a bona fide vacation these past two weeks and not just playing mean tricks on my reader(s) by not posting for 17 days. I don't announce events such as that in advance for obvious reasons. With the "Bikini Strangler" loose in these parts during that time, perhaps you can see why I wouldn't want to broadcast my comings and goings to the world. It's bad enough that you already know about the frequency of my son's bowel movements (or mine). Do you really need to know where I am at all times?

Anyway, part I of Vacation '06 saw us spending the week with Stacey's family in St. Augustine, Fla., while part II found us on Hilton Head Island in South Carolina with my family. Yeah, life is rough — especially since both locations had free, city run skateparks very close to where we were staying, clean beaches, and swimming pools...but no movie stars.

Somewhere along the way, though, the west and welaxation got a bit complicated. We had to replace Stacey's tires and one very expensive cracked rim at the last minute before leaving (which ain't easy or cheap in small town USA), Stacey got appendicitis in the middle of the night (do medical emergencies EVER happen during mid-day?!?) and there was a strep/cold outbreak amongst my family (infecting Connor, too). After the several-hundred-mile round trip that we made, it was nice to return to the house on the lake that we're calling home for the next month-and-a-half, even if the spiders did try to reclaim the place in our absence.

Oh yeah, and the US soccer team got its posterior pulverized in its opening World Cup match today.

Yep, vacation is really over.