I miss being able to plan things and feel reasonably certain that those plans will be carried out. I was a planner once, relying on maps and itineraries and confirmed reservations. But now that parenthood has made my life exponentially more chaotic, I’m only just starting to acclimate to the idea that planning anything is a lot like dog-paddling against a riptide.
I had great plans for Sunday’s post-nap activities. We were going to pack a picnic dinner, attend a free Summerstage concert featuring Laurie Berkner (the Elvis of the 6-and-unders), and then mosey over to the Great Lawn for my weekly softball game. But the Nap, which normally tops out at around 90 minutes, dragged on for a record three and a half hours. Then the Madison Ave. bus took a nice, long detour around a street fair (an utterly useless annoyance that ranks just below rectal polyps on my Esteem List). By the time we got to Central Park, Rumsey Playfield was a cluttered hellscape of juice boxes and used diapers, and the game was in the fourth inning.
There have been days when we’ve had no sleep, or the weather’s abominable, and we’ve begged the boy to shut down the bubble factory for a while so we can regain our bearings. But noooooo. Either he refuses completely, or worse, he wakes up after 35 minutes and favors us with an hour of cranky whimpering. And when we put together a scheme that caters to his boundless energy? He Van Winkles on our parade.
Despite the botched plans, the night was not without highlights. Like when Robert and I had a catch on the sidelines, and he put on my mitt and said, “This is a puppet!”
And later, after I pitched a couple of innings, my wife sat down next to me and asked, “Should I pull an Anna Benson and start blabbing about our sex life?”
