Laid-Off Dad

Rotator cuffed

This week has been notable for its physicality, namely by the number of baseball-based games I've played. Memorial Day weekend offered up a brutal triple-header of one-on-one Whiffle ball with Robert, who somehow managed to beat me all three times by hitting a game-winning homer in the bottom of the ninth. (What are the odds?) In fact, he hit 34 dingers that day, a career for most people. So if you have him in your fantasy league you should be feeling awfully good about yourself right about now.

Tuesday was the company outing/barbecue, so I spent the morning pitching softballs at people I work with. Pitcher is the best position in softball, because you rarely field the ball. In fact, you really don't have to move much at all. You are the closest fielder to the batter, though, so you have to factor in that your beer is vulnerable to a line shot back up the middle.

Because I got out of work early, I was able to pick Robert up at school and shepherd him and TwoBert off for Whiffle ball with six other five-year-olds, all of whom insisted on batting at the same time. Before too long the game devolved into a free-for-all flailfest, as I pitched into the crowd and ruminated about whether our insurance covers abrupt facial trauma.

I had planned to write a blog post that night, but after I managed to wobble home (pushing the stroller with my good arm), get dinner, run the bath, play Legos, and get the boys to bed, I completely face-planted. I am, apparently, getting too old for this shit.

Wednesday was momentous, because we finally seem to have solved TwoBert's thirst for inclusion in our Whiffle-ball marathons. Things had gotten a bit sticky on the diamond of late, because Robert likes to fling the bat after every hit (median distance, about 30 yards). TwoBert likes to scamper over and claim it while Robert runs the bases and refuses to relinquish it until he gets a turn. Innings were stretching into forever until an idea flashed into the old melon: have TwoBert play the field in his trike! Of course he can't pedal at all yet, so when Robert launches one I push TwoBert after it at top speed. It's a win-win for everyone: TwoBert cackles giddily at the high-speed chase, Robert gets to pad his homer stats, and Daddy spends less time with TwoBert's armed desperately clutched around his thighs.

Summer is only two weeks away, and I've got to learn to pace myself. At this rate of exertion I'll be down to a 28" waist by August. I'm relying on the unlikely assumption that my college reunion this weekend will help me recharge my batteries.

I think I'm fooling myself.

Two for TwoBert

TwoBert deserves better than this.

This sweet little boy, this imp with the machine-gun laugh, this dancing machine whose latest passion is grooving to the Blues Brothers' "Rubber Biscuit," this affectionate little truck in Target sandals who sprints to the door to hug me when I arrive home and invariably head-butts me right in the grapes, turned two a couple of weeks ago. And we still haven't thrown him a party. To celebrate his two-ness.

You might wonder how I could neglect my child so, even to the point of giving more consideration to my own 500th monthday. You also might think it odd that a man starts thinking of his own age in months when his son turns two--the age at which most parents finally start referring to their kids' ages in years. The truth is, there are a few factors in play.

First, May is a shitty month to be born in because of all the watershed moments and milestones. If your birthday is in May, you might be all psyched for your party, greatly anticipating the chance to put on "Rubber Biscuit" and flail your arms like a teetering windmill, but your friends might have someplace else to go because it 's Mothers' Day. Or they might have the gall to respectfully decline in favor of some meaningless bullshit like a wedding, or a graduation, or a confirmation, or a baptism, or a bat mitzvah, or your grandmother getting paroled.

Second, it sucks to be a second child. Your brother had two parties for his second birthday, because that was before your parents burned out on all this Natal Nonsense. They didn't mind using a big venue and organizing activities and creating thematic goodie bags, because everything about parenthood was new and shiny, and every day was a gift of beaming, prideful wonderfulness.

We are so over that.

Those first two points are small potatoes, though, when you consider the basic truth that there is no need to throw a two-year-old a birthday party. When you're two years old, every day is your birthday. If for no other reason that when your arse needs wiping, you have someone to do that. TwoBert has plenty of toys and playtime and people celebrating his existence. How exactly does a birthday party build on that?

If you're a recovering birthday-partyholic and ready for a nice long rant about how out of control these dopey parties have become, you can read this piece in the June issue of Time Out New York Kids. If you click over to page 6, you'll find a little burp of invective from me about goodie bags, which I will never understand. Why exactly am I paying you to come to my event? Is this a kid's party or the freakin' People's Choice Awards?

We tried to give TwoBert a party last weekend, but too few of his friends were able to come. So we have a new date planned for next month. No gifts or folderol, just cupcakes and general mayhem in a local playground. And goodie bags full of rubber biscuits.

Just to be the man who lived 1,000 months and fell down at your door

I clicked on my Bloglines page this morning and found 771 unread posts waiting for me. In fact, just about the only site that wasn't staring imperiously at me with its bold, impatient typeface was my own. So much has happened to the men and women I read over the past week; lives have come and gone, and I'm feeling a bit of a shitheel for not having had the time to e-mail and convey my congratulations, and my condolences.

Now that the afternoons are longer, the boys and I have been braving Weather Whiplash (It's 50 degrees! It's 90 degrees! It's fucking 50 degrees again!) and spending lots of time at the park. I've been workshopping for the 10 weeks of 2-on-1 childcare that will start in the middle of June, honing my skills at accommodating two willful minds whose wants rarely intersect. The one thing they do agree on is that they each must have All Daddy, All The Time. Which frankly is a pretty wonderful predicament.

The game of the moment is baseball, and the boys and I spend lots of time throwing and catching and building up eye-hand coordination. Robert isn't all that good at catching yet, so he's compensated by creating a game called Catch-Touch which (oh! sweet irony!) devalues catching altogether. Person 1 throws the ball, and if Person 2 catches it Person 1 can 1) throw his mitt as high in the air as possible, 2) run someplace over there somewhere, and 3) run back to where he was originally standing. If Person 1 gets back "home" without being tagged, he scores a run.

The rules tend to evolve faster than I can comprehend them. For example, I used to be able to tag Robert anywhere. Then it was only below the waist. Then it was only below his knees, and now it's a patch of skin about an inch in diameter on his upper right ankle. Oh--and I have to throw the ball from farther than 20 feet. The upshot of all this is:

• If he doesn't catch the ball, I can't score any runs.
• If I catch the ball, I have to hit a running target 20 feet away. And it's not like I can put any speed on the throw, because other park revelers might think ill of a daddy whipping a tennis ball at his kid.
• If I don't catch the ball, I have to go chase it down. And he runs anyway.

When it's time to go home, he's usually up by around 20 runs. Needless to say, I'm feeling a lot like the Washington Generals.

I'm also feeling more fit, though. And that's a good thing, because in the next few weeks I will 1) attend my 20th college reunion and 2) turn 500 months old. This latter milestone makes me really happy for some reason--maybe because the last month has been so busy and fun and revelatory, and I want the next 500 to follow the pattern. I'm not sure who'll be around to help me celebrate, or what we're all going to do, but there will definitely be some sort of whip-around. Got any ideas?

Crooning together, like good friends should

I'm turning into a karaoke fan.

Before this year I'd been out for a night of booze-fueled warbling exactly twice. I was into it to a point, but since both events were work outings I was very inhibited. If you share a cubicle with someone, you really don't need to think that every time you ask for him to pass the stapler he'll think of that time he saw you keening like Judge Doom with your tie around your head.

Over the last two months, however, I've been out for karaoke three times, and the experience gets better each time. I don't even need to drink too much; if someone hands me a mike I'll try to sing along to anything, from "Toxic" to "She Caught the Katy" to anything in between. And that willingness was tested the other night, when we went to a place with a really strange playlist. The kind that has four songs by Kelis, and "My Milkshake" isn't one of them.

I was scanning the songbook arranged by artist, and toward the end of the B's I saw something I didn't expect: Bob the Builder. After a cartoonish double-take I took another look, and it was still there. So I scanned over to the song column, and there it was, plain as day: "Can We Fix It?"

I'm not sure which is more disturbing: That I chose to sing the song, or that I already knew all the words.

The libretto of our lives

Firefox is my favorite browser, because of the built-in search window that lets me scour the Internet with immediacy. Type in a word, and BAM. Hundreds of URLs to sift through, stat. So if I need to know the name of Ben Folds's third wife, I can find out in one second (which is excellent!) instead of three (which is interminable!).

This little window also has an air-tight cache memory that saves every search stem. It basically follows you around like a court stenographer, taking down records of what you wanted to know and providing a unique and intensely intimate road map of how your mind works.

This morning I wanted to search the Susquehanna Hat Company comedy sketch ("slowly I turn ..."), and when I typed the "s" I was immediately treated to a drop-down list of all the recent searches I've made that began with S. I thought it was interesting, so I'm publishing it here:

• San Francisco
• San Francisco bus map
• Saturday Night Live
• sawgrass 17
• Schwetty balls
• slap yo mama cake chookooloonks
• smarty
• solids revolution flash
• sorgum
• spackle
• Spanish translation
• sperm x chromosome
• spock fascinating
• stalag 13
• stardust trailer
• stinger rocket
• stormtrooper boot
• strunz
• Subaru outback
• subjacent
• surf’s up trailer
• syd barrett
• synonym vasectomy humor

Don't ask me about "strunz," because I don't know either.

Flowers of color

This is becoming monotonous. The days of my week hurtle past, Sunday rolls around, and I'm at my keyboard about to tell you about the Week that Was. And for six days, you've been staring at a picture of what looks like a denuded lint brush. Not a tenable pattern, I agree, and I promise to try my best to stop it. But facts are facts. Weeks are over in a flash of an eye, thanks to a vigorous work schedule and the lovely spring weather that finally burst forth from its dressing room, threw open the curtain, and announced itself with a loud flourish from the orchestra pit.

There have been many highlights, like a) meeting Michael Chabon and 2) learning how to pronounce his name correctly, and I've got a big week of writing planned so I can tell you all about it. But as this wireless connection seems a little tenuous, I'll leave you with a little photographic proof that spring has finally decided to spring:

It's a tulip bed I recently passed on Park Avenue, and isn't it nice to see the residents of the Canyons of Privilege going that extra mile to embrace a little diversity?

The Verminimizer

After four weeks (and four grisly beheadings), we have another mouse wandering about. It's remarkable how the pattern sustains itself; just when you're certain that the battle is in the last throes, it is re-joined.

(Where have I heard that before?)

Given this new challenge, Robert seems unimpressed with the current technology and has offered up some his own. Behold, then, the Verminimizer^TM!

The main housing is the handle for a roll of Caution tape (in keeping with the hazard theme), and the cardboard trap is smeared with peanut butter. The bait is augmented by gluing on an ATM receipt and an AAA battery (presumably to serve as the allure of money and power).

According to Robert, the mouse is seduced by this triple threat and ultimately trapped in the roll until Daddy takes a walk with it to the park and sets it free.

Don't get any ideas, because our patent is totally pending.