Laid-Off Dad

The tidings are high, but I'm holding on

There's so much to say about this year's Christmas Shebangabang, but I'll have to give you the short and sweet for now, as I am writing on borrowed time. My laptop, you see, on which I depend for nearly everything, has decided that it's forgotten how to start up, and whenever the hard-disk gives itself a How's-Your-Father it spits out "fatal disk errors." I've been assured my data are retrievable, but I was also assured that George Bush Jr. would never be president and that Iomega stock would top out at 40. So I won't be sleeping soundly for a while.

The foremost topic of conversation is that Robert's conversion to the dark side is now complete. He now sits at the feet of the emperor in a brand-new #13 Yankees home jersey, which he would wear in the bathtub if we let him. He knows where it is at all times, and some internal alarm goes off whenever  either of the RetardoCats gets anywhere near it, lest they sully it with their shedding. I wish that were all, but it were not, and the shot I have of my child wearing a Yankee jersey and Yankee batting gloves and brandishing a Yankee bat is enough to make a grown man cry.

(Wait. The Boston Red Sox have won two Series since the Yankee dynasty ended seven years ago. Never mind.)

Speaking of RetardoCats, the other big hit with the Berts is an unassuming pair of remote-control cars. They're the size of your basic Matchbox and need recharging every 45 seconds, but when they're working they're absolutely excellent for tormenting felines who will Never. Stop. Chasing. They're so intent that even with four broken limbs they'd find a way to hump their bodies across the floor to catch the strange little robo-vermin.

I hope your family celebrations were happy and healthy, and many thanks to those of you who e-mailed about Laid-Off Granddad. The blood thinners are working, and his leg no longer resembles a big, fat leg of mutton. He still cannot shave, however, lest he cut himself and die clotlessly, so I'm growing a sympathy beard until he can resume his clean-cut, clean-shaven lifestyle. This is the sort of thing I wish I could explain to people as they hurry their children past me on the street.

68 Steps

Blog posting is a peculiar business. One month you post every day, come hell or high water; the next, you flop your little raft into the undertow of the holiday season, and you ride the rapids for a bit, and you look up and it's been two weeks since you posted anything. So let's do the only natural, human thing and cast the blame elsewhere. My finger is pointed at the RetardoCats*, who have been trying to catch that mouse/arrow thing as it flits across the computer screen for months yet are certain that TODAY is the day they will catch and devour it, tastily. And every so often, while standing on the keyboard, they will depress the hidden shut-down button that some design genius thought might be useful, and everything I've worked on will be sucked into the ether.

* All the more proof that cats cannot be superheroes. Because crime would run rampant during the 14 or so daily hours of naptime, and cornered villains would get away scot free merely by throwing a few jingle balls down the far alley.

Anyway. If you're still out there, I'm still in here, deciding that the best way to deal with holiday stress is incrementally. Bird by bird, hour by hour, step by step. I got the idea when our elevator--which, rumor has it, was assembled by gracile australopithecines and has been reliably unreliable for a few years now--finally succumbed to the surgeon's knife. The building's new owner has decided it's probably not the best idea to have some grunt put a fresh load of duct tape on the gears every two weeks, so the entire motor assembly has been removed, disassembled, and donated to the Museum of Natural History's anthropological wing.

We were promised a working elevator yesterday, yet still we trudge up those stairwells with our bundles. I'll piggyback the boys if I'm feeling Herculean enough, but most of the time we turn the ascent into a singing/counting game. Very soon other parents will be wondering why our boys have legs like a speed skater's, and why TwoBert thinks the list of Knowable Integers ends at 68.

The other news is that my dad now has a bionic hip, but thanks to a blood clot in his thigh he will spend most of his 71st birthday this weekend in bed. He's on blood thinners now, and the swelling is almost gone. He can still get around, but oh so gingerly.

For the past two weeks, then, what is normally mundane has become an effort. So we allot the extra time and the extra psychic space, and the job moves along, slowly but surely, until the top of the stairs is in sight.

Smacked ass or not

Cripes-a-plenty, it's been a week. The workplace is crushed by The Busy Time, and I've spent gobs of quality time sparring with Shutterfly's interface in order to design my goddamn holiday cards and my goddamn gift calendars. Shutterfly is particularly crotchety about resolution, but it waits until you've slaved your life away -- uploading and cropping, dragging and dropping, flipping and flopping, breaking and popping -- before it tantalizes you with that compelling game of Guess Which Print Will Look Like A Smacked Ass. So you re-load and re-crop and re-finagle until you know what? My family and friends love me, smacked ass or not.

As I typed that, I decided to write that inside the cards.

One interesting bit of news is that I recently met Lee Woodruff, wife to Bob Woodruff, who had a cup of coffee as World News Tonight co-anchor before he nearly got his head blown off in Iraq. (They wrote a book about it together, and he was interviewed on the The Daily Show, which I remember vaguely as some show or other.) Anyway, when you meet her you'd never guess that she's a best-selling author and a mother of four. She's just lovely and friendly and smells terrific, and I'm frankly a little smitten, and now I specifically don't want to read her book because if I did I'd have to read all about how crazy in love she is with her stupid husband who nearly died.

The other news is that I have made it through another rite of fatherly passage: I have attended my son's first holiday concert. It wasn't much, and it was everything. The fourth-grade band honked away on its saxes and clarinets for about 15 minutes, and the best part of the set was The Spazzy Kid, the one in every class, who played drums and responded to audience applause by doing the robot. Then the 100 or so kindergarteners belted out three quick ditties (complete with choreographed hand gestures), and there were so many cameras pointed at them that you'd think these kids were testifying before Congress. We all lined up along the wall, steadying our handicams with one hand and waving like idiots with the other. It was beautiful. This is specifically, exactly why I wanted to be a dad.

We met the future star in the cafeteria after the show, and after we congratulated him on his performance (no stage fright, and he knew most of the words), he looked up at me and said, "I felt like an idiot." I wanted to tell him it's too bad that a five-year-old can already be so self-conscious, and that he can draw crucial inspiration from Spazzy Kid. I want Robert to know that whenever he feels like an idiot, he'll always be my idiot.

Donder's been in the broccoli again

Over the last few weeks, Robert has developed an interest in writing books. (It might have been inevitable, as the weather traps us indoors more often than not these days, and I have been extra vigilant about tearing him away from online baseball and Ruff Ruffman reruns.) He likes to lay out text and illustrations over a number of pages, then he borrows Daddy's stapler and slams about 100 staples into the "binding."

I love watching is interest in illustration blossom. My mom is a pen-and-inker and a watercolorist, and I've done a bit of four-panel cartooning, so to see my boy sit over a pad, eyes fixed, tongue caressing his lower lip, makes my heart go thumpa-thump. Penmanship is also an ongoing project in his kindergarten class, so writing captions for his work gives him a lot of practice.

The other day he decided to start a new project for the holiday season. So far he's completed the cover:

I can't wait to read how it ends.

Someone's about to get a juice box full of vinegar

One of the things I rely on to wake me up in the morning is a bracing hit of mouthwash. The bottle sits on a shelf high above the toilet, and when I make my morning deposit I usually reach up for a collateral gargle. Because 1) you can flush it all away in one go, and 2) I'm all about the multitasking.

You might be thinking TMI, and I understand. But the details are important. The key takeaway is: the shelf is very difficult, but not impossible, for an industrious five-year-old to reach.

I put a brand new bottle up there on Sunday night, and as I reached for it Monday morning something was ... off. I gazed at the bottle with my half-dead eyes and rubbed my three-quarters-dead brain. It looked a little darker than usual. Then as my eyes gained focus I saw something else ... floating on the surface. Little seedlings or something.

And then it hit me.

Robert has a Jones for experimentation, to the extent that combining a bunch of random liquids and solids in some vessel or other constitutes something that can improve the public good. When he sets about creating the Next Great Miracle Elixir, he likes to use food coloring. He also often draws from the spice rack, which is reachable and filled with various wonderstuffs. Oregano is a favorite.

While I was out Sunday afternoon, Robert had taken the old bottle from the recycling, filled it with water and green food coloring and godknowswhatelse, and left it on my shelf for me, hoping I would blearily partake.

Basically, my child tried to punk me. And if he hadn't overreached with the oregano, I probably would have launched a big, green spit take all over the shower curtain.

I told Robert I'd almost fallen for it, and he laughed himself sick. That's fine, I said. Funny as all-get-out. Good one! HA! What a brilliant jape! Hee-hee-hee-he is so dead.