Laid-Off Dad

Ode to a plumber butt

Ah, the pleasures of the global blogiverse. I'm at a conference today, between workshops, trapped in the exhibitors' hall. Booth after booth of outwardly perky people who are dying on the inside, because at some point in their lives they made a tragic vocational decision that they would give anything--a crucial body part, for example--to undo. This goes especially for the many many many banks that market credit cards (and the seductive Buy Now, Pay Later lifestyle) to teenagers. They know a fertile market when they see one, and they also know their ticket to hell has already been punched. So now they're living out the string, trying to seem as though their lives have any meaning, and hoping you'll please subscribe to their FREE e-newsletters, so that you'll agree to infest your inbox in exchange for the fleeting FREE chance to win a FREE iPod shuffle.

After about an hour of 1) not making eye contact and 2) talking into my dead cell phone, I found a bank of live ThinkPads (one of which might also be FREE if Dame Fortune smiles upon me). The circumstances for posting (motive and opportunity!) are great, but this is also the first post I've ever written standing up. I can't say I recommend it.

But never mind that. I honestly didn't intend this to be a rant about Labyrinths of Despair. I'm actually in a pretty good mood, because of last night's sushi dinner. We were celebrating a lot of stuff: For me, the end of a particularly onerous work week; for Robert, the beginning of Spring Training and another summer of Yankee Fixation. But the biggest news is that little TwoBert, who has been peeing in the toilet regularly for the last week or so, spent yesterday entirely in underpants. He has finally bought in to the concept that walking around with a soggy sack of effluent around your privates is a bad thing. So he put on the little training undies first thing in the morning, played in them, napped in them, and wore them to the restaurant without incident. And lo, the choir of angels sangeth Hallelujah.

There is a little extra spring in his step, which sometimes sends his waistband a little south of the border. But now, instead of a protective layer snugged to his waist with Velcro, the undies slump with the pants to expose his little coin slot. Never before have I derived such joy from a butt crack, let me tell you, and I intend to savor this feeling for as long as possible, until his inevitable first accident with No. 2 sets forth a Maelstrom of Awful.

So huzzah for that! And now I have to sit down, because I can't feel my legs.

Five going on fifteen

"I hate swimming."

"Why do you hate swimming?"

"I've told you, like, a million times."

"What's so terrible about swimming?"

"Mostly, it's everything with the water."

"I see."

"It's too hard, and it doesn't make any sense, and it's just terrible."

"Are you saying you don't like it because it's a challenge? Because you have to try?"

[pause]

"No."

"Do you remember when you first started playing baseball? How you swung your bat like crazy and couldn't hit a thing?"

"Uh-huh."

"Do you remember how you practiced and practiced, and how you felt when you hit your first home run?"

"Uh-huh."

"Why do you think you can hit home runs and routinely beat the snot out of me when we play dingerball? Because you practiced and got better. Because you tried."

[long pause]

"Dad, everything you say is completely stupid."

The life aquatic

It's Friday, when all the work-based small talk shifts into Weekend Plans. There are those whose lifestyles are a bit less fraught than mine. Who like the Night Life. Who like to Boogie. These are the  Free People who triumphantly go nuts all night and sleep until sundown. Fridays are pretty tame for me, though, because Saturday mornings are spent at the pool, where stamina is the only currency.

I like the idea of my kids knowing how to swim, because every kid should know how to do it. It's a gateway skill for boating, and water parks, and Marco Polo. Also, my children live on an island that will one day be overcome by melting icecaps.

The boys and I did a lot of pool-hopping last summer; Robert practiced keeping his head under water for as long as one whole second, and TwoBert fell in love with jumping onto my head. Then Robert started classes last fall, and when TwoBert saw all the thrashing and splashing going on he demanded inclusion. So now, every Saturday, we scuttle off to the Y with the poolaphernalia on my back, TwoBert on my shoulders, and sleep on my mind.

TwoBert's Little Dipper class is run like any other group activity for 2-year-olds, except 1) the kids are all trussed up with floaties, and 2) the parents are nearly naked. We sing songs, we splash, we play with squirty toys, and toward the end we swim a lap or two. TwoBert's favorite ritual is climbing out of the pool and jumping back in, because jumping on Daddy's head is still the best thing ever.  For me, the experience is kind of like being attacked by a giant, flailing wolverine--especially if it's been a while since I've trimmed his nails.

Class ends. We shower, we dress. Robert fulfills his duty as Chief of Staff for Drying the Suits in the Big Buzzing Thing. We kill about 20 minutes around the corner at the bakery, where Daddy gets his second crucial infusion of caffeine. And then we return for Round II.

Robert is a Sea Horse, so I get to sit off the side and watch him ignore the teacher's instructions while his exhausted brother dozes on the floor. Then Robert practices diving, whereby he carefully joins his hands over his head, bends down, and hits the water on fours like a coffee table. Toward the end there's play time, when the splashing gets a little intense, but I can always pick Robert out of the crowd because his tinted goggles make him look a lot like Roy Orbison.

This is easily the best four hours of my week, even though when I get home I really really really want a nap. But it's no big deal, because swim classes will end at the end of March--just in time for T-ball.

Not particularly uplifting

Did anyone click over to watch the Hitchens/Boteach debate? Did you watch the entire thing? All 90 minutes? Of course you didn't. I was there, and I didn't. If you're looking for the basic nub of the gist of the whole thing, you should watch the opening arguments, each about 15 minutes long. Hitchens, the more skilled debater, weighs in with a litany of scientific and rational reasoning, while Boteach screams that God exists because Hitchens is a dick.

The evening got less and less fun as the arguments became more shrill/withering, and if you watch long enough you can hear the groans from the crowd. Then the moderator finally loses it and asks Boteach straight up, "What does this have to do with God?" We were basically writhing in the aisles toward the end, and we left the building feeling really, really earthbound.

And then God thought He would punctuate the sentiment, yea verily, by reaching out his Godly hand and smiting my elevator. So I couldn't "ascend." Clever, right? Such symbolism.

Since most of the apartments in my building are rent-stabilized, we've still got a host of really strange characters roaming the halls. And the elevator is as much a character as any of them. It was found in a thawed polar ice cap back in the 20s, and extensive carbon dating revealed it was hewn from a petrified lava formation by Cro-Magnon hominids. Its interior is a sallow beige with brown trim and "O SMOKIN" stenciled on the rear wall. The floor is shale tiles, most of which are broken. And the mechanism craps out approximately every 20 minutes. The repair guy and I knew each other's first names, and at one stretch he came to service the old box every day for two straight weeks. It was unreliable, it was dirty, it stank.

And now it's D.O.A.

The new management company, the one desperate to monetize its new property, has decided to save the body by ripping out its circulatory system and starting from scratch. They'll be here at the beginning of March and assure us the brand-new elevator (connected to a new basement laundry room) will be done in four months. Which means by the time it's truly done (and inspected), TwoBert will be carrying me up the 68 steps.

So look for us this summer! You'll know us right away, because we'll be the three strapping lads whose calves can crush walnuts.

Wailing and bleating at an empty sky

I've had a relapse. Dame Fortune has given me a glimpse of life as a fully sensate being, and then cruelly slammed the door. Once again I can't smell or taste a thing; for lunch I got a steaming bowl of Mexican chicken soup, replete with cilantro and habaneros, and it might just as well have been runny wallpaper paste.

I recant. Religion is an opiate, God is dead, and Hitchens, though something of a douche, is right.

Was anosmic, but now I smell--part II

I am not a religious person. Not particularly spiritual either, frankly. I'll admit a mild interest when Deepak Chopra natters on about layers and levels of consciousness, but when people ask me my religious views, I say "askance." I have to admit, though, that the events of the past 72 hours smack of a little deus ex machina.

Sunday: I wake up for Lumberjack breakfast feeling remarkably lucid, considering that the night before I'd had (and thrown up) enough whiskey to drown a hamster. The rest of the day leaks slowly downhill, and I'm pretty wobbly when I go to bed. But I can't fall asleep, because I'm seized with a sense of panic over my clogged nostrils. I'm suddenly overwhelmed with the need to clear them, because otherwise I will suffocate in my sleep. Has this happened to you? I've had a handful of these attacks, which started out of the blue about three years ago, and when they happen there's usually nothing to do but suck down some Rescue Remedy and watch DVDs until I pass out. Which I do, at 4:30am.

Monday: I e-mail work to say I won't be in. ("Sinus. Cough. Phlegm. Me die now.") Picture a gallon of petroleum jelly on a Lazy Susan doing a few hundred RPM; that's my morning. I gulp down another Styrofoam breakfast and head to the doctor, who hands me a scrip for a few Zithro pellets. While I'm waiting at the pharmacy, I pick up some nasal spray, two bags of lozenges, and some Cold and Sinus meds (for which I must sign my name and provide ID; people have bought plutonium with less hassle). My troop surge is ready, and the battle is joined. But for now I'm still in Food Jail, and I make a list of things I'm going to eat as soon as I can taste again.

Tuesday: Community service day at work, and a handful of us go to serve lunch at the Bowery Mission. I'm still blocked, but the phlegm is in retreat after the shock and awe of my medicinal assault, and I am deemed healthy enough to serve. The Mission is a wonderful facility that not only provides food, shelter, showers, and clothes for the homeless, but members in its six-month program can improve their lives through GED classes, computer training, and five daily hours of mass and Bible study. Everyone there knows they'll be OK, because Jesus Christ is shepherding them through the storm. The walls are filled with hand-drawn iconography, and the kitchen blasts nothing but choir-sung hymns on a boom box.

As I help prepare the meal (this is the first soup kitchen I've worked in that actually serves soup), the music reaches out and absorbs us all. Jesus Will Care For You. Glory of His Everlasting Love. Washed in the Blood of the Lamb. (Ew.) Everyone seems quite happy, blessed to be led by Jesus's hand and given a second chance. Right before service, our kitchen steward Harry hears me in a coughing fit (yes, I was away from the food) and says to be patient, for the Lord hears your pain and will heal you when it's time.

Then it's time to serve, and after about 15 minutes of working my ladle I am struck by a strange sensation. Is that ... rosemary? Sage? Sweet Mary Resplendent, is that roasted meat? I stand back, startled, feeling like George Bailey after Clarence gives him back his hearing. I can smell! I can smell! I have been touched by an angel, who has restored my senses and made me whole again! AND AS GOD IS MY WITNESS, I'LL NEVER BE ANOSMIC AGAIN!!!

Or maybe it was just the steam from the soup. Hard to say, really.

Tonight: I make Daddy's Pork Chops for the boys. They are moist, and succulent, and I savor every last bite like I'm about to get the chair.

And ten minutes later, TwoBert fills his pants with as macabre a stew as you can fathom. Proof that the sword of salvation is double-edged.

Was anosmic, but now I smell

One thing you probably wouldn't know about me from my writing is that I've been coughing for about a month. It started innocuously enough, somewhere in the middle of the NFL playoffs, and it's been here ever since, steady as a Swiss watch, forcing up lung butter about four times an hour. Apart from that, I felt healthy as a sprig, asymptomatic. So I carried on and figured I could wait it out, as long as I didn't mind that every time I laughed I sounded like I had Stage 4 emphysema.

Time passed, and the butter kept a-churnin', until finally late last week when the muck monster staged an offensive and annexed most of my head. My sinuses buckled under the mucus assault, and by Thursday I had no sense of smell. This was a boon for changing fouled diapers, but a considerable drawback when it came to detecting them. So for the last few days I've had to rely on Robert's anguished cries of "Dad? Are you telling me you can't smell that?" I've also learned to anticipate a poop based on TwoBert's new habit of suddenly leaving the room. If he's been gone for a few minutes, it's a safe bet he's off somewhere in the corner, filling his gutches.

The real problem, of course, is that I haven't been able to taste anything, either. I get hungry, but it's hard to get motivated to eat anything when it's all going to taste like Styrofoam peanuts.

And it's especially perilous when it comes to drinking.

Saturday night I went to an open-bar engagement party and started in with a few fingers of Maker's, neat. Just as I was finishing, an attentive young sprite who clearly meant well handed me another one. How considerate, I thought, as I tucked into Mark Two. Dinner came, as did Marks Three through ... I dunno, a million? And by 10pm I found myself as helplessly drunk as I'd been in 20 years. I was reeling on the way home, bouncing off buildings like Lewis Winthorpe, and when I somehow found my building I staggered upstairs and refunded my dinner.

I was initially perplexed over how it all could have gone so terribly wrong, until I remembered.  When you're without a sense of smell, fire water tastes just like water, even though the fire is still  burning through your bloodstream.

Enough was enough. Sure, I had endured four weeks of listening to my chest creak and wheeze like the hold of a ship. Sure, I seriously considered eating a dinner of cold hot dogs. But now, I had abased myself like some dipshit in the basement of Sigma Chi. It was time to marshal the forces, arm them with some serious drugs, and unleash hell on the Phortress of Phlegm ...

And you'll have to tune in tomorrow for the inspirational, cathartic, and extremely messy conclusion.

The chill of death

There's no use beating about the bushy presence that once occupied my cheeks. Yesterday, I shaved off my beard.

It's hard to pinpoint what motivates me to shave off the face-hedge and face the world again. I've grown about a dozen of them now, and each time they come off the decision strikes like a thunderbolt. I get into the house and the clippers are in my hand before the key leaves the lock. (This is because I've been so focused on shaving that I've neglected to remove the keys from the lock, where they stay for the next several hours until they are discovered by a family member, or a neighbor, or the drifter whom that indolent pothead in 2F buzzed in again.) Sometimes the beard leaves in stages, from the Clyde to the Zappa to the What-Now?. But this time it was off in a trice, from cheek to chaff in four minutes. Several events brought this about.

1. I'm going to a wedding celebration dinner on Saturday, and the groom recently told me I will be the oldest person there. Beards are great for stroking when you want to appear lost in thought, but they do tend to age a man. If I'm to be the elder statesman at this dinner, I might as well look as youthful as possible while I demand a sodium-free meal and a seat by the men's room.
2. Beards are also great defenses against the cold, which New York has apparently outlawed. We're into February now, and we've had at most a few flurries, none of which have stuck (despite breathless predictions to the contrary). Yesterday it was 60 degrees, and I spent my commute home sweating in my coat and clawing at my face.
3. The beard began as a sympathy exercise for my father, a/k/a LOGD, who will likely be prohibited from shaving until June. Dad was originally grumpy about having to abandon his smoooooth lifestyle, but now all he ever talks about is The Flattery. He's so distinguished, they say. Rugged, they say. The man is clearly rocking it, and therefore needs no "sympathy" from me.

I admit I have been feeling my age lately, thinking about how my life is more than half over and stuff. Watching your kids grow can do that to you, make you feel older and colder (see the last line in E.B. White's "Once More to the Lake"). Case in point:

1. Most nights, the boys and I play "High Five Jeopardy." We watch the show (doing our best to blot out the know-it-all resmugnance of Alex Trebek), and every time I guess the question the boys and I slap the flesh. Last night, Robert answered one on his own. It's true. Trebek started talking about the fifth planet from the sun, and out of nowhere came "What is Jupiter?" I was so temporarily flabbergasted I couldn't defend myself when TwoBert yelped "HIGH FIVE!" and knocked my glasses off.
2. Not to be outdone, TwoBert got out of his high chair ten minutes later, shed his diaper, and dropped a log in the dog-dish pottything.

Time is inexorable. Some day, well after TwoBert has learned to routinely defecate outside his pants, Robert will get on to Jeopardy! and give Ken Jennings a run for his money. And I will be huddled under an afghan in the Rest Home's TV lounge, watching proudly and secretly wishing Robert would walk over to Trebek, flick him in the nose, and say "Stop it."

The hands that go *slap* in the night

I'm having a tough time typing this, because on my way home from the Super Bowl party I must have exchanged violent, running-start, mid-air High Tens with the 300,000 or so Giants fans who have taken to the streets after tonight's win. My palms are still throbbing, and my metacarpals are in deep distress.

It's my own fault, I suppose. Normally, I believe 40-year-old men should be Constitutionally banned from wearing team jerseys. But I suspend this rule when I whip out the one jersey I own, an old-school Phil Simms that I found lying in a heap in the corner of Modell's a few summers ago. I've worn it for each game during the Giants' improbable run to glory, and now I will take offers from all rabid collectors who might want to own the Magic Talisman, the Wonder Garment that is solely--solely!--responsible for Big Blue's third Lombardi trophy. It is also the reason why dozens of NYU college kids descended on me, like drunken seagulls to a fish barge, and beat my hands to deliriously happy pulps.

I'm not going to sit here and tell you I thought the Giants had a chance. Because I didn't. My plan was to watch the first half with the boys (complete with the requisite whooping and head-butting) until their bedtime and then, if the game was still competitive, head out to watch the second half with The Boys. It was, so I did, and when the Giants went ahead for good I was shocked. Or I would have been, had it not been for all the whooping and head-butting.

You know what the best part of all this is? The game lived up to the hype. The undefeated juggernaut looking to complete a perfect season vs. the team most people wrote off for dead six weeks ago. The marquee quarterback against the kid brother of the other marquee quarterback. Boston vs. New York. The Week 17 thriller. The spying scandal. If you tried to pitch this as a screenplay treatment, even the after-school-special people would call you a hack and pelt you with loogies.

But it's real, and it's mine to cherish. And I have the destroyed hands to prove it.