Laid-Off Dad

I, haus-herr

So OK, the week started off with a yuk- (and yuck-) worthy anecdote. But believe me, it was no trouble. I'd looked forward to Solo Week for a long time, mostly because seven years of parenting has taught me that I really like this stuff. I like getting the boys ready for school, and mingling with other parents at drop-off. I like giving TwoBert the Big Daddy Squeeze right after he gets up from his nap. I like all the mundane household cleaning and erranding. I don't know what that says about me as a man, and whether I fell off the bed a few too many times as an infant, but dammit, it makes me happy.

After the clog was dislodged, everything absolutely did all go downhill from there. And by downhill, I mean it was great. I don't get why people refer to "downhill" as a bad thing, since there's no such thing as a "downhill battle." But then again, I don't get why people substitute "hopefully" for "I hope," or say they "could care less" about something, or use terms like "verbage" and "foilage" and "intensive purposes." But that's just me, your friendly neighborhood SAHD wannabe/usage nerd.

We had a few revelations during the week. I'm happy to report, most importantly, that Robert seems to be over A-Rod. I offered him his A-Rod t-shirt to wear to school, and he roundly refused, adding: "Why don't you give this to some jerk who likes him?" This could be an all-important step toward curing his Yankophilia. And TwoBert, ever the philosopher, is impressed by my beard and wants to know why I can't grow one on my head.

But the week's signature flourish came when I Netflixed Charlie Kaufman's latest, "Synecdoche, New York." After I'd finished cleaning my ex-wife's bathroom, I saw a character (and this isn't a spoiler, given the film's complexity) become obsessed with cleaning his ex-wife's bathroom. I was sucked into meta-reality, wondered openly whether anyone was staging my own life, and spent the next half hour scrubbing my brain parts out of the living room carpet.

My week, and welcome to it

When I arrived at the old apartment to begin my week-long stay with the boys, my ex-wife greeted me in the lobby wearing nothing but a robe -- and a grimace that could corrode a car bumper. She was about to shower in our super's apartment because a clog had sealed off the kitchen sink, and the drainage had backed up into the bathtub. When I got upstairs and set my case down, there it was -- about 12 cubic feet of greasy brownness whose only saving grace was Thank God It Ain't Sewage.

This was Sunday, when all plumbers are too ensconced in their spelling bees and whist tournaments to answer a call of distress. The super took a crack at it for about half an hour, until the ends of his snake frayed (true) and he dislocated his pelvis (not true, but funny). So we ate out, and when it came time to brush our teeth we averted our eyes, lest we entice the evil ooze to rise up and stifle us all.

The next day the plumber got here at the crack of Ninety Minutes After He Said He Would and whipped out his snake, which made the super's shrivel in embarrassment. He drilled and ground and heaved for about half an hour until Snake Two also bit the dust. The clog was encamped, cemented into its new lair. The ooze burbled haughtily.

It was time to go get ... the Big Snake. The one they use to clear sewage lines and dig chunnels.

He left for the supplier and came back promptly at Two Hours After He Said He Would, armed with an inch-thick cable wrapped around his torso like a bandolier. As he affixed it to his drill and worked it down the sink, he said -- in a perfect Tony Montana accent -- "say hello to my little friend!" The struggle was epic, the kind that makes "The Old Man and the Sea" look like a four-year-old with a Pocket Fisherman. With each press, he worked his snake a little deeper. Around the corner, out of view in the bathroom, the ooze sloshed and hissed. It rose, it fell, it heaved. And then the two of us heard this sickly belch, followed by the unmistakeable sound of a geyser hitting a shower curtain.

And that's how I ended up in the latest place I thought I'd never be: Scrubbing grease, grime, and plumberguck from just about every surface in my ex-wife's bathroom. Whatever the week held in store, it would all have to be downstream from here. Right?

The real surreal life

I grew my first beard when I was 24 and backpacking around Europe. And as it grew in, I was sort of startled by the facts that 1) I had total face coverage in about 10 days and 2) a lot of my chin hair was auburny red. Ever since I've thought of my chin as its own Fuzzy Pumper Barber Shop, loaded up with orange Play-Doh.

So now, spring is springing, I'm off work for two weeks, and I'm coming to grips with my new identity as something of a Manhattan Mountain Man. Naturally, I'm letting the face hair out for its annual fling. And now that it's been 10 days, there's been a new development: 

 

Behold: the grayness.

It's not all that troubling, really. Plenty of vital individuals have rocked the gray beards. Da Vinci, Gandalf, Redd Foxx. But I'm also potentially on the downhill slope toward becoming That Guy, the old crank at the end of the block who shakes his fist and screams "Consarn it!" when your ball lands in his pachysandra. A chilling prospect.

I will try to stave off this newest evidence of encroaching death by spending the week living in my old apartment, with my current children, while Mama's out of town. It's all so familiar, yet decidedly not; I will know exactly where I am but have no clue where anything is. Perhaps I will emerge from this alternate reality as Gandalf the White, which would be totally cool -- except my lease probably doesn't allow horses.

Staycation: All I ever wanted

On this, the second day of my staycation, I had great plans. I girded my loins for a trip to the DMV to finally register my car in New York. Currently it has Jersey plates on it--and not even the most recent style, which looks like a pool of dissipating urine. It's an older style that was designed by a very morose person to be only a little less ugly than the beige-and-black atrocities I grew up with. All legalities aside, there's a very important aesthetic imperative at stake.

Also, my car looks like 1) it's not from the neighborhood and 2) is taking up space that could be for someone who is from the neighborhood, which could lead to 3) god-knows-what on my windshield. People take this crap seriously up here.

As usual, though, the best laid plans went kerflooey. So I figured I'd take this little time before I go pick up the boys from school and assure what's left of my readership that I'm not dead. I admit, though, that it's been a challenge to sit down and write about myself lately. It just hasn't seemed natural, because of all the truly juicy stuff that's going on in my life right now. Like [MATERIAL REDACTED] and [CAN'T TALK ABOUT THAT, EITHER] and [DRAMA! ALWAYS WITH THE EFFING DRAMA!]. Sometimes, when your life accelerates into a turgid spume, you get the idea that maybe it'll all go away if you refuse to write about it.

But hey, it's springtime in Manhattan. The weather is warming, and people we haven't seen for months are emerging from their little Habitrails and embracing the outdoors once again. Today I'll take the boys to our favorite cloistered playground, where we've been going for years, and take part in the annual rite of marveling at how large and obnoxious all the other kids have become. It's the simple pleasures that feed your soul.