Laid-Off Dad

Return to the Urban Playpen

The new masthead says it all: New Englapalooza was a complete gas. Five states in 10 days, clear(ish) weather, gracious hosts, sweet corn, sunblock, and a car with enough sand in it to gag a bedouin. The boys are starting to look the way boys should in summertime: tan lines, freckles, and bug bites.

Oh, yes. The bugs. We've had a really wet spring in the northeast, so the bugs have had an extraordinary opportunity to grow large and conversational. They're like pets, coming and going as they please. But when you show enough temerity to invade their space, which is Everywhere Else, they are not shy about exacting their pounds of flesh, a few ounces at a time.

The masthead is a silhouette of Robert, the Seven-Year-Old Wrecking Machine, on a rope swing in New Hampshire. I owe that swing a debt of gratitude, because after Day 8 Robert announced he was ready to head back to the city. Because he missed sitting around watching Star Wars and building LEGO warships. Dad the Ogre had to state calmly but firmly that we had a plan, and we were sticking to it. I understood, though, because eight days is one of the longest stretches that Robert has ever been out of Manhattan, and he's already taking on telltale characteristics of the Entitled Applecentric. On Day 4, he lamented that there was no place to get a "good bagel."

Enter the rope swing. It was Robert's first encounter with one, and he began slowly, gingerly gliding into the lake from the second step. By the end of the day, however, he was up at the top step, flinging himself outward, limbs splayed, blaring out the Indiana Jones theme. Suddenly, we were leaving too soon, and Dad the Ogre had to take him back to the city. Where the only rope swings presumably have someone's neck in them.

So now we're back. And it's no longer 75 and breezy. And I no longer have a designated spot to park my car. And I'm feeling very grateful, because I'm not sure how many times the three of us will be able to take off for such a long stretch. But the good news is that Mama has a new full-time job, so the boys will be with me all day, every day, for the next four weeks. Look for us to be out and about, marveling at how docile the bugs are.

Token testicles, redux

So. Show of hands: Who's going to BlogHer this weekend?

I'm disappointed to say I won't be, but not because of anything approaching a bad experience. Believe the BlogHerbole: it's truly a blast. It's gotten much huger than my first one in 2006, but frankly, it would be hard to top last year's Community Keynote and book signing and Haus party and and andandand. And besides, as part of our incredibly Byzantine divorce negotiations*, Moxie is going instead. Whereas I get to supervise the boys as they use their new sand spades to move the entire New England coastline two feet to the left.

* Kidding. I've been to two of these things now, and interloped at a couple of BlogHer Businesses. To be four up on her at this point seems a little out of whack.

If you're interested in re-living the magic, here's my brief baritonous bit from last year's keynote. And once it's over, you can peruse all the other speakers who came together, as Eden so writely wrote, to "kick 10,000 pounds of ass":

I'm still very proud to have taken part in it, to have been backstage for all the laughter, the sniffles, and nervous gulps of gin. And I'm prouder still to see that more men (who will be busily playing with their vaginas) will be speaking this year. There's even a men's panel! (Be sure to observe proper protocol and sip your drink every time you hear "fart," "wiener," or "Heywood Jablome.")

If you're fortunate enough to go, the best way to enjoy yourself is not to assume you'll see everything and meet everybody. You won't. But you can still take things an hour at a time, scarf CheeseburgHers, summon the Fail Whale, amass crapswag for your kids--and meet a whole lot of very interesting, wordnerdy people who are working just as hard to navigate the BlogHerati (and adjust their Spanx) as you are.

Have a great time, and put up lots of posts and tweets and yfrogs and vimeos and bloggerdramas for me to peruse afterward--assuming the boys remember where they buried me.

Feel good time

This morning, as I sit here convincing myself that scrambled eggs have less cholesterol than fried ones, I can't tell you how unbelievably great it is to have the kids in the neighborhood. I just can't tell you. I will try to tell you, naturally, but I'm reasonably certain that I just can't do it. It's amazing. Stupendous. It's as if a magic CO₂ siphon descended from the sky and re-bubbled my seltzer. I'm sort of frothing all over the place.

Last night I walked the kids over to my apartment for a Daddy Supreme, watched a little baseball, and when Mama came by to pick them up she stayed for a bit and watched "Grease." TwoBert shook his booty to "Summer Lovin'," and Mama and I took turns explaining to a quizzical Robert why Danny is such a dick at the bonfire.

Earlier this week, I spent two days cleaning out the old apartment, burying 17 years of my life, and I can't say I was terribly ready for the experience. Weird flashbacks to 1992, when the former super, a puffy-eyed Croat with a strangely cylindrical head, showed me the place.

Also earlier this week, I went to see the New York Philharmonic in Central Park and was seated next to my friend's au pair, who will be here all summer before she returns to Germany in September. We were managing a conversation through crummy English and crummier German when I mentioned that I was in Berlin when the wall came down. And she said something like, "When the wall is falling is when I am being born!"

Whereupon I made the point that I have shirts older than she is. Und ve laffed und laffed.*

She might have thought I was joking. Sadly, today's outfit proves otherwise:

* Note: This is not real German. It is fake German, imagined by me as it might be spoken by Sgt. Schultz.

The boys and I are headed out for a 10-day New Englapalooza. See you in August.

The bad is crummy, but the good is pretty great

Well, here we are again. Three weeks into another writing drought. The sad truth is that there hasn't been a lot of time to write since Bridget the WonderSitter, who has looked after the boys for most of TwoBert's life, left us. She finished school and uprooted herself to America's Wang, leaving behind the greatest city on the planet in favor of stultifying heat and giant, flying cockroaches. So for the past four weeks I worked on a project from 8am to 1pm and boywrangled from 2 to 7; Mama, vice versa. When dinnertime came it was amazing either one of us was able to stand, much less form a sentient thought.

The boys are enjoying the hell out of their summer vacations, and finally, wonderfully, mercifully, so am I. My project is over, and the boys and I will celebrate the end of the second-wettest June in LOD history with a trip to the beach, where the boys will spend hours hurling themselves at the waves and counting their wipeouts.

But there is better news. Tomorrow, Mama and the boys are moving to my neighborhood. The new apartment is larger, cheaper, and closer, and I'm sort of over the moon about it. Because the trip to see my boys is going from a 10-mile ride to a 10-minute walk.

I hope I don't sprain anything from all the fist-pumping.