Laid-Off Dad

The violin versus the ass crack

It's an age-old debate, right? And today on Babble Voices, I've written a piece that speaks about how it pertained to my ultimate decision to tell New York, "It's not me. It's you":

This is the paradox of New York City, the place you love and hate and love and hate and love, that nurtures creativity with one sooty hand and chokes it with the other, as exciting and replete a slophole as you could ever want to inhabit. This paradox also formed the fulcrum of the months-long debate between ManMe and DadMe, over whether it was time to move out and raise the kids somewhere else.

You can read the rest of here. And then you can rest assured that I'm just about through whining writing about it. The move is next week, and the new life awaits. Time to shut up and get on with it.

Surfing on The Turbid Spume

The title of this post has meant a lot to me over the last few years, since my little controlled environment of a life burst a seam. When I was younger, I had a very specific idea of what my life would be like when I reached my 40s. (Comfort, stasis, cutting the grass in my Dad Shorts, that sort of thing.) Which, in the bold light of now, seems perfectly pathetic.

All of this speaks to the transformative power of a shitstorm or two. But since Babble didn't care for "The Gathering Shitstorm" as a title (despite entreaties of "C'mon! GoogleAds loves Churchill references!), I went with the next best thing, my little mantra that came to me in a daydream and has helped fortify me ever since.

The Turbid Spume is about "pulling down your pants and sliding on the ice." (Which was also a rejected title.) About pushing forward, dispelling preconceptions, and taking a leap over the pit of vipers (and mixed metaphors) toward the brass ring. And hopefully not waiting until you're 45 to do it.

The most recent post about my housing search is sort of out-of-date now, but I still enjoy it because although it fazed the hell out of me, it finally knuckled under to willpower and a (mostly) unflagging surety that it would all work out eventually. It's exhilarating not to assume that a lack of control always leads to disaster. Sometime, shit just works out.

Get after it. Speak your mind. Fire 'til it clicks. Repeat.

Back in the bed of my own making

After two weeks of Toledo Tumult, I'm happy to tell you that the world is a safer place with me back in New York. I want to choose my words carefully here, because the fact is I could never have weathered the Great Ann Arbor House Hunt if my incredibly generous ex-in-laws hadn't offered up their couch for 1o (TEN!) days. It should have been only 7 (SEVEN!) days, but I had to pay Spirit Airlines 175 (ONE HUNDRED AND SEVENTY GODDAMN FIVE!) dollars to change my flight and 40 (FORTY!) more for my suitcase, in a last-ditch attempt to snag a domicile before I left town.

And snag I did, in a typical example of resideus ex machina. I had spent most of my post-BlogHer week pinballing from house to house, getting back to the couch at 11 (ELEVEN!) pm and soothing my panic-filled insomnia with Rescue Remedy and Garrison Keillor monologues. Every place I saw was way too large, or way too shabby, or way too far from school. I called, I e-mailed, I texted. I was bought lunch by a prominent landlord afflicted with temporary paraplegia (due to recent spine surgery), and who wowed the boys with his pimped-out, ramped-out minivan. I spent my idle time wondering where I and my Life Truck might live after we arrived in A2 (TWO!) with no place to land.

There was even talk that--out of desperate necessity and/or an appetite for the sweet release of death--my ex-wife and I and my crap might co-inhabit a house for a month while my highly incentivized self searched for my own place.

But the powers of Light and Darkness convened an emergency session and decided that the cosmos could not endure that. So on Saturday it sent me a very nice couple with three bedrooms and new appliances and a large, sunny, fenced-in backyard, and I gave them some money and now I get to pile all my crap into it. And my kids will walk .36 (POINT THREE SIX!) miles to school each day, there will likely be snow, and it actually is uphill both ways. All part of my continuing effort to base my kids' childhood on Bill Cosby monologues.

After I signed the lease, the boys and I let loose as only boys can, and got LIBRARY CARDS! And signed up for a week of SUMMER CAMP! And checked out the neighborhood POOL! which smells a lot less GROSS than the NEGLECTSTINK we're used to! 

Throughout the odyssey of CouchCon, I think my strategy for embracing this new Midwestern life was merely to establish some kind of foothold, so when I got back here for two weeks of born-again bachelorhood, I could envision that my life was there, with my kids, and my car, and my house with all its newfound creature comforts. As I spend my last days here writing and packing and bending elbows with whomever is still around, it feels good to feel a bit more removed. And to look forward to seeing the boys again when I pull into my new driveway on September 1st. (FIRST!)

Furloughed from Cat Prison!

How's that for a headline? If that doesn't get your SEO gyroscopes a-spinning, please reach down to your chest and investigate whether you are dead. Or perhaps you're just not reacting to it as emotionally as I do, because you've never done time in the kitty hoosegow.

First, the backstory: Moxie and I and the boys have been living with her parents for about a week. (Hel-LO, wacky sitcom! I'd like to be played by Will "Kiss of Death" Arnett after his umpteenth consecutive show is canceled.)

Second, the back-backstory: Moxie brought her cats out here last month, and they don't get along well with her parents' cat, who has a Hepburnesque distate for intruders and guff. So the intruders have been quarantined in the basement for several weeks and have basically reached the "Get busy living, or get busy dying" stage of their incarceration. And I got to sleep with them, in a basement that through some miracle of physics is actually ten degrees hotter than the rest of the house.

All this might sound pretty dire, but--at the risk of boring everyone's pants off--it's working out a lot better than it could have. This is largely due to Grandma Jellyspoon, whose arms were the first to reach for me when the boys and I pulled into her driveway. And who, when I told her that the cats spent the nights shivving each other and meowing "AT-TI-CA!", paroled me to the couch.

For the past several days I've been scampering around A2 looking for housing, and I'd like to let the word go forth from this time and place that I am an idiot. Coming from the Big, Bad Apple, I thought finding a place here would be a snap. Instead, I've met with a steady flow of 1) shrugs, 2) head-shakes, and 3) crap. There was also the perfect house, which slipped through my fingers when a buyer emerged at the last second. 

People aren't leaving, because they know what I'm learning: Ann Arbor is pretty great. The kids are going to camp next week, Robert has volunteered (!) to run a 5K in Chicago in October, and they spent the other morning singing with Grandma and making mint jelly from scratch. This is what sustains me (as did all your comments and e-mails, and BlogHer, which could not have been better-timed), and helps convince me that this gamble could pay off.