DadCentric

Sunday Scary

For all you parents out there considering the idea of bringing a nanny into your employ, be sure you get the non-scary version. Guys like me will have to be content scaring our own kids.

It really is all about the editing.

Saturday Silly

So we missed the Friday Funny, it happens.  Here is an example of the kind of email my sister sends me.  She things I appreciate stuff like this, and she's right.  Thanks, Fanny.

 

 

 

   

 

A Little Life

Today is the Day of The Dead. Seems like it would be a rather morbid affair, this holiday, but no; the cultures that celebrate El Dia de Los Muertos honor the lives of the deceased, and reaffirm the notion that death is not the end, but the beginning of a new stage of life.

The day of the living. That I can dig, especially after the past couple of weeks. The fires, of course; there's still a faint smell of smoke in the air, and the sunsets remain perversely beautiful. The week of the dead, in a sense; we've all been walking around in a daze, like the decaying stars of George Romero's zombie movies. But even before the fires, I felt like I was in some sort of Purgatory. My current job is a nightmare; everything that I abhor about Corporate America is manifested there - incompetant, callous managers, and miserable employees who stumble through their work day, eyes downcast, too dejected to even quit. It's Dunder-Mifflin, only not funny, and I realized that I'm spending about 8 hours a day too many there; being around such detached, miserable people tends to chip away at you.

But one can't be a parent and a cynic.

The timing was impeccable. A birthday, on this day that many spend celebrating lives lived and the life to come. Seems perfect. A name - Zoe - that we immediately chose upon learning that she was, in fact, a she, a name that we later learned means "life" in Greek. Our daughter, our little Life, born today.

Ding, Dong the Witch is Dead, or Thank God That's Over

Christ.  Is October the longest month on record, or what?  Last month, especially the last four days, was like watching paint dry on some snails that were racing through slow growing grass planted in quicksand.  I had to use toothpicks to prop my eyes open.

At first I thought that it was due to Halloween falling on a Wednesday.  That meant that most of the parties and craziness that are normally associated with the holiday were but a distant memory come Halloween morning.  The day wasn't filled with anticipation of tricks or treats, but rather digging through closets, cars and laundry piles, trying to find pieces of costumes that were peeled off of sleeping children just days before.

In hindsight, I think it was more than that.  To put it in rather coarse sexual terms for no apparent reason, I didn't pace myself.  I peaked too early.  When other parents were just tickling the fancy of Halloween I was knocking its pumpkin head against the, well, headboard.  When other parents were eying candy and costumes I was on my back, smoking a cigarette and hoping someone had a key to the handcuffs. 

It was October, I should have at least been thinking about baseball.  Damn Red Sox.  Basically, I treated Halloween like something slutty and cheap.  It wanted to be wooed and I showed it the wow.

What?  It could have been the wow.

So that meant that Wednesday morning, when everyone else was preparing for the night ahead, I was nursing a figurative hangover and hoping that pumpkins can't get pregnant.  They can't, right?

If I have to blame someone for the rush of emotion that was our Halloween-mania it has to be my oldest boy.  This year he has taken Halloween to previously unknown heights. He enjoyed Halloween last year, we went to Disneyland and apparently set the bar too high.  I thought we were just having fun.  I didn't realize that I was planting the seed of high expectations.  This year it was on.

Candy was an afterthought, icing on the proverbial cake.  He was all about ghosts and jack-o-lanterns.  He was about monsters and boogers (I don't know).  The entire month was a build-up of the spooky and the ooky.  Every conversation centered on skeletons and monsters.  In fact, it still does.  Here  we are one day removed and aside from the occasional M&M the day has been just like any other.  Our song remains the same.

This is where the vicious circle thing comes into play.  So done am I with the ghost of Halloween that I'm already pushing the next big thing- Thanksgiving.  For every mention today of specters or goblins I've introduced the topic of turkey.  Let's talk turkey, I'll say, and the blank response speaks volumes. 

We are not prepared to give thanks just yet, unless it's for skeletons and boogers. Besides, I'm damn sure not screwing a turkey.  We gotta eat that thing.