DadCentric

Mace Windu is Not The Only Jedi with a Purple Lightsaber

In recognition of George Lucas' latest attempt to wring cash out of a franchise that's been rode hard and put away wet chapter in the Star Wars saga, we bring you this post from Offsprung's Terrible Mother. It's simply awesome.

Two To The Face; Big Disgrace

I just finished reading this little article about a high school wrestler who, while pinned down by his opponent during practice, was subjected to a face full of sack from a third high school-aged individual who saw an opportune moment to T-bag the poor bastard while he was incapacitated.  The baller - so to speak - was subsequently arrested and released on bond equal to $500 per testicle.  This got me thinking...

First of all, the T-bagger just earned himself some major locker room cred right there, man.  Damn!  That was hella badass.  Second, and probably more importantly, how do you ensure the communication lines are open when your young son begins to wonder whether or not (or how) he should flop his junk around on other kids' faces?  As we all dream of one day, it would be great to have the type of relationship with our children that allows them to tell us or ask us anything, but, let's be honest...that may not happen with this kind of stuff. Is there some literature or maybe some Best Practices books on the seedy underbelly of locker room shenanigans?

I have girls, mind you.  My wife will be handling this shit in my family.  I'm just trying to look out for you other guys.

 

Ghosts of Chicago

For the first time ever, I felt good about taking my 8-year-old girl to Chicago to meet with her rheumatologist.

Six summers ago, my daughter suddenly broke out in a rash on her face, hands and legs. Her face and hands began to swell. She started covering her legs in Blue's Clues bandages. We figured out, much later, that this was her pre-school attempt to make her muscles hurt less so she could get up and down the stairs.

After two months of stumbling from private dermatologist to private dermatologist, one at the local children's hospital took a single look at our daughter, limp as wet rag in my arms, and told us she had juvenile dermatomyositis, an autoimmune disease related to lupus with no known cause or cure.

The doctors started pumping her full of steroids and her red, blotchy little body started ballooning. Her immune system was forcibly suppressed so low that stupid little things, like a stubbed toe I didn't clean and bandage soon enough, developed into staph infections. In the hospital stays that followed each new complication, I learned to slide a feeding tube up my daughter's nose and down her throat, and how to inject a chemo drug into her thigh every week.

In between this, I was trying to figure out how to cheer up my wife, who was suffering from guilt, overwork and the fact her daughter was diagnosed on her 37^th birthday with what could be a fatal disease. I was trying to pay some attention to my newborn son. More often than not, I was spending a lot of time crying in my car then staring blankly at the red lights of the CVS sign before sucking it up to go inside for another three prescriptions.

In many of our past trips to Chicago, my hope for good progress reports usually crashed early on. The rash just didn't look any better. Her muscles and joints remained weak or stiff. Her nail fold beds looked aflame with twisted capillaries.

I knew it'd be different this time. Only the vaguest scarring from the rash remained on the back of her knuckles. The heliotrope spots on her eyelids were fading. I was confident to the point that, without a trace of denial on my conscience, I could tell the doctor that the only reason my daughter's strength tests were a bit below par today was that she was dogging it because I woke her up too early that morning. (The girl confirmed my diagnosis with a snicker later over chips and salsa at the airport Chili's Too.)

"She looks great. This is the best I've ever seen her," the doctor said. She also expressed amazement that my girl had never developed calcinosis, painful hardened lumps of calcium under her skin.

"I won't say it won't ever happen, but at this point, it's very very unlikely," she said.

Pending the results of her latest round of blood draws, we could continue our slow tapering off one of the half-dozen meds she was on. The doctor's look said she did expect any problem with the tests.

I felt great because my daughter felt great. I stepped out of the exam room during the last bit of her strength testing to get a celebratory drink at the water fountain.

That's when I saw the ghost.

She hopped onto the scale on prednisone-swollen legs. Her face was red as an Atlantic beach sunrise and round as a cartoon moon. She was probably about 4 or 5, maybe a bit older and stunted from all the immune suppressants in her bloodstream.

Her Mom quietly held the girl's stuffed animal, a beat-up floppy brown thing. It could have been a rabbit or dog or a monkey. Her Dad held a clipboard of papers and the expression of someone who was having the wind knocked out of him every day from every direction.

Our eyes meet. I tried to give a nod of reassurance that would mean something because I've met many kids who have gone into remission and led normal lives. I might even by the father of one someday.

But I've also met the parents of children who died helplessly from complications of a disease that is not fully understood.

I opened the exam room door and went back in, slowly and silently.

-- You can help fund research into a cure for juvenile dermatomyositis by donating to The Cure JM Foundation either online or by mail.

2 Blogs Can Be Confusing

I have fallen in love with sweeping & mopping. There is absolutely nothing like freshly swept and mopped floors. I love it when the ceramic tiles are still a little warm from a vigorous mopping and you walk around barefoot. There's no sand or crumbs causing a bunch of abrasive friction between foot & tile. Just the soft pad of your sole and moist hot tile coming together in an almost sexual union of fresh and clean-

Shit. This is DadCentric isn't it. Fuck Fuck Fuck. I thought I was in that Vagina post thing. O man fuck. These dudes are ruthless too. Fuck. Um. Scratch that. Forget that.

Last night I was finishing my 22nd Miller Lite and getting a lapdance when it dawned on me that I was setting a poor example. What if Jackson saw me? I need to start spending a little more on some better brews because drinking Miller Lite is just plain irresponsible.

Blocking Out the Scenery Breaking My Mind

I was sitting at the stoplight trying to block the sounds of Twista from the car next to me by cranking the David Gray on my stereo.  It was futile.

My oldest son was in the carseat behind me.  He and I had just completed a morning of male-bonding which consisted of getting my pants hemmed, buying a couple pair of new shoes for his first day of kindergarten on Monday (brown high-top Converse and plaid Sperry top-siders) and finding a gift for the three events that we were involved in that afternoon: a baby shower, a birthday party and a wedding.  We've had a summer without so much as a picnic and then it's all shoved into one day.  People really need to spread themselves out.

My wife was home making cakes and lasagna.

As we were sitting at the stoplight my son noticed a kid standing alone on the sidewalk.  He was holding a big neon-green sign, the kind that you see on every corner in the summer begging you to donate five bucks to get soap streaks on your car.

"Why's that kid by himself?"

"He's holding a sign," I said.

"What does it say?"

That's when I realized that the kid wasn't raising cash for camp, he was being punished.

The sign said:

I WILL NOT LIE TO MY PARENTS AND I WILL NOT USE PROFANITY

I started to read it to my son, stopped, and looked at the kid again. The kid was about 9, twelve at the oldest, and on the heavy side.  He was wearing a wide-brimmed hat and staring at his feet.  He was standing on the sidewalk in front of McDonald's on the busiest corner in town.  He was in the sun and it was 95 degrees.

He was humiliated.

Is that good parenting?  Is that tough love? 

There was a group of people sitting in the grass behind him, about 20 feet away.  There were about six or eight of them.  They looked like they were tailgating in the shade, oblivious to the endless line of traffic beside them.

Is that good parenting?  Is that cruel and unusual?  Whatever happened to just beating a kid?

I pretended that I could hear the kid's thoughts, they were filled with lots of profanity and they were aimed at his parents.

I watched the kid stand there as thousands of people passed him, oblivious to his sentence, mocking him, feeling pity.  I looked at the people in the shade and I hoped that this was a final straw, a bluff called.  I hoped they felt worse than he did.

The light turned green and we started to make our left-hand turn, four lanes and a world away from that kid learning a lesson on a hot, concrete stage.  I turned up David Gray and looked at the road ahead.

"What does it say?" my son asked again.

I met his eyes in the rearview mirror and earned a sign of my own, "it says 'car wash.'"

Sailin' Off Into The Weekend

It has not been that great of a week. But when things get grim, I can usually count on surfer/dad Chum to even things out. The ocean, after all, is the world's biggest dose of Perspective. I'd never heard this Tom Waits song before. It's going into permanent rotation. Clear skies and calm waters, y'all.

The first cut is the deepest

Apparently, Jason let one of his kids play with the keyboard the other night - a little "Lucas with the lid off" action.  What?  Those weren't just the random keystrokes of a four-year-old?  Oh, shit, my bad.  Black Hockey Who?  Jesus?  So now DadCentric is like a Front 242 song?  Suh-weet.  Wow - things are looking up around here.  Honestly, it's good that Jason brought in some new blood - rookies always help keep the wily veterans on their toes and at the top of their respective games.  I suppose I should just get to posting something right about now.

Since the arrival of the Littlest Dubs back in June, I have been having an internal debate.  I know it's the right thing to do and many others have done it, but we're so attached.  I have spent the better part of my life protecting them from any number of threats that I can't fathom willingly robbing them of their power.  But I know I must.  And in a conversation over the weekend, it was once again confirmed: I have to, but, thankfuklly, I'm not alone.

What am I talking about?  The dreaded "V" word, of course.

No, not Valentine's Day you ass.  Vasectomy.  Vas, as in vas deferens (or vas deferentia (Latin plural)) and -ectomy, as in snip, snip, here comes the Kryptonite, Superman.

So, for you pros out there who have reached your limit on the kid quotient, have you gone this route?  Are you going?  Why or why not?  Are you hedging your bets?  Can't imagine bringing one more life into this world?  Do tell.

And, for you first-timers out there - Welcome!  Nothing but happy-happy talk here.  Move along now.

She Completes Me

Today Beth and I celebrate 8 years of wedded bliss. She more than any other keeps me happy and sane in an often sad and insane world. She is my soulmate, the love of my life. How do I know this? I know this because as I was picking out a dozen roses and a lovely bottle of Piper-Hiedsieck to celebrate our love, I reflected on a couple of things. First, I was buying this stuff at 5:00 on the day of our anniversary, having stopped at the Ralph's down the street from our house on the way home from work because I am lame and every year I wait until the last possible minute to get her something, and second, while perusing the selection of dog-eared Hallmark Funny Anniversary cards I happen to look up and she was standing right there (having stopped at the same store for some milk) and she did not kick me in the balls.

Catching Up

Gee…it’s been awhile. I don’t think I’ve posted here since Joanie Loves Chachi went off the air. I’d like to thank the boys at DadCentric for not giving me the boot for my lack of participation like those douchebags over at Not Even Wrong did. Honestly, that one wasn't even my fault.  I couldn't decipher the algorithm to unlock my password so that I could log in which severely affected my ability to post.

So, what’s been going on over at the Whiffle House? Well, my littlest one starts “school” in a few weeks. And by school, I mean Pre-K which is really just a couple of hours of “Me Time” for my wife at the expense of the L.A. County tax payers. We thank you! I kid. It is free, mind you, but, only in a monetary sense. We’re expected to participate one day a week by helping in class, bringing food for parent/teacher sessions, assembling materials for crafts, etc. And for that, I hold L.A. County tax payers personally responsible. Had I known all this “parental involvement” stuff was required, I would have opted for the homeschooling thing SpongeBob and the good people at Nickelodeon have been doing quite admirably for some time now. Instead we’re left with no choice but to meddle in our child’s edutainment because there aren't enough funds for free, no-strings-attached schooling. Liberal State my ass!

Our eldest has grown in to a wonderful pre-teen. This scares the shit out of us, of course. There’s got to be a rebellious hell-child in there somewhere and, as far as we know, she’s plotting the most inopportune time to launch the childbeast upon us. For now, she simply lies in wait, quietly reading her horsey books, keeping her room clean, saying “please” and “thank you”, volunteering at the animal shelter and whatnot. You may have your teachers, friend’s parents, neighbors, pastor and most everyone else in your life fooled, but, we’re watching you, kid.

So that’s it, really. Hope to post a little more around here in the future, what with all this fresh blood and talent we’ve got.  Now do yourself a favor and read that big pussy, Black Hockey Jesus', post which you probably missed since I topped his ass.

I Can't Find My Boundaries

I'm back. Jason asked me to post at least once per week and it's been 8 days. You know why I didn't post within 7? Because I don't give a fuck. That's the problem. I see a motherfucking cop I don't dodge em.

Actually I do give a fuck. My wife found this site so I can't bang on her and the kids anymore.

You know what I don't get? There's no moderation here. How's it work? For instance, Kevin just posted. If I were Kevin, I'd be super mega pissed because this post is gonna sit right on top of his post. But let's say I wasn't doing this for the sake of science and I didn't know that Kevin just posted. He'd get all mad and start a Blog War with me.

If you ask me DadCentric is a Blog War waiting to happen.

Plus where's all the other DadCentric Dads? Is this the Jason, Kevin, Black Hockey Jesus show? I say we rip those other dudes off the sidebar and call them names and talk about how they were too soft to hang with the DC Crew.

[There's a perfect window here for them to call me a pussy for being afraid of my wife, but I get mad laid at my house, so to hell with those dudes.]

Pardon all the questions while I become acclimated to my role at DadCentric. I think Pet Cobra's gonna throw some products my way and I'll start giving you some dope reviews. He said I get the Wii Fit but to keep the noise down because those other dudes are just getting underwear and trail mix and shit. Ha Ha. Damn. Life ain't nothing but bitches and pagelaods when you roll with the DadCentric set.