I get confused with lots of directions. Give me complicated instructions — turn right over there, then stop — and I’m a basket case. My mind spins in somersaults trying to understand such strange and cryptic commands. It just can’t process them. Tell me specifically what to do with my hands — put them here, lift this way, rotate around and don’t forget to breathe — and it’s like I’ve just been told how to put the space shuttle together. My face goes blank, and sometimes I pee my pants. It’s why I was never good at knots. The bunny goes around the tree, down the hole, over the hill, down by the prairie, back up the hole … What the heck are they talking about? Next thing I know, I’m tied up in a tree screaming for someone to cut me down. I’m a basket case. Which is why days later I’m still not sure how well our first baby swimming class at the YMCA went, or whether I accomplished anything at all. This I can tell you: I sure didn’t understand anything at all. My wife signed up our family, including our little 6-month-old girl, for these very basic classes. No Olympic breast stroke for babies here. Mainly it’s how to handle your child in water, and for your child, how to handle being nearly drowned by your clumsy parents. It was a lot of fun. We swam, we splashed, we didn’t drown and my baggy board shorts […]
Will Insurance Insure an Alien Invasion?
It’s time to insure your home insurance. Do they sell policies like that? Floridians might need them if the hurricanes keep coming, the rates keep rising and companies keep evacuating from the state. I’ve been listening to my mother talk about this quite a bit recently. Her homeowner’s insurance in Tampa went up $1,000 this year, and there’s another increase looming. She wants to sue them, not for price gouging or raising rates, but specifically for being jerks. I don’t know that it will stand up in court. So I tell her insurance is a business, and all businesses need to make money, but she’s not listening. Then it occurs to me: What am I doing defending insurance companies? My rates are going up, too. But it’s all made me much more interested in my own policy, specifically what is and isn’t covered. If you’ve never read the excluded losses in your policy, take a look as it’s not only critical, but also fascinating. I read mine the other day and wondered if they had been written expressly for me as a way to head off stupid, house-damaging things I do. Strange stuff I thought only happened to me is on there, like this uninsured loss: “settling, cracking, bulging, shrinkage or expansion of the structure.” Shoot, that’s been known to happen all on the same weekend at my house. Plus elongating and elevating.
When it All Goes Projectile
It took me two weeks to the point where I could write about Father’s Day — my first. Not the day itself. That was wonderful, and really gave me time to think about what it means to be a new dad. It helped me put in perspective what this little 6-month-old munchkin means to me (beyond the tax deduction), and I savored the moment. It wasn’t Father’s Day I needed separation from — it was “the incident,” which is now becoming a parent’s day tradition, as our little girl did the same thing when we went out to eat on Mother’s Day. Three guesses I give you. Need a hint? In college, this act signified the end of a VERY good night, or the beginning of a VERY bad morning. In Roman times, they had special places for you to go and do this after an expansive meal. It’s one of only two things your child can do in public that can horrify and embarrass you to the point that you consider changing zip codes. The other is breaking out in a Barry Manilow tune at the top of her lungs, and I haven’t experienced that one yet. But I got the full effect on this. There’s nothing quite like baby public vomitation.
Searching for a Barber to Prune My Bush of a Head
I’m going to break one of my column writing rules today. There aren’t many. Mainly it’s things like try to come within at least one or two letters of spelling a word correctly or know what day your column is due so you have plenty of time to come up with an excuse for why it’s not ready. This week it was, “I sprained the three fingers I type with.” But the one rule I always adhere to is: Never write about the dentist (they can cause too much pain), the water department (if you like to bathe, don’t mess with people who can cut off your water), anyone who prepared your food (need I say more), or most of all, your barber. Don’t mess with anyone who can buzz “Big Idiot” in the back of your head. But my barber is moving to another state and can’t shave my noggin’ anymore. Freedommmm! I’ve been going to Price’s Barber Shop since I was in college, and for that long, Genie’s been turning me into a respectable member of society. I go in about every 4 months looking like a Yeti, she wonders what in the world she did in a past life to deserve this, and then fires up the chain saw. Cutting my hair is a lot like trimming a pecan tree: you need special equipment, you need a pole saw, you need a truck with a basket on the end of a crane, you need to start drinking […]
Got Me Some World Cup Fever
So, I wanted to … wait a minute … hold on … Sorry about that. I’ve been a little distracted lately. I don’t really finish my train of … uh-oh … be right back … It’s really become a problem because … oh, Damnitt! … talking to you people and I missed a goal. Now that’s just great! Yes, it’s World Cup time at my house. That would be soccer for those of you who honestly could care less, and would rather watch ink in a ballpoint pen go dry. Hey, that’s your privilege. But me, I’m becoming fanatical. I’m one of those strange Americans who is hooked on the spectacle — 32 of the world’s top teams squaring off in Germany to decide whose supporters can drink the most beer. I mean, to see whose supporters can get arrested as the worst hooligans. Actually, to see who will be crowned world champion in the beautiful game.
The (Somewhat) Joy of Running
“So you want to do it?” Mike asked in an over-excited way, like a kid on a school yard planning to jump off the roof and looking for accessories. I smiled, but secretly I almost threw up. Run another marathon? “Uh, no,” I told him, and he looked disappointed. “I want to live.” Mike works with me and he took up running several months back because he doesn’t like his knee caps and liked the thought of heat stroke combined with the kind of hyperventilation that putting one foot in front of the other for multiple miles brings on. Now he has gotten it in his head that running a marathon might be a cool idea. He’s already registered for the Marine Corps Marathon in D.C. I wish him all the luck in the world and hope he survives. I’ve run a marathon before, several years ago when I was younger and lacked common sense, or a cluster of brain cells. One day I will run another one and have sworn to complete the New York Marathon. But it takes a certain mindset to convince yourself that going out and pounding yourself for 26 miles is a sane idea. And it also takes the kind of innocence of that kid on the schoolyard who believes that jumping off a one-story building somehow might be a good idea, and won’t shorten him by 18 inches.
Here Come the (Hot) Summer Projects
So much to do, so little time to want to do it. Yes, the summer jobs around the house loom. They haunt me in my sleep, calling me and taunting me. “You’ll never finish us. You’ll start three and quit after getting a splinter, sissy boy.” It’s quite frightening to get visited by these ghostly visions on a nightly basis. Lawnmowers that need oil changes. Trees that need trimming. Talking pipes and a belching bucket of plaster that eats a ham sandwich and throws putty knives at me. “You’ll never start us!” A driveway. The unfinished plants by the street. Some plastering in the baby’s room. An upgrade to the backyard spigot. A shower each morning. Grass that makes my neighbors jealous. A cure for cancer made from butterfly bushes. A ladder to the sun. Figuring out what all that crap is on my desk. Throwing out all that crap on my desk. Banishing weeds to Oklahoma. Developing a magnet that will repel leaves and dust from my front porch so I don’t have to sweep anymore.
The Ins and Outs of Being a New Dad
Fatherhood: Is there another profession in the world where you’re woken up at 5 in the morning with the question: “So, you want to change the baby’s diaper or clean-up the dog vomit on the living room rug?” Now that’s living! How do you answer that? How do you choose? And obviously the diaper is in “interesting shape” if it’s offered as part of the bargain. This is a deal with the Devil, and there will be no winner. “I’ll take dog vomit,” I answer, and so begins another morning as “New Dad #103562.” Dads get asked questions in the morning like this: “Have you checked in on her yet?” “Yes, I just did,” I say. “And she’s breathing and stuff?” What exactly is the “stuff?” That’s never specified, and I, of course, lie. “She’s breathing and definitely ‘stuff.’”
Rain Rockets and the Big Florida Drought
Dry! So dry! Someone in this great nation please send us poor Floridians a bottle of Perrier. We’re parched. We’re thirsty. We’re drought-stricken. We’re all going to be on fire soon. And well, this is just ridiculous because five miles that way is the great Atlantic Ocean, and a few miles that way is the Gulf of Mexico, so how in the heck can you be surrounded by water but dying of thirst? How can that be? We shouldn’t be the ones begging for rain. We’re tropical. We have rivers, lakes and even water parks. But here we are, desperate and dry. When we want it to rain, we get nothing. When we don’t want it to rain, a hurricane pulls into town like an unwanted house guest who sleeps on the sofa, eats all our food and then throws such a big, fat party that the power gets knocked out and the yard looks like the Rolling Stones played there.
So, What’s the Baby Doing Right Now?
“So, what’s the baby doing now?” comes the voice on the phone — my mother’s. She’s calling for her regular update on what’s new with Amelie, my 4-month-old daughter. “Right now, what’s she doing?” she demands. The answer is often disappointing. It falls into one of five categories: 1) She’s sleeping. 2) She’s lying there. 3) She’s getting her diaper changed. 4) She’s eating. 5) She’s spitting up on her mother. Sometimes it’s a combination of two or three. None are terribly exciting or translate well over the phone, so she probes for details. “Well, describe it,” she says when I tell her a diaper change is underway. “You want me describe ‘it’?” I ask her. “I’m not describing ‘it.’ I don’t want to be in the same zip code as ‘it’ and I’m sure not coming up with the words to paint that picture for you. ‘It’ will melt the phone lines.”