The holiday gift shopping calls have begun, and I don’t see any end in sight. Family all want to know what to buy my little 2-year-old girl. She’s finally at the age where toys are getting fun, and everyone wants to join in. But this kid already has stuff! Lots of stuff, and she doesn’t need that much more, unless she’s going to go into the wholesale toy business. My mother was up last weekend and took inventory of her needs. She was horrified to see that her little play kitchen was missing so many vital pieces and necessary utensils — things that proper kitchens wouldn’t be caught dead without. She needs table settings for eight apparently. Cordial glasses for pretend late night liqueurs. Truffle shavers. Garlic presses. Water goblets. A sous chef. You name it. “How can she live like this?” she demanded. “Poor little thing. She doesn’t even have butter knives! I’ve got shopping to do.”
What to Do with a Week Alone?
Five days on my own, living the bachelor’s life — no one to worry about but me, and free to do whatever I like. No wife. No kid. Five days. On my own. Eat what I want. Drink what I want. Sleep when I want, if I want. Goof around. Get into trouble. All by myself. HELP!!!! When you’re left alone for almost a week there’s a part of you that dreads it — it’s been especially tough not seeing my daughter — and part of you that thinks, “Man, this could be really fun. We can go around in the same pair of underwear all week.” Luckily, there’s not too much of me thinking like that, but it’s nice to know you have that kind of freedom. (Yes, I did change my underwear several times.) My wife went to Long Island with my daughter to help out a cousin who’s been having some health problems. How a woman towing a 2-year-old child who has the energy of bottled plutonium could be of any help at all is beyond me, but off they trekked leaving me to myself.
Thinking of the Next Big Feat
Run a marathon and people inevitably start to ask you what’s next. What feat will you attempt to top that? What challenge will you set for yourself next? What lengths will you go for the sake of accomplishment and bragging rights? What they’re really saying is, “Hey dipstick, how many pounds of lunacy will your yet-to-harden brain conjure up next? Gonna’ try to get struck by lightning?” I’ve wondered myself. A marathon is a mammoth undertaking, but certainly not insurmountable. Thousands of people have accomplished them, and while impressive, maybe I SHOULD take it up a notch and shoot for something even bigger. Like maybe an ultra-marathon. That’s only 50 miles, and just imagine how stupid people will think I am then. I’ve met a few people who have run ultra-marathons, and my reaction usually is that I want to sit them down, smack them a couple times and scream, “Take up woodworking or golf! Be lazy!” Maybe not ultra-marathons then. Maybe I should get out of running for a while. I could switch to a new sport, like surfing. I’ve been doing that on and off for the past couple years, and I really could get hardcore about it. Is there such a thing as a marathon surf session? I kind of like that pruned look I get after being in the water too long — kind of like a dehydrated 120-year-old.
Hitting the 20-mile wall at the Marine Corps Marathon
There’s something not-quite-right about running a marathon, which is a dandy 26.2 miles long and, as much as I can imagine, what it must feel like to give birth through your thigh muscles. There’s something not-quite-right about it, and unfortunately, that doesn’t seriously occur to you until you’re 20 miles into it. Why not a year ago when I first hatched this plan? Or six months ago when I started training? Or why not as I approached the start line, when there was still time to fake the recurrence of an old soccer injury? “Ohhhh, my groin! Someone get me to the beer tent, stat!” But no-ooo! I signed-up, trained, walked up to the start line, accepted the challenge, ran off down the road with a bunch of deranged lunatics and got 20 miles into the thing before I realized it was an extremely bad idea. What was I thinking?
Hello to the Big Kid Bed
And just like that, the crib is gone. The baby is a child. Parenthood is filled with moments when you realize your kid is getting older — that the sands of time wait for no one and spill through the hour glass as quick or slow as they please. When times are bad, they slacken to a trickle. And when things are good, they slip through as if powered by jet fuel. We bought my daughter a big kid bed a few weeks back when we determined that her legs won’t stop growing and that if she keeps sleeping in her crib, we’ll eventually wake up one morning to find her so pinned in between the bars that the jaws of life will be required to cut her out. You never know when a toddler’s growth spurt might kick in.
Do Brownies and Spinach Mix?
Thanks a lot, Jessica Seinfeld. You just had to go and write a cookbook, becoming a big food sensation in the process. Thanks! Now I’m eating spinach brownies and hearing about chicken nuggets with sweet potato or beet puree. (Actually, that sounds kind of good.) I’ve had apple sauce muffins with carrots stuffed in, and chocolate chip cookies with garbanzo beans tucked discreetly inside. Garbanzo beans in cookies! I have no idea what else is coming down the pipeline, but my wife has become a baking fool. And it’s all because of you. If you haven’t heard of Jessica Seinfeld, she’s the wife of comedian Jerry Seinfeld and now has a mega-popular cookbook out called “Deceptively Delicious.” It’s all about showing you how to “deceptively” work vegetables into everyday food so your children (and stubborn husbands) will eat them. (For the record, I eat my spinach and love broccoli. The irony is that my wife is the one who’s never been a fan of vegetables. But I guess children change all of that.)
As the Marathon Looms
Fear. Trepidation. Panic. Dehydration. Heat stroke. Butterflies. Muscle spasms. Leg cramps. Abdominal cramping. Ear lobe cramping. Fever. The shakes. Ingrown toenails. Deviated knee joint spontaneous combustion. Nausea. Indigestion. Frizzy hair. Anxiety. Terror. Abject terror! No, this was not the result of my marathon training. (For the record, I’m training to run the Marine Corps marathon in Washington D.C. this Oct. 28.) Rather, all these feelings and reactions hit me while walking around the block last weekend right after my neighbor John yelled out to me from his porch: “Hey, you hear they canceled the Chicago Marathon mid-way through because of the heat?” Then, for added effect, “Someone died.” Actually, it turns out that the individual died from a heart condition, but that didn’t make me feel any better. Death from heat during a marathon or death from heart condition during a marathon: which do you prefer? Any way you look at it, he DIED … in the marathon. (Here come the stomach cramps again!)
And We All Get Sick Together
The family that gets sick together … well … uses a whole lot of tissue. They do stay together, but only because they get quarantined and no one wants to come near them. No worries. We don’t want to share our hacking with anyone else anyway. We’ll enjoy it all to ourselves. The bug has been going around, and it hit our house a bit over a week or so ago. It started with my wife, moved on to my kid and now I’m battling through it. (I’ve also noticed that the termites haven’t been feeling so well and even lost their appetite. It’s quite sad.) We’re mostly cured, but it’s been a humdinger. Nothing too debilitating or disastrous. More like disgusting. A lot of runny noses, sneezing and some really bad hair days. (Why does having a cold always take out its full brunt on your hair?) I’ve found that having a sick toddler can be quite, well, exciting. Everybody warns you that toddlers will get sick, but nobody ever prepares you for what it will be like — how bad it will be.
Salmonella in Space
I was shocked — literally shocked! — when I saw the story. The headline read: “Germs taken to space come back deadlier.” That’s just great. As if we don’t have enough problems in the world, now we have to deal with juiced-up salmonella that WE sent up into space. Just great! What did these people expect? That the salmonella would come back tamer and help find the cure for cancer? Any kid who has ever read a comic book or watched a sci-fi flick could have told you how this one would turn out. Send germs into outer space, and they come back to eat your face. It’s that simple. If you haven’t read the story, I will sum it up for you: Enterprising scientists decided last year to send salmonella up in a space shuttle, curious to see how the bacterium would fare on such a voyage. The year before they sent salmonella on a cruise to the Caribbean, but between the bacterium getting drunk all the time and contracting the Norwalk virus, that experiment was a complete bust. So this time they picked space. Makes perfect sense! Maybe it’s just me, but I get these pictures in my head of astronauts conducting little, tiny tests on the weightless salmonella. You know, like how long salmonella can pedal on a stationary bike in zero gravity. Whether they react differently to ink blot tests while orbiting earth. How long it takes them to put a miniature puzzle of the Eiffel […]
Kids and the Need for Ear Muffs
As the deafening noise rose to the decibel levels you only get with erupting volcanoes or, say, planets exploding, I looked over to see a comrade hand me a pair of construction-grade noise-protection ear muffs. They were the same kind that you see worn by guys at rifle ranges who are firing howitzers. He was already wearing a pair, and I laughed. I thought it was just a joke — or maybe he’d had one beer too many. But he said, “Seriously, might want to put these on. This could go on for a while.” So I did. And funny thing was, I could hear myself think again. It blotted out all the noise and all the insanity that had encircled me. It allowed me to ponder great questions like: Is this my future? Is this what it means to be a parent? Is it too late to trade the little one in for say a riding mower or a walk-in freezer? Have we entered a new stage? Will I be able to conjure up the strength to survive it all? Will she be like these other kids when she grows up? And how did I not see this coming? I looked at my buddy. He was smiling, and if I read the look on his face correctly, he was thinking, “Don’t worry. You’ll learn.” Some friends of ours who had just bought a new house held a shrimp boil this past weekend to celebrate their soon-to-be construction area. Call […]