Who's the Big brother?

I like the second one...Otto already looks like the cool uncle who had money and a Cadillac but no one knew what he did for a living...

Train Wreck

Yesterday I told Quin that I miss the old Quin.  The uber-polite, please-and-thank-you kid who'd sit at the dinner table and behave.  I told him this because the new Quin is testing boundaries.  His specialty is standing in his chair and laughing at his scolding parents.  On the outside I try to look tough.  On the inside I'm scrambling for answers.  I thought Sarah may have hit on something when she snapped him up and put him in the bathroom.  It was rash, yes, but a quick move to get us some peace and quiet.  I was so happy she did it.  I had nothing.  But then we were left to eat in angry solitude.  The ambient noise our toddler laughing and unrolling the toilet paper into the toilet. 

Let me just say on Q's behalf, that he is still very good.  He is always concerned about everybody, including Paco's trips to the doctor.  He plays with his brother and is sure to hug and kiss everybody, including Paco and Allie Cat, before bed.  And maybe that's why we struggle when he's lording over us and laughing.  

So last night I told him if he didn't sit down I was going to take apart his train set.  This is the train set that some friends dropped off.  They said they already had one and thought Q would like it.  I think it was a junk hit.  A "junk hit" is when you pretend to gift something that city codes prevent you from setting on fire. 

As I grabbed the giant tote bag of loose parts, I thanked our friends but looked deep into their eyes.  I saw a quiver, a weakening constitution once strong during rehearsal but caving during the actual event.  They sped away and Quin, present at the exchange, squealed with joy. 

With a work headache, a hungry belly, a heart filled with stress at the Republican party deserting policy and adopting nihilism, and a right eye that won't stop crying due to something called "Blepharitis", I worked around Quin's wiggling infterference to piece together dozens of little, plastic parts. 

And then an hour later, before I'd even scrounged enough batteries to make it work, I threatened to take it down. 

Sarah looked at me with discouragement and laughter.  Quin still refused to sit, and he smirked at our feeble parenting...yet I was going to punish myself.

But if Quin had heard my threat he'd need to see me follow through.  I knelt down and, with I think a real tear rolling down my cheek, unsnapped every piece, pulled up every sign, and dismantled the bridge section that had so baffled me.  In the brisk manner of a disgruntled maid I whisked all the parts into the bag.  I emphasized my every action and slammed the closet door on the mess. 

I am daddy.  I will be heard.

I was not.  Quin ran from the table to the vacated site of what we had once called "The Q Train Depot."   And he wondered aloud, "Daddy, what happened to my train?" 

Be wary of me approaching your house with a giant tote bag.

the green, green grass of home

Overexerted myself today.  I got crazy and tore out a staircase.  It wasn't mine, but the people who owned it were okay.  It started simple, a man date with my friend Eric to Lowes.  We picked up some lumber.  After unloading it was time for the awkward goodbye, but then he surprised me by inviting me in.  Here's where it got physical, and amongst all the grunting and groaning, I hurt my back, my neck and I think I have a cold.

This staircase is huge and heavy and when it didn't budge I started yanking on it.  I was bent over rocking like a mad man with Eric behind me yelling, "your back, your going to hurt your back!" and me replying, "No, I love it!  I totally need this!" 

I'm certain we alarmed the neighbors. 

I was so tired that driving home I missed all the exits to my house.  I was just spacing out, listening to Elvis's Country Classics, and admiring all the little things you don't notice when you're going faster than 40 on the interstate.  

I don't know why we like to listen to longing.  Every one of Elvis' country songs is a cry for help.  He's either yearning to go back home, or for someone to love him or for anybody or anything at all.  My favorite song is "Cold Kentucky Rain."   I've heard it 500 times and I still miss when I'm supposed to sing.  But that song gets to me.  The first radio station where I ever worked I was alone most of the day.  I'd sit in the studio and when that song would come on I'd get up belt out the pain with Elvis.  My boss would come back and ask if I were yelling for help, and if my eyes were OK.  Just that Kentucky Rain.

 

It's a sad song of a guy searching for his girl.  He fights bad weather and bad advice from people with poor recall and he just can't find her.  And it's not like there's a happy ending.  He's already gone back home and written a song about it.  There's no follow up like "Warm Cialis Bath."  This dude's toast and she's gone.  That's what I was zoning about as I moseyed down the interstate with a staircase in the back of my truck: why do we pay to listen to some dude's pain and suffering?

 

And it's not even interesting pain and suffering, like Ultimate Fighting.  It's the kind of whining that would have you scoot over to a different bar stool.   

Then it hit me.  I was spacing way out, and breezing past the turns I've taken habitually for the past decade, when I noticed the ribbed clouds giving a venetian view to the blue beyond.  Geese peppered perspective to the vastness of eternal hope.  Elvis's baying unlocked all the stuff I want to do, and the romance of his chase had me doctoring my own futile pursuits into glamorous adventures.  It's not the longing that has you tuned, it's the opportunity to fulfill it.  And that's where you run into me, the guy going way to slow on the interstate, crying and yelling Elvis while I peruse a mental film strip of me doing something awesome.

 

In my head, on I-25, I knocked out the best comedic speech ever for my Alma mater (for drama I was about to die), and before she got to work I left on Sarah's desk the perfect story about her.  I saw her unable to function she was so moved.  I swore I'd get home and get some of these country classic-inspired ideas on the page.  

I didn't.  I could barely move.  The biggest thing I did was get Q the orange sucker I owed him for pooping on the potty all by himself.  Then I lay around pretty satisfied with the day.



diapers and tantrums and then there are the kids...

Yesterday was the Martin Luther King holiday. Sarah worked and I had both the boys.  Of course I couldn't just have a simple day at home.  As per Jared Ewy, it must be a painful production of driving, getting lost, visiting elders and finding the perfect spot to play in the sun that only exists in Jared Ewy's head and in reality is very difficult to find on a holiday in Boulder where's there's no #$%@# parking.

You know a day is going to be arduous when you put your baby in great grandma's lap and she bites him.  It scared the shit out of Otto and to be honest had us all a little unsettled. 

First, a little bit about grandma.  For all intensive purposes she's, well, mentally gone.  Unless she's faking it then I just look like an asshole leaning into her lens and talking to her like a foreign child.  But I love that lady.  For me she was the Grandma in "Grandma's House." She was candy, toys your parents were too cheap or too sensible to buy, and instead of the real, fatty bacon, Grandma was Sizzlean.  And we ate at Furr's Cafeteria, Wendy's and Dairy Queen.  In the winter there were always more blankets than you needed, and in the summer I escaped the dry, dusty mountains and chugged sodas on her perfectly manicured lawn.  Eventually I learned she was more than Grandma, she was once a basketball star who graduated high school at 16.  She was--she is--a very pretty woman.  She was the cute tomboy who had lots of guy friends and cool nicknames like Cody and The Beast.  She was a dedicated employee of CU, and before that a true mountain woman who maintained and drove a mail truck up and down the scenic but treacherous South Saint Vrain. 

She's a giant to me, but for a moment to Otto she was absolutely terrifying. 

So he lost it and I had to grab him, and while I was doing that, another lady was grabbing Quin.  She muttered to herself something dire and with her long, bony fingers reached for his head, which, at this point, was mostly eyes, as he stared in horror at the stranger going for his soul.  So Quin, who was already on the whiny side, lost it too. 

This meant both of the boys wanted held, and let me tell you, Otto is no longer a little baby.  He's round, he's filled with lead and he wears outfits that slide right through your arms.  I grunted and made little squeaking noises carrying Quin, Otto, Otto's carrier, and the bag brimming with ointments, food and diapers. 

I shouldn't complain, as moms have to do this stuff all the time, but moms are made of cocaine and steel.  I'm soft.  Although I thought I'd toughen up and teach Quin a lesson.  I wanted him to walk.  The nursing home facility is about the size of the Pentagon and Otto kept slipping lower and lower.  So I set Quin down and let him cry while I walked ahead.  I felt like the kind of parent the world needs more of--stoic and demanding--until we walked through a crowd of grandmothers and they saw a guy deserting one child and carrying another by his head.  

Quin even timed a dramatic fall to the onlookers sympathetic "aaaahhhhh".  I was mixed with pride for his cunning and a throw-away-all-his toys frustration.  But everything worked out fine.  We saw Grandma--great Grandma to the boys--and in the maelstrom of diapers and tantrums, got something out of Grandma I had not expected.

I was changing Otto and getting out the PB&J for Q when Grandma looked at us and said, "I love you."  I couldn't believe it.  It was one moment, maybe a second, but it folded out across the room and nearly bounced me against the wall.  The clarity was stunning, a football hit I did not see coming.  I scrambled to be included in the lucidity, shouting out my love for her and how the boys loved her and ten other things about love trying to fit them all in the crack in the wall.  But that was it.  She was on the other side of understanding shaking her head and fiddling with her shirt. 

After that we went to Pearl Street to have lunch with Aunt Leslie and Uncle Stu.  It might have been too much as by then we were frazzled, but remarkably we all held it together.  A little bit of Grandma goes a long way for that.

Sandy Utah, Town name, stripper pseudonym

I am a little scared of success.  Nothing highlights that more than when I get a really good parking spot. I'm always sure I've done something wrong.  I've left intense cliffhanger action films because I couldn't stop thinking about my car killing the Christmas shopping dreams of someone in a wheelchair.  

Tonight, in the airport economy lot, I did something I never do: I drove toward the aiport.  I never believe there's going to be a spot close to the terminal, so I save the hassle and get some exercise by walking from Kansas.  Tonight I was pretty brash.  And somehow I landed parking spot "J1".  It's right next to the tunnel to the more expensive parking garage.  It's like I'm almost in the expensive parking for cheap.  But I was worried.  I looked around for signs telling me it was too good to be true.  I used the light of my cell phone to check under the truck for wheelchairs.  I didn't see anything, although sometimes those asphalt heiroglyphics can be old and faded.  

I'm thinking about that now in Utah.  I'm thinking of a crying kid with a cane and a local news reporter making a name for herself with the live scrapping of my truck.  Anyway, it's "J1", east side, if you walk by it let me know if it's still there...or if it's not (was that a Yogi Berra?)  And if you're in a wheelchair don't egg it or key it.  At least you get the pictured parking.   My typical spot should have a sketch of someone resigned to walking ten miles.   

("At least you can walk!"  No sh*t.  It's 1am and I think it's funny.  Besides this is real-life inspiration.  In Houston they have parking spots for pregnant women with a stick-figure prego.  There should be spots for everybody.  A drawing for the double-parking douchebag in the Hummer, one for the clueless coupon walker, and way in the back something for Mr. and Mrs. Text and Mosy.)  

The plane flight was good.  I sat next to a Navy recruiter.  Her name is Ann and she works at 16th and Grant in Denver, and she wants YOU to for the United States Navy.  She even pitched me to be a public affairs officer.  She was nice, and really not that over the top, but certainly under a lot of pressure to get her numbers.  I guess they've raised the standards in the Navy.  She told me they really need doctors and chaplins.  So apparently the doctors they have now just aren't cutting it.   

I am in Salt Lake City, or just south in Sandy, Utah, to be exact.  I'm in a Comfort Inn in the parking lot of a strip club.  On the other side of the building there's a Sizzler.  So some naked boobs and a family restaurant.  It's so uniquely American yet somehow I'm guessing not what Brigham Young had envisioned.    The room is a little worn.  I thought I'd save some money but now I'd definitely pay to get rid of this image of the big guy fresh off twelve plates of meat rolling around with the desperate stripper with the skin problem. 

But that's the glamour of business travel.  One moment I'm the family man chasing Quin around our warm house, and the next I'm in a cold car wondering how to make it move.  My rental is a new Prius hyrbrid. I've never driven one.  There's no key.  I pawed around like a lab monkey for a while before getting out the driver's manual.  There's nothing on how to make the car go.  There's pages on how to FORWARD A FRICKEN CALL...it's a car, not a phone.   I kept pressing the "power" button, and the rap station would blare and the heater would turn on and I'd fiddle with the tiny driving nob.  It's not a stick, but a small dash postule.  It doesn't stay in a gear.  You put it in drive and it snaps back to it's starting position.  So I pushed buttons, caressed the dashboard for hope and flopped the little gear shift like a large animal's teat.  Finally, I got it.  But I'm not sure how.  If there's no luck tomorrow could be a buffet and pasties day.  Success firmly parked in Denver.