I’m not ready for kindergarten.

My beautiful wife and I went to register our daughter for kindergarten today. Kindergarten. My daughter will be in kindergarten this fall. Don’t children have to be at least 5 years old before they start kindergarten? And Hannah will only be……um……wait…..oh sweet mama, she’ll be five. Wait, what? Five? Who skipped 2 and 3? This can’t be. She’s only 3 years older than her brother, and he was just born in January. He can’t even talk yet! He can walk, but…..oh, crap. He was born 15 months ago in January. I’m lost. How did this happen? Was I in a coma for a couple of years? Was there some warp in the space-time continuum that I missed? I’M NOT READY FOR MY BABY GIRL TO GO TO KINDERGARTEN!!! I need to find a way to get a grip. Breath….breath….

I’m thinking about putting together a list of rules to give to her future kindergarten teacher. In fact, I think I’ll pass out copies of the rules to all of the teachers, administrators, and other parents. I have until fall to complete the list, so I may modify some of the rules, and/or add.

1. My daughter’s happiness will be directly related to your own personal health and happiness.

2. If you allow anyone in school to bully my daughter, it will negatively affect your own personal health and happiness.

3. If you are the parent of a child who physically or emotionally hurts my daughter, you should expect a meeting with me regarding that incident, and the cessation of any further incidents. The success of your attempts at curbing your child’s inappropriate activities will determine the severity of the punishment you will receive from me. If you are asking yourself “What would he really do?” keep in mind that I used the word “curbing” earlier in this rule.

4. Please don’t make me angry. Just teach my daughter the lessons she will need scholastically to succeed. Be kind to her. Treat her like you would like to be treated. I will do everything in my power as a parent to help you.

I’m sure that all parents want their children to be treated well at school. Hannah is different. She’s not “their” child. She’s mine. She is my world, along with her mother and brother. She is a gift beyond measure to me. I am entrusting her to you. All I’m asking in return is that you treat her with dignity and respect, and care for her to the best of your abilities. I’m not asking for more than you are capable of, but I won’t accept less than you are capable of. Do we have a deal?

I’m not ready for kindergarten.

Salsa

I love to cook, but I rarely make the same thing twice. I don’t follow recipes, and I don’t measure. One of my favorite things to make and to share with people I love and/or despise is my ohmygodithurts salsa. Delicious. Hot. Delicious. I finally spent some time recently measuring everything I put in it so I could share the love/pain. Here’s the recipe. It’s guaranteed to cure gout, all known variations of the Hanta virus, colds, hang nails, ulcers, foot and mouth, hoof and mouth, mouth. It may lower blood pressure, and in some cases may cure death. Or cause it. Jury is still out. Enjoy!

Salsa
1/3 cup lime juice
1 onion or bunch of scallions
4-6 tomatoes
1 1/2 tbls minced garlic
2 tsp salt
1 tsp cumin
1/4 tsp smoked paprika
1/2 cup red wine vinegar
1 - 4 oz can of diced green chiles
1 - 14 oz can of diced fire roasted tomatoes
Jalapenos - I ususally use 6 or so
Habaneros - I usually use 10-12
Tabasco sauce - maybe 10 squirts or so
2 tsp cayenne
1 tbls crushed red pepper
1 tsp chile powder
mix in a food processor or blender until the plastic starts to melt.
Eat. Cry. Cry again the next morning. Eat again.

Daddy is not a genius.

Yesterday reminded me that despite my proclamations to the contrary, I am not a genius. I was a little under the weather yesterday. My poor insides felt upside down. That in and of itself has little to do with intellect. The reason I was sick does. I ate a giant portion of super screaming paint remover salsa with lunch. I was still reeling a bit from the bowl of liquid death I ate a couple of days before, but I was not to be deterred in my mission to conquer any viruses, bacteria, parasitic termites, and anything else that dared to take up residence in my system. Habaneros are the answer. Kill them all and let god sort them out. The sad part about this story, and the part that really points to my apparent Rainmanitis is that I made the salsa myself. I knew what I put in there, and I ate it anyways. Twice. And I’ve done the same thing uncountable times before with the same result. Hollywood people call it a “cleansing”. I call it “ohsweetmamamakeitstop”. Captain Genius ate tomatoes + napalm on purpose. While I was recovering, the episode reminded me of a few more gems on my bucket list of smartitude.

1. Items being drilled with a power drill should not be held in your hand, specifically where the drill will exit the item being drilled.

2. Cast iron pans are fabulous to go from stove top to oven for a nice crusty finish. Removing a cast iron pan from a 450 degree oven should preferably be done with some sort of pot holder. Or a cloth. Anything except your soon to be charred bare hands.

3. Just because you can eat worms from the ground doesn’t mean you should.

4. Forty degree water is colder than it sounds, and 12 feet is deeper than it sounds. You’re better off just buying a new fishing rod.

5. Nail guns have “gun” in their name for a reason. Nails from nail guns are notoriously difficult to remover from flesh.

6. When swinging from a rope into a lake with a bicycle between your legs, you should always try to position the seat somewhere other than directly below your crotch.

7. Surgeries should always be followed by recuperation, not heavy lifting and yard work. Not being able to breath because your recently sliced open throat is swelling up from shoveling gravel is generally a good sign to stop shoveling gravel.

8. The words “pick axe” and “bare feet” should never be combined in the same sentence.

My son is now 1. He loves to pick up various household items and bang them into his head. My wife tries to stop him, and asks “what is wrong with you little man?”. I don’t ask. I know. You may have gotten your looks and your fabulous hair from your mommy, but you got a whole lot of “are you stupid?’ from your daddy. It’s ok. Girls like scars.

let’s not get all stabby…

I’ve been driving my lovely wife a bit loopy lately with my “newest” obsession. I’ve been focused pretty heavily on researching knives, and finding the perfect one for each imagined niche in my tiny little brain. The UPS man has been delivering more weapons to our house over the last few weeks than to a gangster holdout on the Mexican border. My children will grow up with clip point stainless steel high carbon cro van micarta handled implements of destruction sticking out of sock drawers, bags, backpacks, coat pockets, and assorted and various cubby holes in vehicles. To the rest of the civilized world this may sound a wee bit unibomberish. Not to me. To me it makes perfect sense. There’s a purpose to my lunatic behavior.  So to my wife, and someday to my children, let daddy try to explain the madness.

I grew up in love with the outdoors. I spent half of my childhood knee deep in a river looking under rocks, or wandering with no destination in mind in the woods. I climbed trees just to see what was up there. I followed streams just to see where they went. I crawled through brambles and thorns just to see what was beyond them. I am at home in the outdoors. I am at peace in the outdoors. When I daydream about vacations with my wife and kids in the future, those vacations always seem to be on a mountainside, or a rainforest, or a deserted beach. I want to share what I love most with those I love best. I’m sure the Spintastic 5000 ride at Great Adventure Flag City is great fun, but I’d give that up in an instant to lay down at a tidal pool and watch starfish, or peek into a hollow tree trunk to see if anything is peeking back. I also grew up with a fascination for knives. Not big, stabby knives with hollowed out handles for explosives and special deathstar dagger ends. Not samari ninja knight of the realm swords. Not switchbladey butterfly quick draw shiny pearl handled people cutters. Just plain, solid, working knives. Real knives. Small enough to carry on your belt without looking like you’re on your way to a machete fight, but tough enough to be able to baton the wet wood off of a log and get to the dry center for a fire. Knives that I can teach my children to use in the woods to build fire or shelter. Knives that I can slice vegetables at the campfire with, and that I can use to whittle a little horse for my daughter or a bear for my son with. Not zombie apocalypse knives. Basic, solid, old school knives that someone who spends time away from civilization in the great outdoors should always carry. Read any list of backpacking essentials, and somewhere between numbers one and ten you’ll see a knife. I also want to be able to hand down my favorites to my children someday so they can have something that they can hold in their hands that I know is tested and true, and something real that they can remember their daddy with when they are walking in the woods with no particular destination in mind and they find a need to cut a piece of cord to fix the shoelace that just broke, or to peel the bark off of a nice walking stick.

I will admit that my recent bout of knife fever has been a bit frantic, but there’s a reason for that too. I want to share my love of outdoors with my children. I want to share my favorite place in the whole world with my family. I want that in a bone deep way. I’m just worried that my window is closing, and by the time they are ready to share, it will be beyond me. Somehow, someway, this frantic search for the perfect knife has become the outlet for my fear that I’m running out of time to give the gift of outdoors and woods and water and hiking and exploring to my children. The reasonable part of me knows that this is silly, and buying a fixed blade bushcrafting chunk of steel won’t fix anything, but the reasonable part of me has a difficult time explaining that to the rest of me. So there you have it. Knife nut? Yes. Nuts in general? Again, I’d have to say yes. But the why part is the important part. Sorry honey. Thanks UPS man.

Yes son, women are insane.

I’ve written a few posts to my daughter since she was born. She is the light of my life wrapped up in a 4 year old sized package of joy and happiness, mixed with an impressive talent for mind boggling temper tantrums. One thing that I have learned from that beautiful child is that the insanity of the female members of our species begins as soon as they can put together complete sentences. As a man I have become accustomed the standard suite of insane female questions/statements that all men hear. “Does this make me look fat?”. Really? There is absolutely no good response to this question. If I say “no” I get accused of just saying no, and berated later when that nasty woman we barely know tells you at the wedding we are attending that your dress would make you look slimmer if it had stripes. If I say yes, I am an idiot. I’ve learned that the only safe response to that question is to immediately leap up from the sofa and exclaim “Good lord honey! Was that an explosion? Get the kids into the bedroom!” and run as fast as possible out the front door, pretending that you’re taking the point against the attacking zombies to save your family from otherwise inevitable brain eating destruction. Either that, or you could try the delay tactic.

“Does this make me look fat?“
No, I didn’t feed the cat.
“I said does this make me look fat?”
No. The cat is fine. It’s not even normal feeding time. Can we go now?

This occasionally works, but you still end up with an annoyed woman.

There are other standards.

“Do you think that girl is pretty?”
“Were you planning on watching the entire football game?”
“Can I have the remote?”
“Would you like to go to my parents for the weekend?”

My beautiful wife came up with a new one the other day.
“What would you say was the most romantic thing you’ve ever done for me?”
Seriously? If I knew that, I’d pencil it in at least five times a week. Shouldn’t you be the one to determine what the most romantic thing I’ve done is? And if you do, could you tell me? That would be great.

Men know that women are insane. We live with it because life without you would suck. What I didn’t know until I had a daughter is that it starts day one.

“I don’t like sweet potatoes.”
But I thought you loved sweet potatoes!? That’s why I cooked them!
“No I don’t. I don’t like them. My belly is full. Can I have desert?”

“Daddy, blow my nose.”
You can do it honey.
“No daddy I can’t! I don’t remember how!”
You’ve been doing it for a long time now. You just did it a couple of hours ago at the dinner table.
“No daddy! The tissue just slides off my face! YOU NEED TO DO IT!”
Ok fine.

Or this gem from a recent walk in the woods-
“I’m exhausted. My legs can’t carry me anymore.”
Honey the truck is right there. We just started. We’ve only gone about thirty feet.
“I’m too tired to walk any further. You need to carry me on your shoulders.”
But sweetie, you were the one who wanted to go for a hike with daddy.
“But I can’t walk any farther!”
ok. climb up.
“Daddy, go faster. Run daddy.”
I can’t run with you on my shoulders honey.
“Just run a little daddy. Then you can rest for a minute.”
ok. Hang on.

Somewhere along the evolution of our species, the link between reality and common sense was sacrificed to make room for the memory storage capacity of a building sized super computer, dedicated to remembering every word men ever say so that it can be brought back to haunt us twelve years later. Impressive. Scary, but impressive.

So here’s my little tidbit of advice to you little man. Never try to understand the feminine mind. It is light years beyond your reasoning capacity. Just accept it, and try to be nice to them. They are pretty awesome. Insane, but awesome. Of course you could be a hermit living off the land, and I will try to impart as much of my knowledge of woodcraft and outdoor survival as possible, but that’s a lonely option. Trust me. Learn what you can about women from your sister and your mommy, then give it your best shot. Just try not to say too much, and always open their door for them.

Love,
Dad

Happy New Year

Another year come and gone. The holidays are over, and my son just turned one. One? How the heck did that happen? He was just born a little while ago! Where did a whole year go? This time passage thing is starting to get annoying. 2012. This is the year my son will stop being easy to catch when he figures out the whole walking thing. This is the year my daughter will start kindergarten. At least that’s what they think. Really it’s the year I complete the attic safe room and lock her in there until my wake is over and the crematorium guy finds the key in my ashes. There are boys in kindergarten, and they’ll lock me up if I start shooting school children who talk to my daughter. So, since we’re all supposed to start the new year off with some silly resolutions, let me list a few other things I’d like to see this year bring…

1. Uninterrupted sleep for 8 hours on a regular basis. On a probability scale of 1 to 100, I’m gonna give that one an 11.
2. My children both start enjoying dinnertime. Probability- 3. At this point in our lives, the only ones who enjoy dinnertime are my wife, who gets a hot and delicious meal plopped in front of her every night, and Moses, who gets whatever food items Finn and Hannah send floorward. I’d like to take that as a compliment to my cooking, but this is the same dog who eats doll legs and squirrel poop.
3. I don’t have to circle the frowny face on that stupid pain chart at a hospital. In fact, not entering a hospital at all in 2012 would be excellent. Probability- 14.
4. My dog stops jumping on people. Probability- zero as long as he has legs.
5. My truck runs for another year. 83.
6. we go on a fun filled family vacation. 12.
7. we go on a vacation. 72.
8. we go on a stress filled “vacation” where I lose my mind. 97.
9. my children do something unexpected that brings joyful tears to my eyes. Probability 100.
10. I remember why I married my wife, and wish I could have done it years sooner. 100.

That’s my immediate top ten. More will pop in my feeble brain as soon as I hit the “publish” icon, but that’s good enough for now. Happy 2012 everyone. May all your wishes come true, and may many of those wishes involve something that makes me happy, like a new hat or something camo.

out.

To sleep, perchance to dream…

Sleep. Sleep is that magical state of being where all of life’s worries carry on without you, while you dream about flying, or ice cream, or doing some circus thing with your wife that you couldn’t do even when you were young and flexible. People only bend like that in dreams. Sleep is what helps your body get over that damn day care cold that your child brought home. Sleep is recovery. Sleep is glorious. Sleep is also something that you specifically opted to give up when you made the decision to spawn. Children fight sleep with every fiber of their tiny little beings. Sleep means they are missing out on something. Sleep means school starts after sleep ends. Sleep means not playing. Children sleep begrudgingly at best, mostly when they fall over from lack of it. There are times when they fall into a predictable sleep pattern, where you can actually get some things done around their sleeping schedules, but these times aren’t real. They’re traps. Sweet, innocent children lull you into thinking that these mystical sleeping schedules will continue long enough for you to get your own life in order, but as soon as they detect your descent into gullibility they snatch the schedule away and stay up all night demanding that they be transported to mommy and daddy’s bed, where all things are wonderful, and life is complete. Or if they’re too little to demand, they just crawl around in their crib until they trap themselves in a position that is somehow inescapable, and generally uncomfortable, and then they cry until you untangle them. Then, as long as you’re up, they may as well take that opportunity to make you walk endlessly in circles with them until you start deliriously banging into doorways. Sleep. Someone asked me once how to make an infant sleep all night. I replied that all they needed to do was change their definition of “all night” to mean something more than one hour when it’s dark outside. Sleep. Oh how I miss thee.

Next time I’ll write something about the greatest discovery man has ever made. Caffeine. Thank you coffee. Without you, I’d be face planted on my keyboard right now. Sleeping. Without caffeine I’d be sleeping. I know there’s some point I’m missing here, but I’m just too exhausted from lack of sleep, and too wired from caffeine to figure out what it is. Dammit! I need a nap.

Fall

I love spring. Everything is green and breaking out of winter’s cold grip. I love summer. Shorts and swimming and sand castles. I even love winter, especially here in Maryland where it doesn’t last too long. But I really think fall is my favorite season of all. Cool crisp nights sleeping with the windows open, days warm enough to still wear shorts, but with a nice, warm sweatshirt. The crockpot comes out of retirement, filling the house with yummy garlic and onions and rosemary and wine smells all day long. Football on Sundays, less lawn mowing, apple cider, and holidays. First comes Halloween, which has definitely moved up in the ranks now that I’m a daddy. The days leading up to Halloween are better than the actual event. Some days Hannah is going to be a fairy, some days she’s going to go as Jessie from Toy Story, some days a butterfly. The latest is a pony, and Mommy can be the pony’s mommy, and I can be a barn. I’m not sure a barn is really a great costume, but being something designed to shelter and protect is exactly what I would choose to be, so barn it is. I’m sure tomorrow I will be something else, but I like the barn idea. Finn will be adorable as something he doesn’t get to choose. He might be a dragon, he might be a hot dog. Just go with it little man. The earlier you learn to let your women decide what you should wear, the happier you’ll be. After Halloween comes the annual Tobash Thanksgiving lallapalooza, where we eat a lovely, intimate meal with 73 of Steph’s relatives and their families. Fortunately the plan has shifted so we get our part done before the crowd arrives. One of these days we’ll start having thanksgiving at our house, but for now a belly full of turkey at Grammy and Gramps house is something to look forward to. It’s also the time of the year to start planning for Christmas. What would my children like. What would my wife like. What will I build this year for friends, assuming I find time to build anything. There’s definitely something rewarding about building something for a child, and finding out later that they liked it. Fall means walks in the woods. Corn mazes. Pumpkins. How could anyone not love fall?

I think today would be a good day to plan a fall trip with my family. I love fall.

Being away and coming home

The career that I found my way to sometimes requires being away from my family for a week or two. It doesn’t happen often, and I love what I do, but it is by far the least favorite part of my job. If there is a silver lining to this cloud, it is that being away from my family refocuses the important things in my life. I adore my wife. If I had a magic workshop where I could build my own perfect wife, she would be Steph. The love I feel for my children is immeasurable. But when we are all together, the clear focus of these feelings gets clouded by the moment. A headache makes for a sarcastic reply. An unexplainable 4 year old meltdown results in raised voices and anger influenced words. It’s the classic “can’t see the forest for the trees” situation. Being away clears that fog. Don ‘t get me wrong, I don’t like being away. But if being away is unavoidable, I can at least reap whatever benefits I can. I will be home again soon, but here’s what I will try to remember from this time apart-

If you are thinking something nice about someone you care about, say it outloud. It doesn’t do as much good just rattling around in your head.

Don’t waste time and energy trying to explain yourself to people who don’t really mean anything in the grand scheme of your life. Getting worked up because you disagree with someone who is irrelevant to your life is just silly.

Ask people more about them, and tell them less about you.

Complaining about things doesn’t make them better.

It’s never right to ridicule people you don’t know, unless they are men who wear spandex bike shorts in grocery stores. On a related note, men should not wear bike shorts.

My daughter can always make me smile. Always.

My wife can always make me want to take her on another honeymoon. Always.

My son is only 8 months old, and he has the same joy capacity as his sister. You make me smile little man.

Regardless of how difficult a situation is, my family makes me the winner in the game of life.

There are two worlds. My family is the first. Everything else is the second.

Going away sucks, but coming home is awesome.

Daddy’s coming home.

“We are awash in a sea of fools”…in other words, stop driving like an idiot and get out of my way.

This week is as close as I’m going to get this summer to a vacation week. A couple of days off to go to Ocean City and spend time with my sister and her soon to be husband/boyfriend of the last 15+ years. Spend half the morning packing Sherman the Pathfinder full of snacks, towels, small plastic toys destined to be lost on the beach spawning sobbing and promises to order replacements from Amazon as soon as we get home, sunscreen, dry clothes, other dry clothes, pool noodles, things that float, extra shoes, and a leapfrog handheld video game console. Ready to go. Wait, go back in and get Finn, who has been waiting patiently in his car seat, chewing on that zebra thing that hangs from the handle. Ok, ready. Only an hour or so behind schedule. One thing I’m slowly learning as a parent is that schedules are silly exercises in futility. We will go when Hannah decides we go, and get there when we get there. Resistance is futile. So we’re ready to go. Somewhere around 15 minutes into the hour long trip we remember that we left the air conditioner on, and the bathroom door might be open, which means Moses the destroyer will punish some of the innocent bathtub toys for his unchosen solitary confinement. Poor Woody’s girlfriend Jessie, still scarred from the previous encounter with the dog from toy hell would be shaking in her boots if Moses hadn’t have chewed them off last time he was left alone. Alas, poor defenseless toys. You will be missed.

Where was I…oh yea. We’re on vacation.

So there we are, driving slowly along behind a 1997 Dodge Caravan from Delaware with their left signal on for the last 14 miles, going 5 miles below the speed limit in the passing lane, matching the speed of the largest Winnebago ever created in the right lane, blocking all traffic and making the guy behind me swerve onto the shoulder every 30 seconds to see why we are going so slow, like that’s going to make them go faster. I love traveling. The Caravan eventually moves over, just as the State trooper cars firing radar at all oncoming traffic appear ahead of us. Great.

Blah, blah, blah, we get to Ocean City. Lovely OC. The best Maryland has to offer. Home of Fisher’s kettle corn and Thrashers fries. Yum. And also home to the entire population of Fatville USA. Next time you think our country is the greatest country on the face of the earth, go to Ocean City. There are young, nubile girls wearing things that I will never let my daughter wear until I am completely and totally dead, being followed by tan boys in board shorts and sideways hats, and more fat people than you could ever imagine existed. Giant, sunburned people holding cotton candy while they ride the trolley car to the pizza place. We ride up to the condo in an elevator that smells like a mixture of dry cleaning fluid and pee, to luxuriate on the balcony overlooking the beach crawling with families and fat people, and watch the airplanes fly by advertizing underage dance parties, all you can eat buffets, and insurance. Ah, vacation at last. Time to relax and refresh…what? Ok honey. Daddy will take you to the pool. I’m sure it’s lovely. Yes honey, that man is fat, but no, that’s not a shirt. He’s just a hairy man. In the pool. A fat hairy man in the same little condo pool as we are.

I love a good vacation.

On the bright side, because there is a bright side, children don’t see things through big people eyes. They see the ocean. They swim and it’s fun. Kites are amazing, trolleys are rides,  sand castles are awesome, and taffy is manna from heaven. Finn, my adorable little man, you won’t remember this, but Hannah will. And she will remember it being fun. So now that I think about it, I guess I really do love a good vacation.

 

Crap. Now I have to drive home.