Fri 23 Nov 2007
Posted by TexNovember 23rd, 2007 under
Parenting ,
Philosophy[3] Comments
So the Muppet is exactly 3 years, 4 months and 6 days old. And she has the manipulation ability of a woman ten times her age. I have heard people say that someone has an “old soul” before, but seriously, the Muppet is scary how well she can manipulate. I give you an example - mind you, one single example from amongst the many many that I see, hear, or personally experience on a daily basis. But this particular one happened just this week.
If you read my last post, then you know that the previous few days have been less than perfect for my ever lovin’ Ferf and her immediate family. But it has become apparent that the Muppet, like so many out there, has not been reading my posts as she has been a perfect little toot this last week. She has been whiny and overly sensitive and clingy and disobedient and outright defiant. (For those of you who know the Muppet, you know this is not her traditional method of behavior. But, this week she seemed to be trying out a new tradition. On Wednesday night, I got home from work to find Ferf ready to hand the Muppet off to me and go lock herself in the bedroom. I, being the incredibly sensitive husband and caring father that I am figured, “Hey, I’ve got her. You go put your feet up and take a load off.” It took me less than 30 minutes before I was ready to hand the Muppet off to the next person who rang the doorbell. DING DONG (door opens) “Can I bear you my testimony?” “Nope, but you can have my kid. Nice suit.”
It was at this point that Ferf and I first found that in moments of great stress we actually do have psychic abilities. We read each others minds in an instant and both declared at the same moment, “you are going to bed early tonight missy.” (I have never understood why people refer to their daughters as “missy” when they are in the first stages of trouble and parents are in the final stages of patience. I have actually known a couple of girls named Missy in my life. They weren’t bad girls. In fact one was uber cute and I would have loved to date her, but she had poor taste in men. But in retrospect I wonder what her parents called her when she was in trouble. “That’s it. You are going to bed early tonight missy betty lou.” It just doesn’t work without missy, and it won’t work if that is actually the girl’s name.) Anyway, little missy started wailing to wake the dead when it was suddenly time for “last pee”. (Last pee, is a ritual that Ferf thought up. Last pee, is an obligatory sacrament that must be adhered to whenever (a) one is about to go to bed, be that nap time or night time (b) one is about to get in a car, be that for a short or long trip. I think it began when the Muppet was old enough to figure out that Mommy always had to go one last pee before we went anywhere in the car. Road trip? Last pee. Going to dinner with friends? Last pee. Quick run to the store for something? Last pee. Frantic race to get me to work because we both overslept the alarm? Last pee. And it doesn’t matter if she voided her bladder 3 minutes ago and gave up water for Lent, if there is a car ride coming, Ferf will go one last pee. It’s eerie really)
So it was time for “last pee” before bedtime and the Muppet was clearing out the lungs. It was as I sat her down on the potty that I said those immortal words passed down from generation to generation like an oral history that must be learned because it is part of who we are, “if you don’t stop crying, I will give you something to cry about!” It was like I was suddenly channeling my mother. My voice, but her words. This caught the Muppet’s attention and she stopped crying immediately and asked me, “what else would you want me to cry about?” I wondered if I should explain the concept of child abuse to her at that point, but decided against that particular intellectual discussion and simply said, “believe me, I can give you a real reason to cry.” Then I snuck just the right amount of diabolical rage into my glance at her favorite doll. Nothing said. Just a thinly veiled threat against Sata the Cat. (yes, she has a stuffed cat, and yes she named it Sata. I have no idea what the possible origin of that name is. All I know is that when she finally got potty trained, Ferf promised her that we would go to We B Toys and get her a special treat. The Muppet walked right into this huge store of millions of toys and took the direct route to the stuffed animals and picked up this orange colored cat and announced that this is what she wanted. I was ecstatic because it was small and only cost like $5!! Anyway, we are getting out of the car later and I asked her what the cat’s name was and she said, with no hesitation, Sata. (if you are really interested, the first a is hard and the second one soft when pronouncing it) I thought and thought where the crap that name came from. Was it a reference to a Serial Advanced Technology Attachment? I couldn’t imagine that being it. So was it the Saskatchewan Advanced Technology Association ? I had a hard time pinning that one down as the reference either. My last ditch effort to explain how a 3 year old came up with the name Sata for a stuffed cat on the spur of the moment, and then remembered it and called said cat by that name every day since was to go to the oracle of all knowledge - I googled it. The only other possible source for the name was the Singapore Anti-Tuberculosis Association. Evidently, my daughter has a soft spot in her heart for the people of the Asian sub-continent and their struggle against a common and deadly infectious disease caused by mycobacteria. I have no idea why this is, but it is what it is.)
Where was I? Oh yeah, I was giving “go to hell” looks to my daughter’s stuffed cat in an attempt to make her realize that there were far worse things one could cry about than simply not being happy with decisions made that were out of her realm of influence. It was at this point that the Muppet asked for Mommy and then stood up, with pajama bottoms still bunched around her ankles and wrapped her arms around her mother and kissed her and said, “I’m sorry mommy.” Ferf was somewhat taken aback at this abrupt, yet seemingly heartfelt apology and turn of behavior, as was I. We were about to engage in more psychic behavior as we both started thinking that we are inherently exceptional at this while parenting thing, when the Muppet asked her mother, “Are you happy now Mommy? It makes you guys happy when I say ‘I’m sorry’.” The little turd was totally playing us. She wasn’t really sorry for anything per say, she just knew that when she said those words, we got happier. I was suddenly hit in the face that I was the dog to my 3 year old’s Pavlov. Show the food, the dog salivates. Say the words, the daddy gets happy. Damn, I hate being that predictable - TO A FREAKING 3 YEAR OLD!!!!
At that point I realized that my daughter, by age 3, had mastered something that took me decades to begin to comprehend, much less walk out with any type of style. In effect, my daughter said to us, “sincerity is the key. once you learn to fake that, everything else is easy.” And I’ll be darned if she hasn’t learned to fake it. I am in serious trouble. Serious trouble.
Thu 22 Nov 2007
Posted by TexNovember 22nd, 2007 under
Culture ,
Family ,
Holidays ,
Philosophy ,
cancerNo Comments
So let me start by wishing everyone a happy Thanksgiving. American Thanksgiving that is. The day that gluttony is overlooked and football is the TV de jour (after the Macy’s Day Parade of course). It was by all accounts, a pretty good Thanksgiving this year. The food was good (I assume). The family was all together (well, I couldn’t make the trek to TX, but everyone else in my bloodline did). AND the Cowboys won. Convincingly. 10-1 for the first time in their illustrious history. Not altogether a shabby day. Plus, everyone south of the 49th parallel had the day off too.
But not everyone found as many reasons to be all celebratory and thankful today. Ferf and Merf and ScottyBear were all dealing with the odd fact that this year Thanksgiving fell on the anniversary of their mom’s death. She died of cancer on this date back in 1991. 16 years ago today. That is a rough reality. They were all mostly children, with Ferf being the oldest and away at law school at 17. ScottyBear and Merf were in high school and elementary school respectively.
As anyone who has gone through the devastating loss of a close loved one (especially a parent, spouse or sibling) knows, grief is a unique beast that comes and goes almost cyclically over the course of time. But anniversaries are always hard. Even if you don’t realize the anniversary is coming up - and this will happen too - your mind and body never forgets. Inexplicable sadness and depression can sneak up on you when everything is seemingly going great and only when you stop and look at a calendar do you realize that the anniversary is coming up quickly. Our subconscious is always keeping track of such things - like a little bastard with a photographic memory that always won the spelling contests in middle school and knew the frickin answers whenever the teacher asked a question. You know the one, they sat near the front of the class like some kind of keener and silently willed the teacher to ask a question, any question really, because they knew all the answers. They went home and read the dang encyclopedia at night. (for those of you too young to know what an encyclopedia is…well, it’s like the great grandparent of wikipedia, but nowhere near as cool) Anyways, I think you are picking up what I’m putting down with this metaphor. Subconscious memories are a biatch.
So to have that memory come rearing its funk nasty head on Thanksgiving of all days, well that just sucks. I mean, if it falls on any other major holiday you become, over time, kinda calloused about it. It happens every year. You know it does, and you adjust and deal with it. But Thanksgiving is the one freaking “major holiday” that is all over the freaking calendarial map. (yes, I said calendarial. I turned a noun into an adjuective by adding -ial and in doing so invented a word. Feel free to use it.) (and on another note. How the hell do we know which holidays are “major”? Who the crap decided that” And what metric is being used to make said determination?? I don’t even know. But it is quite common knowledge that Thanksgiving, Christmas and Easter are kind of the big three “major” holidays. Valentines Day is up there, but it sucks for so many people (as I noted with much wit last year right here on the Maru in a classic post that I suggest you go back and read again for the first time). St. Patrick’s Day is an excuse to say “kiss me I’m Irish” and drink green beer on purpose. 4th of July is obviously HUGE in the States, but still not really “major”. Presidents’ Day is barely a blip on the radar - it’s more like a planned teachable moment for middle school social studies classes. Halloween is a sugar fest that provides reason for older kids to act all a fool and cause mischief. Then we digress into things like “secretary’s day” and “take you kid to work day” and any number of other lesser holidays. But the BIG THREE are pretty constant. It’s like ranks of mythological deities. Major gods and lessor gods. Which is also kind of stupid. If you were going to go all mythological, why the hell would you bother to worship a “lessor god”? If you had to choose between Thor (who is no doubt totally cool) and say Zeus, who doesn’t pick the cool guy’s dad. That’s how we treat holidays. Well, sure I could do something special for Labour Day - but I’m saving up for Christmas! Labour Day is like a red headed stepchild in the holiday family. Stick with the blood relatives in the holiday family.)
Wow, I really digressed there…but I feel better about it, how about you? So anyway, before I so rudely interrupted myself, we were talking about Thanksgiving being all over the calendarial map. And therefore if you have any difficult date that nips at your unconscious mind that falls in the latter half of November then you run the risk of it falling on Thanksgiving one sucky year, and that, my loyal reader(s) is what happened to my ever lovin’ wife’s family this year. Kinda shitty I must say. Now I never met the matriarch of her clan. In fact it was her death that brought Ferf back to the States and let her meet me and put us on our current path of marital bliss, but I often wish I could have talked with her just once. I think she and I would have gotten along famously. (and not just because I am so damn lovable.) I think many of the things that I love so dearly about Ferf came from her mom. I just think that way. So losing her and then having that remembrance happen on the day that we all set aside to be thankful is somewhat difficult. In fact, Ferfy is lying on our marriage bed right now, three sheets to the proverbial wind having enjoyed a wonderful bottle of wine from Blasted Church vintage 2003 feeling much better than she did before we corked that Blasted Church. (I love using the term “blasted church” in a way that has nothing to do with religion, and yet sounds like I am taking church in vain, even though i am not. It makes me smile inside, just a little)
But, in true Ferf fashion, she taught me once again a huge life lesson from this thing (not the drunk from a bottle of wine with a crazy straw that she stole from my daughter part). Yesterday, a lady she works with lost her husband in a drowning accident while they were on Vacation in Mexico. They have two young children, and in fact the youngest is not even a year old. I cannot imagine the devastation. But Ferf immediately wrote her a letter that I am going to quote now. The wisdom she put on paper is beyond anything I could ever hope to do, but the amazing thing is that she put it in an envelope and put it in a file to mail to the lady in 3-6 months (she sent a short card of sympathy now). But she knows that what she is saying will take time to even hear, but it is truth in the raw.
She wrote:
…I reach out to you today out of my knowledge of grief rather than my knowledge of your specific circumstances.
I now understand that grief is not linear, but it is cyclical. The shock, horror, anger, loneliness, and deep sorrow comes and goes throughout life. I still feel abandoned when I cannot pick up the phone and ask my mother for parenting tips, I still expect my parents to be sitting at the Christmas dinner table, and I still experience sorrow when I reach a milestone in life that they can not physically rejoice with me.
And yet, grief can be an amazing gift as well. Our wisdom is mined in the dark places in life, and you now have an intimate understanding of a side of life that we, as a culture, prefer to avoid. Certainly, you will understand the pain of another widow, but you will also understand the pain of everyone who loses that which is closest to their heart. And this knowledge will be an amazing gift that you can bequeath to these people.
But I know this to be true too – you will be happy again. There will be a time when you can experience joy to heights which you have never felt before because of the very pain that you feel right now. The intensity of this grief will lessen over time, and you will be able to smile and laugh and live without a constant ache.
I realize that you have an outpouring of support right now – it might even be a bit overwhelming. But if you ever need someone to scream at 6 months, a year, two years, five years down the road, please know that I will always be available.
And that dear people is why my wife is so much better at life than I am. She gets it in ways that those of us who weren’t orphaned in childhood probably never will. I love her for that, and yet do not envy her. But I am thankful for her. And even selfishly thankful that she does understand. That is why Thanksgiving this year is a mixed day.
Luckily, tomorrow is just Friday. And November 23rd doesn’t hurt so bad.
Sun 11 Nov 2007
Posted by TexNovember 11th, 2007 under
travel1 Comment
So I flew into Charleston on Saturday and I am sure that I will have so much to talk about before it is over, but there is one thing that I absolutely HAVE to tell you simply because it was just to random to not tell you.
I ate lunch at a seafood restaurant today in Charleston. It was an amazing meal and the place is no being run by the 4th and 5th generation of the founding family. The 4th generation is the managing partner and his name is Eli. He was on site and came over and talked to us and was incredibly good at customer service. I had forgotten what good customer service was like.
Anyways, it is the name of the place that I simply cannot get over. SO MANY JOKES, so many of them inappropriate…I can’t even get started. I’ll give you the pleasure of letting your mind run amok with this. I give you - the seafood restaurant in Charleston that you simply must patronize:
Hyman’s Seafood…seriously.
Thu 8 Nov 2007
Posted by TexNovember 8th, 2007 under
Culture ,
Family ,
Memories ,
Parenting1 Comment
So today the Muppet and I were playing around the house as Ferf is now in her Christmas rush where every woman in K-town wants a Passion Party before the season of giving …so many jokes and so little bandwidth…
Anyway, holiday sex humor aside, Ferf was gone and the Muppet and I were going through magazines cutting out things that begin with the letter F. This is somehow connected to her piano classes. I have no idea how, but who am I to question it? I never took piano lessons. My folk bought me a keyboard once and I was supposed to start taking piano lessens with this lovely old lady in my church, but the week before I was to start - she died. I was only in like 3rd grade at the time, but even at that tender age, I could recognize a sign and portent. Play the piano and you die. It seemed fairly simple to me and Marvin was making sports look much more inviting. Besides, back then I had no idea what “gay” was but evidently only people who were “gay” played piano. This was back when there was an assumed link between musical ability and sexual orientation, at least among older kids that my brother hung out with. At as we all know, when you are in 3rd grade and a 5th grader tells you something, you can take that shite to the bank! It was the 1970’s equivalent of reading something on the internet - YOU KNOW IT’S TRUE.
Somewhere along the lines this scientific certainty became somewhat nebulous as to its inherent truth as I have had so many dozens of gay friends, and to my knowledge, not a single one of them was musically inclined. Well, some of those guys truly knew the secret to making mix tapes - but that is less about musical ability and more about understanding the art of mix tapes. Which if you have ever watched Hi-Fidelity then you know it is not a gender identity thing, but a simple following of the rules:
And finally: How to make a mix-tape…
Rob: To me, making a tape is like writing a letter. There’s a lot of erasing and rethinking and starting again. A good compilation tape, like breaking up, is hard to do. You’ve got to kick off with a corker, to hold the attention (I started with “Got to Get You Off My Mind,” but then realized that she might not get any further than track one, side one if I delivered what she wanted straightaway, so I buried it in the middle of side two), and then you’ve got to up it a notch, or cool it a notch, and you can’t have white music and black music together, unless the white music sounds like black music, and you can’t have two tracks by the same artist side by side, unless you’ve done the whole thing in pairs and…oh, there are loads of rules.
And the one guy in my junior high and high school career who took piano lessons while the rest of us played football, basketball and baseball ended up sleeping with the wife of a deacon in the church I attended (according to rumor, which back then was second only to a 5th graders word) so obviously he wasn’t gay. At least not only so.
Anyway, I was talking about me and the Muppet. But I am always happy to give a shout out to my non-musical gay friends.
So we get instructions from Ferf to do the piano practice (which involves the Muppet pointing out to me where a C note is as well as the accompanying neighbor notes of D, E and F. This all sounds well and good, but I have no freaking idea where one would locate these things. A “C note” is a hundred dollar bill in a lot of the movies I watch or when I am listening to all the homies in my hood talk about their smack. Ok, maybe the homies and the hood are in the aforementioned movies and I live in what is easily the whitest town in north america. But the point I am trying to make is that I have no idea if the Muppet is pointing out the right key or not. Honestly, she’s pushing keys down when I ask her to show me where a “D” is and I just look and say “woo-hoo - good girl - good job baby girl!!!!” But whatever there is another part to the homework! That’s right, my 3 year old gets homework. As a former teacher, I can dig that. In fact, I have a lot of respect for “busy work” which is just giving the kids something to do to keep them busy so they will shut up in the classroom and the teacher can get some freaking quiet for at least a small part of the day.
So this “homework” is to help the kids focus on the note they are learning - “F”. Which has special meaning in relation to music in my family because I think that is the grade Marvin was given in choir one year in high school (the only time that a blood relative of my father has even even attempted a musical anything actually to this day). But I figure, hey, the Muppet and I get to cut up magazines and glue pictures of words that start with F. I immediately grabbed a Sports Illustrated and said to the Muppet - let’s cut out a picture of the F-ing Red Sox - that starts with F.
I kid, I kid. I don’t want my daughter learning about the Red Sox at such a vulnerable age. You think I’m abusive to my daughter!? But finding “F-words” in picture form is more difficult than you might think. “Food” was pretty obvious. We cut out a picture of children as “Friends” cause I couldn’t find a picture of David Schwimmer. Then we did a picture from the “Fourth of July” because it also had a “Flag” in it (this is Canada and I don’t take it for granted that she’ll get credit for 4th of July or an American Flag to be honest, but I figured that with a two-fer photo we ought to be okay.) Then we found “Frogs” and I was thinking that we were on a serious roll. And then we turn the page to an ad for yogurt with Dora the Explorer on it.
And the Muppet, being a HUGE Dora fan simply HAD to have Dora on her page. I tried over and over again to explain that there was no “F” on this picture, but it was arguing with a 3 year old (which is a special kind of hell) and so I finally gave up and relented and said fine. She cut the picture out and glued it on and called it done.
About 10 minutes later she brings it to me and says, “Daddy, there is no “F” in the Dora picture and her eyes well up and she starts crying and telling me that it’s wrong and she won’t get a sticker and that the world will undoubtedly end within the next 3 minutes if this travesty is allowed to continue. I offer to rip Dora off the page and replace it, but that is not an option as she begins to wail that SHE MUST HAVE DORA BUT THERE IS NO “F”!!!! Finally I get her calmed down and she says, “fix it Daddy - you’re a good fixer - Mommy says so!” So in that moment, where I must save both my daughter (and the world) as well as live up to the standard that Ferf has set for me as a “good fixer” it comes to me.
I pick the Muppet up and say, “IF your teacher asks about that picture, you tell her ‘Dora is a Foreigner and that is an “F” word’”. Problem solved. At that point the Muppet gives me a HUGE hug and says (and I am so not making this up) “Thanks Daddy, you’re the best all time!!!”
And well, really, how can I argue with that?
Sat 3 Nov 2007
Posted by TexNovember 3rd, 2007 under
Uncategorized[3] Comments
I just realized the other day that I have been blogging for over a year now. That is almost scary really. I have never really thought much about how much, how long or how often I blog. It’s just something that I do when I either remember to or when there is something just “blog worthy”.
Some have asked me what it takes for something to be blog worthy, and I have never really answered that question because I am not sure that I can actually explain it much less quantify it. If it strikes me as amusing or happens in such a way that I can make it amusing then I would give it a shot. If it is thought provoking to me, then it gets a shot. If there is a teachable moment, then maybe that to. I like to keep my themes fairly wide open - which makes me a little more difficult to pin down. But then no one really enjoys being pinned down - tied down or even handcuffed sure, but pinned is completely different.
So I realize that I have totally missed doing something special for the actual anniversary of the launching of the Maru (as that happened on the 14th of August of 2006) and we are now in November of 2007 racing at breakneck speed recklessly towards 2008. But better late than never I say. Not that I want to do something special per say, but I have had over 10,000 unique hits on my blog in that time and that’s gotta be worth a mention I think. Not that I am trying to proverbially toot my own horn here, cause if that were my intent believe me you would know it. I am a horn tooter from way back. I am practically toot, toot, toot-a-licious.
So that is really all I am going to say at the moment about it, but it struck me as worthy of note. Sure there are tons of sites and blogs out there that have hundreds of thousands of readers and some with over a million I am sure, but there are even more that exist whose readership consists of their mothers, girlfriends and a couple of buddies who just feel obligated to. I can safely now say that I am not one of those as I am pretty sure that even my mother doesn’t read this - but at least a couple of other people’s moms do, and at the end of the day, I am satisfied with that. At least for now. In the next year maybe I will try to get 100,000 readers, or maybe I’ll just try to get my own mother to read it, who knows.
Anyway, I want to take this moment to thank all those who have ever been here - even those who just got fooled into coming here by some strange google search you did in the early hours of the morning where you thought you were gonna find something more, umm, we’ll say exotic than what we get here. (I am not just talking about Seth here, but all those folks that I don’t know too).
So as we head into the fall/winter holiday season, know that I am sure lots of things will happen in my life that are blog worthy and I shall share each and every one with you as we go along. Cause between God using me for His personal amusement, Ferf’s line of work, and the antics of the world’s most amazing 3 year old - there is always something happening.