Category: Dad Blogs

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Dad Blogs Family

TTFN – and Happy 4th!

I’m pretty sure that I, and nearly 2/3 of America, will get nothing done at work today. That is, if 2/3 of America is actually AT work today, which I’m doubting considering the traffic this morning. And the only reason I’m at work today, rather than kicking back working from home, is because some nimrod scheduled a meeting from 1-2 p.m. today to talk about some collateral I’m supposed to write that will only get lost in the big corporate shuffle and quite possibly never be seen by a customer, much less an executive who will read it and say, “Holy crap! Who wrote this? It’s pure genius!”

(that’s the scenario I play out in my head each time I write something that actually gets printed and/or published)

Which led me to the fact that in addition to not really having any work to do today, I also don’t have much to write about. Upcoming weekend will consist of three exhausting days of trying to keep the boys from whining, interrupted with fireworks at 9:30 (waay past their bedtime and cutting severely into my own “down time”). This, I’m sure, is right in line with just about everyone else’s plans, so why bother with the details right?

But Allison over at “That’s What She Blogged” changed her header image to a bunch of books and it got me to thinking about a series I finally finished and thought I’d pass along.

If you like Fantasy books at all, you simply must check out Terry Goodkind’s, “Sword of Truth” series. There are about 8 (ok, 11) books in all, and most are very long. It’s about a simple woodsman, who turns out to be the savior of the world (sound familiar?). There’s a lot of magic, and a lot of logic, and a LOT of really great characters spanning the series. It is, by far, one of the most original Fantasy series I’ve read in a long time. Goodkind has taken the best of the old Fantasy genre, stripped out what a lot of newer writers seem to think you must have for a good plotline (primarily lots of detailed war strategy) and come up with something that will stir you and make you actually care about the characters and perhaps think a bit along the way.

It won’t take you long to realize that what Goodkind has created here is his “perfect world”, which in actuality is our REAL world, only perfected in his image (which I must say, would be nice, but will never happen). As such, he does get a bit preachy here and there, but it comes with the territory. Hey, when I’ve sold jillions of books, I’ll write pretty much what I darn-well please too! If you lived near me, I’d lend you the books, but since you don’t, you’re out of luck, but all the major chains carry them.

So that’s my spiel for the day. I don’t know if I’ll actually find time to blog again before next week, so if not, I hope you all have a fun and safe 4th of July!

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A Boy's Life Dad Blogs Family

I’m too sexy for this post…so sexy it hurts!

aerosmith T here are lot of things about a person, physically, that help shape how others view them. And many of us spend out entire lives tweaking our personal presentation through the way we dress, or by the types of exercise we do; and of course, through our hairstyle. But there’s one area of personal attention that I’ve always paid close attention to, and which, I might add, is sadly lacking among young people today. This area is in how a person carries him or herself.

Ages ago, before it was widely recognized that women held talents beyond those of the household variety, young ladies were taught how to walk, how to sit, and generally how to present themselves to company (and young ladies, nothing is less attractive than a woman who slouches all the time. Be proud, be strong, pull your shoulders back and look men in the eye.

Men, on the other hand, have never had formal training; rather, we learned to pattern ourselves after our heroes, and those we thought cool. For a man, a large part of the way he carries himself is in the way he walks.

There’s the “I crap bigger than you” Jack Palance swagger.

There’s the “Hey, you talkin’ ta me” spunky side sway as presented by people like Di Niro and Pacino.

There’s the Peter Parker, “Maybe if I don’t look up, nobody will notice me” walk.

And then there’s my personal favorite, the Obi Wan Kenobi, “…move along, there’s nothing to see here” walk that tells people, “Hey, beneath this calm exterior, lies pain you don’t wanna mess with. Feel free to admire from a distance, but generally leave me alone.”

So, when I was in my early teens, my father and I were walking through the mall together, something we rarely did because he hated shopping. While walking, he casually mentioned to me that I should, “Stop bouncing.”

When I asked what he meant, he explained that I was strutting and that I had a bounce to my walk.

Well, being a short feller, I had been the object of many a bully’s attention. Most times, I’d been able to avert those attentions, sometimes through implied aggression and other times through simple avoidance, but the last thing I wanted, was to draw attention to myself through a bouncy, strutty, “Hey, come take my lunch money!” kind of walk.

So, over the years, I have strived (striven? strove?) to remove all traces of a cocky bounce from my gait, and instead turn it into a smooth stride that says, “Ignore me if you’d like” even if it wasn’t terribly graceful. I like this walk in the gym especially, because, while I’m not a powerhouse, for my size, I use a lot of weight and as I move around, I like the economy of movement it provides, while also making me appear humble, and not like some muscle-bound roid freak! I’ve found that what I’ve strove to achieve, is very much like what Tai Chi teaches about walking, though I never made the connection until recently.

But since my latest back injury, my smooth walk has gone out the window. I’ve become this flat foot landing, leg dragging hunchback instead. What I’m finding now as the pain starts to dissipate, is that my body still wants to walk like this, even though the pain isn’t really there. It’s become my new walk and it IS NOT a graceful thing of beauty. I am not a gazelle!

It’s taking me real effort to attempt to walk normally, because somewhere in my head, my brain is telling my legs and feet that if they try and take a full step, and if they try to land heel to toe, it’s gonna hurt. And while the pain isn’t all gone, it’s certainly not like it was.

So if you see someone walking down the road and your mind vacillates back and forth over whether he looks like Quasimodo or a really cool martial arts dude that could probably kick your butt, it might be me (but I probably could not kick your butt).

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Dad Blogs Family Fatherhood

Feeling sorry for myself, care to join me?

epiduralSo this morning, CareerMom and I headed down to my Orthopedic Surgeon’s office and I was treated to two exquisetely painful epidural steroid injections. Actually, when we got down there, they didn’t have me on the schedule and I was this | | close to pitching one of my famous fits, when they came out and said they could fit me in after all. So, that was good. Crisis averted…tantrum, unnecessary.

It’s funny to read the description of the procedure by doctors who have apparently never had these. While it’s true that they numb you up pretty well and that you don’t feel the steroid needle actually go in, but what you DO feel is when they hit the bone…repeatedly…and when the steroid itself starts oozing around in there and doing its magic.

This is the third time I’ve had this done, but the first time I’ve had two at one time…not fun. I think I sweated out a quart of water in the 15 minutes it took to complete the procedure.

So now I’m kicked back at home with an ice pack on my back and jerking every few minutes as the steroid finds a new nerve to bully around, but I’m assured I’ll start feeling some relief in a couple of days!

Yaaah.

Also, three women got to look at my hairy butt this morning, and none of them were CareerMom. Hooray for them!

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Dad Blogs Family Fatherhood

Ebert and Roeper would give me a "Thumbs Down"

boredThis weekend, even CareerMom, from whom patience springs forth like the water in Niagara Falls after the winter thaw, had seemingly “gotten over” the constant entertainment requirements of our children. Thanks in no small part, I feel, to Daycare and the constant entertainment provided there, as soon as the kids get home at night, and from the moment they wake up on the weekends, it’s, “What are going to do now?” “Can we go swimming?” “Well, when CAN we go swimming?” “Can I have a snack?” “Well, when CAN I have a snack?”

I tell ya, it’s enough to drive you nuts! Especially when you consider what our kids do today compared to what we did as children. I told MLI on Sunday that he’d done more by 11 a.m. than I did an entire weekend growing up!

When I was a child, the weekends were for “catching up.” Saturday mornings, assuming I beat everyone out of bed, consisted of my watching cartoons for about an hour and then once everyone was up, doing chores until the house was spotless. After that, if I wasn’t helping my dad with one of his many, never-ending projects around the house, I was left to go happily cruising around the neighborhood with my transistor radio hanging from my bicycle handlebars, looking for other kids in a similar plight. What ensued from there was anyone’s guess.

As a comparison, here’s our weekend with the boys:

Saturday

  • Took both boys with us to the gym at 8 a.m. where they played in the huge gym play area consisting of a McDonald’s-like tunnel system, a kid’s basketball court, computers and all sorts of other things.
  • Played with the boys outside for a while. Rode bikes, threw balls, the usual.
  • I ran to Home Depot while CareerMom did something with the kids at home…dunno what…something to do with blocks and cars.
  • That afternoon, I took MLI to a Braves game, via the Atlanta MARTA system. MLI thought riding the train was pretty cool, except that we caught it at its northern most point, and it took nearly 30 minutes to get to the transfer station and by then we were both hot and bored.
  • At the game, we sat down and by the time I got dinner for the both of us, it was already 8 p.m. By the top of the 3rd inning, MLI says, “Daddy, I’m already tired of looking at this!” Determined to stay for a while, we stuck it out till the 5th inning and then made the trip home.

Sunday

  • We’re still in “church transition” so went to the gym again.
  • Played with the boys outside for a while.
  • While I killed all the plant life in the backyard (herbicide), CareerMom took the boys to the neighborhood park for a while.
  • After lunch and naps, took the kids to this new indoor play area with a gy-normous foam filled pool thingy. Was pretty darned cool!

The whole daggum weekend revolves around the kids! By Sunday night, even CareerMom’s nerves were getting frazzled and though we both felt bad talking sternly to the boys, even parents need a few quiet moments.

Oh, and on top of all of this, MLI had been asking for the mailman to bring the DVD “Aladdin” and so I ordered it from my Netflix account. It came on Saturday and I stuck it in the DVD on Sunday.

AladdinDo you see anything wrong here? Did you know that there is more than one “Aladdin” movie on DVD? I didn’t. Why would anyone even bother stocking anything other than the Disney version?

Trust me, this is NOT the Disney version.

Despite the colorful packaging, I’m pretty sure this cartoon was created sometime back in the 80s, before cartoonists began attempting to synchronize voices and mouth movements. It was bad…really bad.

So, in total, my entertainment ideas fizzled miserably this weekend, and truth be told, I think we’re all a little relieved that the boys get to go to Daycare today and we adults “have” to go to work. People always tell me to “treasure this wonderful time when the kids are young,” but it’s funny how the people who tell you this, never seem to have children that young at the time of the telling. I think that by the time you’re ready to say this to someone else, you’ve long forgotten how much work it actually is.

Right now, I treasure the few moments the boys are off playing by themselves…right up until one of them steals the other’s toy, or when one of them pushes the other down and a cry-fest ensues. Those moments are GOLDEN!