Looky, Daddy!

That's the Way I Like It

It's a two-hour round trip from our house and the apple-picking farm.

It takes ten minutes for three kids to pick more apples than we could eat in a month. Half that if there's a gentle but unexpected rain falling.

There is something wrong with this.

There are probably closer pick-your-own farms, but honestly, despite the unequal drive-to-fun ratio, I doubt we'll try any of them. We really like ours. It's cheap. It has none of the things that many suburban New Jersey families seem to crave in a farm, there's no corn maze, no petting zoo, no haystack pyramid, but what the farm lacks in family-friendly amenities, it makes up for in surliness.

"How are the trees this year?" my wife asked, spreading across her face her honest but twitchy smile, the only kind she can make anymore.

The woman just stared at her. Somewhere down in her phlemy, leathered throat, she made a grunt. Perhaps it was gas.

"Good! Good!" I jumped in, clapping my hands and rubbing them together like she had just told us the apples were made of gold this year, or the trees had won a battle with cancer.

The woman spoke. "You gonna want the hayride?" Hayride? There'd never been a hayride before. I don't know which shocked me more, the awkward attempt at commercialism or the woman's voice, sounding like a uneasy cross between barbed wire and hate.

"Sure!"

There was neither hay nor much of a ride in the hayride. It started at the farmhouse an ended only about a hundred meters away in the apple orchard. As the driver pulled our hayless trailer down to the rows of apple trees, he yelled back to ask us what kind we were picking today. At this farm there are dozens of varieties of apples, jonagold, gala, empire, macintosh, and many more, each with their own section of the farm. "The red kind!" I yelled back, just to see the expression on his face. It didn't disappoint.

When the ride stopped less than a minute from when it began, the girls unanimously declared it the best hayride ever.

The apple picking went quickly. Preschoolers exercise no judgment when picking apples. If it is red and in reach, it gets picked. They might as well be choosing vice-presidents for all the care they take. I started off trying to stay on top of this, trying to sort the good from the bad as the apples were dropped into the basket, but I had only two hands and they had four, and I simply couldn't keep up. Besides, most of these apples were going to become applesauce anyway, so what did it matter if many of them were halfway there when they were picked. Kathryn did try to help, calling out repeatedly, "No, Honey! Not that one!" when a twin reached for a particularly mushy specimen, but because Kathryn neither tries nor cares enough to tell the twins apart, nobody knew to whom she was yelling. The helpfulness of her strategy was compromised from the get-go.

Halfway through, a light but surprisingly cold rain began to fall and by the time we had our apples bagged and paid for, we were all wet and chilled to the bone. We loaded the apples in the minivan, stripped the girls down to their underwear, wrapped them all in blankets and towels, and drove the hour back home, listening to Ben Lee's Catch My Disease thirty times in a row, because that's the way we like it, that's the way we like it.

At one point on the drive home, Sharon swiveled around in her seat and asked the naked masses, "Who had a good time picking apples today?" "ME!" three voices yelled in unison, and as Sharon turned back around, I caught a glimpse of her honest but twitchy smile, the only kind she can make anymore.

October

Say what you want about the South but at least when I lived in Texas, they only closed the schools for real holidays, not ones made up by other religions. So imagine my surprise when I learned that yesterday my kids would be home all day because of Rosh Hashanah, two words that translate as "Head of the Year" but actually mean "Last Minute Trip to Blockbuster."  Like all Southern children, I was told at an early age that Jews are a clever and crafty bunch, but why is everyone so worried about a people who can't even read a calendar properly? Seriously, if they celebrate New Year in September, when must they have Christmas?

The twins celebrated Rosh Hashanah by falling to the floor and writhing in front of the television, as they usually do. It's like the electricity which should be bringing them Dora and her friends Boots is actually crackling through their helpless bodies instead. This is their common reaction to a TV that is not on. Once, at a Best Buy, with a whole wall of televisions flashing synchronized images of greed and joy, I found them flopping around in front of the one set that was not working. How dare it not entertain them? Gnash and rend, gnash and rend.

On Saturday, Kathryn and I squeaked out to Queens for the final Mets victory in their monstrosity of 60's-era concrete called Shea Stadium. It's the bubble wrap that causes the squeaking. Our Luck Quest has stalled of late, which has nothing to do with our lack of book deal and I'm offended that you would even think such a thing, so we're going with bubble wrap. We couldn't even get a bird to crap on her in all of Manhattan, not for lack of either birds or crap, and Kathryn balked at my idea to scrape some off a park bench and wipe it on her head which I so would have done had it been up to me, just to show how seriously I'm taking this, Random House.

Kathryn is a delight to take to ballgames, not least because we can win the game, leave the stadium, and wait on a train platform surrounded by thousands of cheering drunks and she'll ask, "Is the game over?" To her, a trip to Shea is not about the baseball (an outlook she shares with the Mets themselves), it's about how many things she can buy from the vendors. That's how we divvied up our jobs: I told her what was happening on the field and she told me exactly who was selling what in our section of the stands. She did her job better than I did mine. By the time we left, I was honestly surprised the vendors hadn't just started hovering around her seat, yelling out the name of anything they could get their hands on.

"Paper clips! Get'cher payyyper clips!"

"Ooh! Dad, can I have five dollars?"

But despite their win on Saturday, the Mets are out for the rest of the season, which means October is going to be a pretty quiet month around these parts. Unless, of course, those crafty Jews decide to make up any more wacky holidays.

I wonder when they celebrate Easter?

Not Bad for a Monday

It's already Monday and I've only taken my kids to the doctor once this week, so already things are looking better.

To be honest, I've kind of forgotten how to write for this blog. For months now I've used it as nothing more than a news site, throwing out headlines of our disasters, then filling in the gaps for the curious. I can't remember what I used to do beforehand. A few nights ago, I found myself at a party for blog writers, and for those few inconsiderate people who had not heard of me (read: all of them), I found myself reluctant to share my url, cajoling these new readers to make sure they go a few pages in to the archives before they write me off as an unfunny mess. I'm sure Eddie Murphy felt the same way when he went finally to the Oscars and the only thing of his in the theaters was Norbit.

That said, much is happening, and while Lila and Victoria sleep off their morning trip to the pediatrician, I'll let you know a bit about it.

Alpha+Mom, a site that discriminates against me with its very name, has fired up its Guide to Everything in Five Easy Steps, and was kind enough to feature one of my entries.

The New Jersey Star-Ledger contacted me for an interview, and I was flattered until I realized it was only to elicit a quote about my down-the-street neighbor, Alice. Then I became surly and unresponsive, refusing to answer questions until reporter promised to call me "the most popular daddy blogger to answer her calls."

The Month of Mastheads is winding down and thanks again for all the pics that you sent in. So far I've only missed posting new banners on two days, which considering everything, is a miracle of New Testament proportions.

And last, but hardly least, the x-rays we took of Kathryn's arm on Friday showed the bone to be, in the words of our orthopedist, "straight enough," the two sweetest words I've heard from a medical professional since my urologist called my vasectomy a "rousing success." (He spoiled my bliss almost immediately by following that with, "Get it? A rousing success? Ah ha ha!" Stupid urologist.)

Oh, and that trip to the doctor this morning? Turned out to be nothing. Nothing that a few thousand ice packs won't fix.

Her Summer Vacation Essay Will Be a Book

This is the god's-honest truth: The last words Kathryn heard before she broke her arm were, "Now why don't you try it without holding my hand." And the last words I heard before she broke her arm were, "Okay," but it was really more of an "Okaaaaaaayyyeeeeeeee!" with the pitch of the last syllable wavering up-up-up, up into the stratosphere of nervousness. She then took two quick breaths, then a step, then another, then her feet in her brand-new heelys shot out in front of her and the bone of her right arm eased her fall to the concrete by breaking in two.

If suffering truly built character, we could sell our house and fucking move in to Kathryn's character.

Riding in Cars with Girls

I don't resist getting a DVD player for my minivan because I'm morally opposed to them. I resist it because I believe life is suffering and the earlier my kids understand that, the better prepared they will be.

There is nothing wrong with DVD players in cars. Those who bray there is are usually united by one of two characteristics: They don't have kids and they never went on a road trip with my family. To this day, my father still favors his right shoulder after all-but dislocating it over many summers trying to beat my brother and me into some degree of quiet while driving down I-35 to wherever. It always started the same way, too. He'd reach up and swivel the rearview mirror at one of us, triangulating the distance. In the backseat, you knew something was coming--the tension had been building up for minutes, minutes in which you just couldn't help but put your hand or foot or hip or fingernail or plucked hair or something on your brother's side of the car--but you didn't know whom he'd strike until that mirror moved and the angry front-seat eyes found yours. Then it was a mad dash to the floorboard as the fist came around in a move that I swear human arms cannot actually do, and quiet would reign in the car for a few more miles. Had our bodies been strapped into seatbelts the way kids are today, had we not had the little bit of warning the swiveling, searching mirror provided, surely neither of us would have made it to adulthood.

This past weekend, my brother-in-law got married in Tulsa, Oklahoma, a five-hour drive from my parents' house where the girls and I have been staying for two weeks now. I responded to the first few invites to the wedding with polite requests that the venue be moved closer to us, but these requests were ignored. The final salvo came when I demanded, at the very least, that the wedding be held in a state that did not mandate the serving of 3.2 beer, to which my brother-in-law reminded me that I was currently residing smack dab in the middle of one of the biggest dry counties in Texas, which was a winning argument if I ever heard one, so I threw the kids in the van, loosened up my right shoulder, and hit the road.

A short list of things slightly more interesting than the drive from Dallas to Tulsa: Dryer lint, a broken stapler, Kate Hudson.

Multiple people came up to me at my brother-in-law's wedding and remarked that they couldn't wait to read about the event here on this website, like there was some kind of fundamental disconnect between their wedding experience and mine (which, unless they too heard a three-year-old exclaim, "Daddy, look! God!" when the priest came out, I guess there might have been), but I'm afraid all those people will be disappointed. I saw the same thing they did: My wife's brother, grinning so wide the top of his head was no longer connected to the bottom, saying I do to a woman likely to bring him more happiness than he deserves. There were no foibles, no humorous missteps, and to speak more of the whole event would open this website up to such descriptors as "heartwarming" and "touching," so enough of that if you please.

Tomorrow this whole Texas/Oklahoma summer trip comes to an end, for the twins and I at least. At 6:10 AM, we step on a plane leaving behind Texas, Kathryn, and my parents, but heading toward all those things that make regular blog posting possible: laptops, wireless connections, and--most of all--separate bedrooms. Just hope you're not in the seats in front of us on our way there.

Where's Flick? Has Anyone Seen Flick?

I'm going to tell you one story in order to tell you another one. Neither puke, nor poop, nor seizures will be featured in either, although the second story still has a healthy dose of suffering, lest you think you are reading someone else's website.

Friday was Kathryn's third birthday party this month. There's just one more to go. Four birthday parties in one month was, of course, my wife's idea: The four-part-Indiana-Jones-birthday-party marathon. It had started with a casual "Let's take Kathryn to the new Indiana Jones movie for her birthday," and had turned into a "Let's invite all of Kathryn's friends over every Friday night for a month to watch each of the old Indiana Jones movies and then take them all to see the new one when we're done," all before I even had time to remind her that Kathryn's birthday comes in late July. By the time I did get that not-unimportant fact out, it was moot. "...and each night can have a theme and games and, ooooh, I wonder if the movies come in a boxed-set," my wife rambled on to herself. When she turned to me and asked if we should have a fifth party night just for the DVD bonus features, I admitted defeat and mentally added one more layer of bricks to the internal tomb in which I keep my poor dead soul.

Now that we are three movies into the saga, even my wife admits she thought there would be a lot more movie-watching involved at a movie-watching party. Instead, what we had for the first movie-and-a-half was a bunch of girls screaming at odd intervals for no apparent reason, and for the second movie-and-a-half, screaming because Camilo wouldn't stop saying, "Ah, dessert! Chilled monkey brains!"

He's like the son I never had.

But it's not the screaming girls I wanted to tell you about; it's the screaming men. Well, screaming man. To be precise, the screaming me. I know you're surprised.

Late last night, I found a forgotten casualty of the three weeks of partying: an untouched bowl of ice cream, spoon and all, stashed away in our freezer. Cookies and cream, it appeared to be. Delicious, it appeared to be. Waiting for me, it appeared to be. And cold, it appeared to be.

The only one of the above I can actually confirm is that it was cold. Because when I spooned that first bite into my mouth, using the spoon so conveniently left right there in the bowl, and I know you can see where this is going, that metal spoon froze to the inside of my mouth so quickly I didn't even realize what had happened before, in shock, I pulled it out, taking with it the tender skin of my tongue, my left cheek, and the back of my bottom lip.

Cue the screaming.

The bleeding stopped within an hour or two. I'll let you know when the pain does.

As a Child, the Only Time I Was Quiet Was When I Was Trying to Use the Force

Tikal, Guatemala:

Luckily, my wife didn't let me pack my replica helmet, or I would have posed in the picture, too.

(Also, to those of you who wrote and called, yes, I seem to have been on Oprah yesterday. That was me, in my Mets cap, standing in front of the car of a drunk woman who had already had her keys taken away. Just doing my part, keeping the roads safe from drivers with no ability to start their cars. I was thinking for my second appearance on her show, I would attempt to resuscitate a person who was having no trouble breathing. Because that's the kind of hero I am.)

In Which I Recall Laughing

Last night, just before we went to bed, it started to snow. Big ol' snowflakes. Snowflakes the size of your head. So outside we went, with no preparation for the weather, no twenty minutes of finding boots, collecting mittens, or arguing over hats and hoods, we just went out in the clothes we were wearing, and caught those big-as-our-new-house snowflakes on our tongues. Forever, it seemed, we were out there. Spinning, leaping, shouting, and laughing. Most of all laughing.

I don't spend a lot of my time on this blog describing the good aspects of having kids, and mostly that's because I don't spend a lot of time actually experiencing any of the good aspects of having kids, but sometimes, only sometimes, when it's well-past dark outside, and your fingers are cold, and your hair is wet, and you can't see the snowflakes until they are right there on top of you, and nobody is asking for anything, and everybody is living with all their attention focused right in that moment, waiting for the next snowflake and laughing to wake the dead, in those moments this fathering thing doesn't seem that bad after all.

All Over but the Crying

Santa Claus must work fast at my parent's house. Between the twins and Kathryn, there's only a 45-minute window the night before Christmas during which all three kids are actually sleeping. Thank God for coffee. If my brother ever has kids, too, Santa might have to switch to methamphetamine.

At one point late in the evening, someone without kids had the idea to go outside and make simulated Santa noises to coax my kids to bed, a technique about as effective as waterboarding in creating a rest-conducive environment. Does anyone remember back in the 80s when Manuel Noriega was holed-up in the Vatican's embassy in Panama? For days we tried to get him to surrender, surrounding the embassy with loudspeakers and playing non-stop rock music at excruciating volumes. Far more effective would have been to send in a two-year-old and, very softly outside, ring a single sleigh bell. Noriega would have surrendered within the hour.

Kathryn's list to Santa was a short and inexplicable affair, the two major items being a digital camera and a mood ring. She got them both and proceeded to use one to snap hundreds of 5-mega-pixel shots of the other, resulting in photographic evidence that she experienced every possible emotion all before 7 AM Christmas morning. Like we needed proof.

The mood ring has been on her Christmas list for months, ever since she found one on the playground of her school. It wasn't hers, obviously, and she knew it had to go to the lost and found, but first Kathryn had to assess the mood of each and every person she encountered along the way. It took hours. The last person to wear it was the principal who, Kathryn reported matter-of-factly, was "aggravated."

The twins celebrated Christmas as countless two-year-olds before them have, by screaming with glee about each present that was theirs and then simply screaming about each one that wasn't. They asked for no specific present from Santa, mainly because they were not yet aware that they could. Santa-wise, the twins were in that blissful state of ignorance that allowed us to set our own rules, kind of like those delightful summers long ago when Kathryn still thought the ice cream truck was the "free music van." It will be sad to see that time go. Still, the twins handled the excitement of the day well, and only sporadically did they gift us with their own special presents of snot and tears, which is probably more than the Vatican can say about Noriega.

Boundless

I do these things so you can feel better about yourself. I do them so tonight, you can kiss your spouse and say, "At least you are smarter than that guy in that blog that I read.  Not as hot, sure, but a hell of a lot smarter." I do these things because deep down, underneath the gruffness, underneath the facades, underneath the cynicism, I am a moron.

And these things I do are camping trips.

Every night since our last attempt, when the twinlings are tucked into bed, Lila has asked hopefully, "Are we going camping tomorrow, Mommy?" (Of course, it is Mommy she asks because my wife has requested that my "interactions" with the children be kept to a minimum after dusk, since that's when I'm more likely to "lash out" at them "with my words." Or my "foot." Or my "car.") Yes, Lila asks this. The same Lila that woke up screaming every 40 minutes the last time she slept in a tent. So after putting them to bed, The Mom always comes over and unlocks me from my room and we all have a good laugh at Lila's ridiculous question. Then, one day, I said--I said--"Why don't we try it again in October." It's like I was watching someone else say it. Someone with different kids, or no kids at all. Or maybe I was thinking that October only comes every twenty years or so, you know, like it does for the Mets.

But October has come. And camping we are going. Tomorrow. Now that last time we tried this, you, Gentle Reader, commented with suggestions both good and wise, telling us to buy a trailer or rent a cabin or screw the whole thing and stay in a hotel, and I'd like you to know that we are completely ignoring you.

Our stupidity knows no bounds.