Looky, Daddy!

Your Days Are None the Better For What You Have Done

I woke up this morning at about 6:30 AM and I rubbed my eyes. They hurt. Everything near them hurt as well. They would continue to hurt until coffee was brewed.

There was a noisy queue for our house's single toilet and I joined it at the end. Everyone in front of me was wearing footed pajamas. Two-thirds of them asked to have their butts wiped. Two-thirds of them were disappointed. No one flushed. The water in the bowl was impossibly yellow by the time it was my turn. I told myself not flushing was better for the environment, then I made the water even more yellow. The sight of it would have surely burned my eyes had not closed them against the pain.

Three pairs of pajamas were exchanged for three sets of school clothes. Some people thought this was a better idea than others. Protests were made and ignored. I poured three bowls of cereal: Two bowls Frosted Mini-Wheats, one bowl Cheerios.

Later, school lunches and backpacks were passed out and shoes were wrestled on. I handed the car keys to Lila. It was her turn to hide them. Each morning, one child gets to run out first, unlock the car, and hide the keys somewhere inside. That's my way of ensuring at least one of my children goes to the car voluntarily. I can sling the other two over my shoulders if I need to. Even the eight-year-old. Lila always hides the keys in the glove box. I always know this, and she always knows I'll check at least five other places before I find them. This morning, when I opened the glove box, she screamed with joy at her own cleverness.

Nothing that happened this morning was affected by California passing Proposition 8. Had voters rejected it instead, my morning would have been identical. Proposition 8 has not touched me. Making gay marriage illegal in California has left me unaffected. My days haven't changed.

But listen, 52% of California: Back when gay marriage was legal, your days didn't change, either. When there was marriage equality in your state, your mornings transpired exactly the way they had before. Your head probably hurt before your morning coffee. Your kids probably protested getting dressed. It's even possible that your daughter also hid your keys in your glove box, and when gay marriage was legal, she still squealed with joy when you found them.

You didn't need to vote away a people's right. Your days are none the better for it. Your days are none the better for what you have done.

More

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Because Everyone Should Have the Right to Be Awesome

In a nutshell: Four months after gay marriage was declared legal in California, an initiative has been introduced to the November ballot, called Proposition 8, to make such a union illegal again. I am of mixed feelings about this, because while I whole-heartedly support gay marriage, I have a number of presents waiting to go to the post office for friends who have recently tied the knot, and if their marriage suddenly becomes illegal, I can return the gifts for cash.

I kid, of course. I'd barter them on the street for drugs.

I kid again. I don't have any friends.

So, what do you do?

If you live in California, vote NO on Proposition 8.

If you live either in or out of California, donate to the cause. Polly at Lesbian Dad has a handy little donation page that I've linked to here. Click on it. Donate. If you all donated $5 the minute you read this, we'd have almost $10,000 additional dollars by the end of today. Donate $10 and we'd double that. Do it. If you are not sure, read Polly's site here, here and here. Then do it.

So you've pledged to vote, donated to the cause, read the propaganda, and even promised to raise all your babies gay just to marry them legally in California and you still want to do more?

Steal this post.

Below are seven different post-ready ads that you can copy and post on your blog or myspace page or whatever you kids have these days and won't tell me about because I'm almost forty. Each is followed by a code that you can copy and paste directly. Take them and spread them everywhere. You can also send me your own awkward wedding photos and I'll make more posters to spread around. If I receive enough, I splice them into a youtube video and we'll all be famous! (Nothing like being mocked for a good cause. And yes, I'm in these somewhere. I won't say which one I am, just that I'm really cute, short, and blonde.)

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Luck

Poop. People, why does my life always come back to poop? Bird poop, people poop, gold-plated poop pendants, you people wasted no time in writing to tell me how lucky poop is supposed to be. Poop. People, as I look around my house, trust me when I say if poop were lucky, we wouldn't be having this problem.

That said, you know our first Luck Quest mission is going to be riding the train to New York and making asses of ourselves trying to get those surly city pigeons to crap on us. I'm skeptical that it will work (if bird poop was lucky, why does my minivan have WASH ME keyed into the door?) but I'm tickled pink just at the thought. And that's what this whole Quest is about: Throwing skepticism to the wind and making asses of ourselves. It's what this family was based on, and it's time we got back to our roots. Enough of this pity party this blog has become.

And speaking of which...

I used to know this guy. I never once punched him in the jaw no matter how much I wanted to. He was a full-time world traveler, working odd jobs from country to country, amassing experiences that many people would sell their babies just to have. He liked to call himself homeless, which was literally true, the man had no permanent home, but he meant it seriously. He meant his life, and the life of the 3.5 million people homeless in the US alone, were essentially the same, the fact he was saying this in a pub in Eastern Europe not withstanding. He and I used to argue about this loudly and often, and like I said, I never once punched him in the face, but I wanted to.

Which leads me to this: My family and I are lucky. Incredibly so. Yes, Kathryn broke her arm and, yes, it has resisted multiple efforts to straighten back out, but she has a doctor with great skill working in a modern hospital trying to fix it, and the whole thing is getting paid by an insurance company. There are countless places where children with broken limbs are not so lucky.

The events we've had here, with seizures and limbs and a rabid carpenter ant (I didn't even write about the ant, but you wouldn't have believed it anyway) and before that teeth and toes and basements and basements and basements are only perceived as bad luck because I have the luxury to sit here at my laptop and declare them so. If we were truly living an unlucky life, I sure as hell couldn't be blogging about it.

Many of you, in comments and emails, have asked for our address to send us gifts, charms, and ponies. We are truly honored by this, but entirely undeserving. Instead, may I suggest you make a donation to Doctors Without Borders, a group dedicated to spreading the kind of luck we do have to children and families that lack it.

Now, if you'll excuse me, I'm off to find birds to crap on my daughter. Just hope you're not on our train coming home. We plan on being real lucky.

Seven Was So Yesterday

Dear Kathryn,

On your first trip to the pediatrician, you crapped on me. I had just set you down, naked, on the examination table, and you lifted your legs and squirted a fine line of brown up my shirt, from my navel to just below my chin. I didn't have another shirt to change into, and so, for lack of anything else to do, I greeted everyone I met for the rest of that office visit with a thumbs up and the biggest smile they'd ever seen. I looked like the smiley-faced dot a young, dreamy girl might place over the "i" you'd just drawn on me with your butt.

And then we switched pediatricians by cell phone on the car ride home.

Today you turn eight, and right now I feel like you are the biggest smile I've ever seen dotting the line of crap that seven pooped on you. May this year treat you better.

I love you,

Dad

Because I'm Too Tired to Think of Five

Four Reflections on Flying with Children:

Thirty years ago, airline ticket prices were such that flying was the domain of the business traveler or the super-rich. Those days cannot return fast enough.

If a child kicks your chair from behind, don't be an asshole about it. It is very hard for parents to care if their children kick the chair of an asshole.

Someone should draw piggy nostrils on the oxygen masks.

In a movie theater, drinks come with lids and fit into cup holders molded into the armrest of the seat in which you are sitting. In an airplane, drinks come with no lids and rest on little slippery hinged tables attached to a seat in which someone else is sitting. And movie theaters do not, as a general rule, move.

Trees and Apples

A message from my dad on my answering machine yesterday morning:

I don't know what you're thinking, but I'm thinking Crap! I forgot my parent's 45th wedding anniversary.

Listen, Dammit.

It's happening. Right now. In California. The fall of our society.

People of the same sex are getting married.

Listen. Listen hard. You'll hear something: The fabric of our world ripping apart.

Can you hear it? Listen again. Just below the clinking of the champagne glasses. It's there. I know it.

Maybe it's beneath the speeches and the well-wishes and the congratulations. Keep listening.

Maybe it's beneath the laughter.

Our lives are being torn apart, I know it! Keep listening.

No, that's not it. That's kissing. You can't tell kissing from the upending of everything our country stands for? Boob.

Listen harder. Listen past the sound of children knowing that their parent's bond is now legal and binding. Listen past the sound of couples being granted their rights. Listen, dammit!

It's there, beneath the words of ministers and justices and officiants, beneath the pledges of love.

If only people would stop clapping, I know we could hear it better.

Blackout

The water off the Jersey Shore is 55 degrees. On Father's Day I spent upwards of six hours in that water, long enough for any of the more Father's-Day-ish parts of me to bid adieu to the external world and find a new home somewhere between my kidneys and my pancreas. I'm not sure they can be coaxed back out before the next Father's Day comes around. Not that anyone's trying.

On the plus side, lifting forty pounds of toddler flesh over each and every wave that hit that shore did wonders for my pecs. Tell me again, when will trips to the beach be relaxing? Every year I hear learned people recommend books I should take to the beach, and every year I wonder what they expect me to do with them there. Use them to hold down the blanket, perhaps? And  while you are answering that, tell me why do we even take a blanket? Who sits on it? Neither my wife nor I, that's for sure. Not while there are ball-numbing waves to lift our kids over.

And a Happy Belated Father's Day to you, too.

In other news, the storm that spanked New Jersey last week left much of our town without power for a day or so. That night, while the upper floors of our house filled with the unnatural heat of the day, the five of us slept on the basement floor, willing the coolness up from the concrete and into our bodies. The twins were beside themselves with the arrangement, the candles, and the company, and they spent the night waking repeatedly just to see if we were all still there. Kathryn, as is her wont, spent the night twirling and shadowboxing, never having more than one body part touching the sleeping bag in which she was supposed to be sleeping.

The next morning, still without power, Sharon fled to work and my girls and I fled to the local cineplex, where Jack Black assured us "there is no charge for awesomeness." Which explains why his new movie cost me $31.

The power came back on at about 3 PM, and the lights immediately illuminated the mountains of crap I had ignored up till then. So we turned them back off and went outside, where all three kids were amazed to learn a sprinkler required no electricity whatsoever.

What I Have Learned Recently

Do not try to get control of your household's sole television by promising your kids it will be showing "cowboys" and "giants." There will only be disappointment and tears.

It takes an ridiculously short time for a snowball fight between a second grader and two toddlers to turn tragic. Add in a thirty-eight-year-old and that time can be cut in half.

On a cold winter day when your dentist asks you, "So if you are a stay-at-home dad, where are your kids right now?" remember that he has a sharp metal object and possibly a limited sense of humor before you respond, "In the car--is this going to take much longer?"

If a seven year old sees a weather report predicting up to a foot of snowfall overnight, she will stay awake until she sees white through her window, even if the first white she sees turns out to be the sunrise.