Looky, Daddy!

Happy Cinco de Mayo

The perfect not-really-Mexican drink to celebrate the perfect not-really-Mexican holiday:

Mexican Martini

3 to 4 oz. good tequila
1 oz. Cointreau
2 oz. sour mix
juice of one lime
jalapeño stuffed olives

Place all but the olives in a shaker. Add a splash of olive juice and fill with ice. Then shake it like a maraca, pour it into two salt-rimmed martini glasses, and enjoy.

I won't go into detail about what makes a "good" tequila, because for every liquor snob that reads this, there's always someone just a little snobbier. Also, there are those who would recommend adding an ounce of orange juice and/or a splash of Sprite before the shaking. Whatever floats your boat across the border is what I say.

What about you? Anyone care to share a recipe for their favorite libation, Mexican-sounding or not?

Role Playing

It wasn't a satanic thing. I mean, maybe it was for some, but nobody I knew that played Dungeons and Dragons was even remotely interested in worshiping Satan. We left Satan and all his deeds to the kids with the big hair and the chains and the black clothes, but they didn't really want him either. They wanted Robert Smith. They were just born a few years too early to know it.

It was really just for the porn. Outside of a dog-eared, all but illegible copy of the Hitchhikers Guide to the Galaxy, there was no book I read and re-read more than Gary Gygax's Monster Manual, the first hardcover book for what was to be known as "Advanced" D&D, and by "Advanced," I'm pretty sure they meant, "Now with boobies!"

Although the manual gave a frequency of "rare" for succubi, they still kept showing up in almost every game of Dungeons and Dragons I played from age 10 onward. And don't think they were held to the "number appearing: 1" rule, either.

Rest in peace, Gary Gygax. 1938-2008.

The Goodest Friday Ever

Camilo turned eight years old yesterday and he still won't marry Kathryn, so he invited her over for a slumber party instead, a strategy that may work for him now but will get him called all kinds of unpleasant names if he tries it senior year of college. It was Kathryn's first night away from home since we learned of her epilepsy. Normally her mom and I would have gone back and forth for weeks over this kind of thing, so this time I just didn't tell her. And she didn't notice either, so we're golden.

Before Kathryn left, she asked me to water her Jesus seeds.

Exactly ten years ago today, I said "I do" to the daughter of an Oklahoman accountant. Like most such arrangements, it didn't happen without some compromises. For her part, my future wife agreed to never make us move to New Jersey, and I, in turn, promised I wouldn't interfere if she raised our future kids Catholic. So far I'm doing better on my promise than she did, but not by a whole lot.

Sharon knew this would be hard for me, and as such, she set the bar I had to clear at its lowest setting. "You don't have to go to mass with us," she told me at the negotiation table over a decade ago, her god filling up three chairs on her side of the table, me listening on the other side, alone but for the small bottle of whiskey I had set on the table mainly to piss them off before I remembered they were Catholic, "but you can't try to entice the kids to stay home and become godless like you, either." She looked at me. "Like, as we're walking out the door in our Sunday finest, you can't call out 'Bye, guys! I'll just be here eating ice cream until you get back!'."

I would like to say now that I thought long and hard about what it meant to raise kids in a given religion, because for me, organized religion comes in somewhere between NASCAR and Kate Hudson movies in the list of things without which this world would be better off. But really all I was thinking was that if I said yes, then this woman across the table would marry me and so yes it was. Yes, yes, yes. A thousand times yes.

So now in my own house, I am outnumbered by Catholics, four to one. And I'm the one watering the Jesus seeds.

Two weeks ago, Kathryn came home from church with a cup full of soil. Inside were seeds. It was her job to care for these seeds the same way Jesus cares for her, she told me earnestly. And if that's true, then maybe she should start staying home and eating ice cream with me on Sundays, because unless Jesus' dad has nothing better to do than remind Jesus about his commitments, Kathryn's up the creek on this one.

The Metropolitan Museum of Snickers

Sunday morning my wife and I broke the news to Kathryn about the death of our dog so many miles away, and after the grieving (a second grader can pass through all seven stages of grief in thirty minutes flat, twenty if you casually mention the ice-pops in the freezer) we decided to spend the rest of the day, just she and I, at the Metropolitan Museum of Art.

It was delightful.

Kathryn's mind is an interesting place. Like most children, she has an amazing capacity to forget that which she deems unimportant and remember with frightening detail that which she values. Something Kathryn can do without: Proper nouns. Something about which her depth of knowledge surpasses anyone you know: Mythology. Greek mythology, to be exact. Oh, and Webkinz.

For about a year we've been reading to Kathryn from D'aulaires' Book of Greek Myths, and for a year she has been absorbing it, filling her brain with it, treasuring its information in place of such mundanities as her best friend's identity or where we live. Or how to spell her middle name. Which is Rose. So we thought the time might be right to try another trip to the Met, hoping that their collection of ancient Greek art would dazzle her into forgetting the tragic announcement of the day. We had taken Kathryn there a few years back, but she had been too young then to be impressed by anything other than the way her big voice echoed in those quiet rooms. We hadn't stayed long.

This time, though, it was magic. And by magic, I mean she laughed a lot at all the naked penises.

I had forgotten that the Greek wing was really nothing but an astoundingly large number of naked torsos carved in marble, their arms, legs, and heads all having fallen prey to the elements, leaving just one appendage behind. And its two friends.

Hercules was the hero that rescued Kathryn from the thrall of the thousands of bedicked torsos, not because his manhood was covered, but because his back was. "Hercules!" Kathryn yelled, spying him across the hall. I asked how she knew. "He's wearing a lion skin," she replied with extra eye-rolly action. (If they ever made a Kathryn action figure, it would come with Extra Eye-Rolly Action! And I'd come with the Power to Not Strangle the Stranglable! Stranglible? Stranglable? It's hard living out here on the outskirts of English.) Hercules led to Perseus, Perseus led to Medusa, and Medusa led to Marsyas. And Marsyas led to me wondering just who it was my wife gave birth to seven years ago.

"Who's this guy, Daddy?"

(Reading) "Mar-sy-as."

"Oh." (Looks a little longer then turns to skip away.)

"Wait! Don't you want to know who he is? Don't you want to know why he looks like that?"

"Daddy. He looks like that because he thought he could play music better than Apollo. He couldn't so Apollo pulled off his skin to make a drum."

"Oh."

Scary, much?

And that's pretty much how the rest of the day went, Kathryn bouncing from piece to piece and me struggling to keep up, both physically and intellectually, with the world's preeminent Greek scholar. Who skips.

In Which God's Messages are Ignored

To say that my wife is more religious than I am is to say that Old Navy is more of a discount clothing outlet than I am. That is, it is not necessarily saying much. But in truth, The Mom does have a very deep-seated religious conviction, which made it even more baffling to me that, when God spoke to us last week, The Mom was able to completely ignore his message. And that message was this: DO NOT GO CAMPING.

But camping we went. And God smote us for our insolence.

Our optimism was well-founded. Four years ago, deep in the heat of a Texas summer, The Mom and I took a not-quite-three-year-old Kathryn on a mammoth 10-day camping trip out in the  Big Bend area of West Texas. It was extremely ambitious, extremely foolhardy, and extremely fun. It took us two days of driving to get there, and although we had borrowed a DVD player for the car to entertain our backseat two-year-old, we never used it. And when we reached our destination, we learned that all of the hiking trails leading away from it were closed due to an aggressive mountian lion that had mauled a few people some days before.

At each trailhead, there were big signs of scary looking mountain lions. Kathryn thought these were advertisements, teases of what was to be found just out of sight, and she spent most of her time standing at each of the trailheads that radiated like spokes from our campground, calling out "Mountain lion! Oh, MOUNTAIN lion!" and shaking a baggie of Goldfish snack crackers as a tasty enticement for her newest and bestest friend to come visit.

The day before we left, the renegade mountain lion, a female apparently driven from her normal hunting lands, finally came into the campgrounds, skinny and hungry, only to be shot by the park rangers. Later that day, the trails were opened and the warning signs were taken down, replaced with less alarming, more generic signs asking potential hikers to take care and keep an eye open for mountain lions and bears. Kathryn, ever inquisitive, asked about the new signs, and when The Mom read them aloud, her eyes lit up. "Oh, Mama! Bears!" she exclaimed, running back to our tent for more Goldfish.

But dangerous wildlife aside, we had a great time. Kathryn loved sleeping in a tent and while she was never exactly thrilled with what we prepared to eat over our campfire, she was always delighted how it was prepared and that alone seemed to keep her going. And with her mother's hiking stick as a horsey and a stream to cool off in, she was easily the happiest person there. Which is good, because it would have been a long two-day drive back had she not been.

But this camping trip was different. We knew it would be going in to it. All the signs were there.

For starters, the forecast for our destination, captured the night before our departure:

Then came this, courtesy of Lila:

The Mom's response? Pack some ponchos and children's Tylenol. Let's go.

I could have argued, but though I'm loathe to admit it, I wanted to go as much as she did. Before the kids came, we used to camp all the time. In Japan, our favorite activity was to strap a tent and a few blankets to the backs of our bikes and ride, ride, ride until we found a beach or an old shrine or just a dry plot of ground next to a rice field to sleep for the night, just to return home the next morning. And I craved the ability to do that again. So much of my time right now is dedicated to raising these kids that when the carrot of my former life is dangled before me, I jump.

Besides, there was no way I was going to countermand my wife. She's mean.

So camping we went. And if you ask each of us what our favorite part of the trip was, here's what we would not say.

Kathryn would not say it was sitting in the tent for hours while mother nature did exactly what it promised it would:

Lila would not say spending the night in the tent, during which she woke up no less than five times confused and screaming and inconsolable.

The Mom would not say trying to calm Lila in the middle of the night, repeating ad infinitum that she was there and it was all okay to a child who did not hear her, while nearby campers grew more agitated and less sympathetic.

Victoria would not say the wasp that stung her just below her eye:

And I would not say it was watching the dangling carrot of my former life turn rotten and drop from the line.

On the way home, I asked The Mom, what with her closeness to God and all, why she didn't listen to him when he told us not to go. She replied that every good Catholic knows you should never listen when God speaks. "No good comes from it. It's either sacrifice your son, or build an ark, or wander the desert, or you're pregnant with my baby and good luck with that. Trust me, this camping trip was way better than any of those things."

So It Goes

          1922 - 2007

I Guess the Red Team Got Santa Claus

"Bobby, I want you downfield."

"Right, coach!"

"Jimmy, you stay on the line."

"Got it!"

"And number 21, you cover Jesus."

"Aww, coach!"

Angering the Karma Gods

I should not have complained, but I did. And the karma gods heard me. And punished me.

I've been punished before by the karma gods. Once, outside a Home Depot, I realized that I had just walked out with a pocketful of newly-made house keys for which I had not paid. I should have turned back around and paid for them, but I didn't. The karma gods were watching and took action and when I got home, not a single one of those new keys fit my front door.

Do I believe that the keys would have worked had I gone back and paid for them? Without a doubt.

This time the karma gods were more creative. And more evil.

This morning, I had asked The Mom to add one thing to my shopping list: Coffee. She didn't. She forgot. It wasn't her fault. Our kids have reduced both of us to the kind of people who go to the kitchen to get a spoon and end up standing in front of the refrigerator for three hours, looking from shelf to shelf trying to remember why we opened it in the first place. By the time she made it all the way over to the shopping list, The Mom's attention span had been reached. I'm sure she stood there, silent, maybe chewing absently on her finger, trying to think of something we needed. In a sudden flash of inspiration, she wrote not coffee, but "New Cereal for Mom," because she's been wanting to take some to work, which is where she always has breakfast because she leaves this house in such a rush every morning you'd think it was built on an ancient Indian burial ground.

Pleased with her addition to the shopping list, I have no doubt that she scampered away, clicking her heels like a leprechaun as she went.

Coffee is sacred. Coffee is my only friend on these dark winter days at home. One afternoon not long ago, I sat exhausted on the couch and Victoria approached me. "Beep! Beep! Beep!" she said, each beep accompanied by a little hop. "Beep! Beep! Beep! I coffeemaker!" Then she looked at me with a two-year-old's concern and said, "Daddy happy now?"

So this evening, as I unpacked the bags from yet another laugh-a-minute shopping trip with twins and realized that I had no coffee for tomorrow, I may have complained to The Mom a little. I might have said a few disparaging remarks. I may have implied that she didn't care about my needs since her Madison Avenue office no doubt had a staff of underpaid immigrant workers on hand to keep their coffeemakers filled and ready. I may have mentioned the number of times "Starbucks" appeared on her credit card bill last month. I may even have mentioned that I was glad she could remember to include things that she wanted, like new cereal--

and that is when the karma gods heard me.

"You mean this?" The Mom asked, holding up the box of cereal I had bought.

And there it was, sprawled in enormous letters across the top of the box, right above the name "Cinnamon Cluster Crunch," a logo that I swear was not there when the box caught my eye at the store, a logo that the karma gods had obviously planted there not seconds before:

"Weight Watchers"

And if I'd had just a little more coffee in my system, I might have been able to duck fast enough.

Carpools With Camilo, part 2

Christmas must be just around the corner. I know this not because I've seen the displays at the mall. I would rather participate in a voluntary study of some kind of particularly invasive and controversial surgery than take my girls to a mall. It is also not because of the cold snap that has hit the country. Cold snaps only affect those who go outside, and with the twins deeply rooted in the "I'll do it myself" stage, I think it's better for everyone concerned if they continue to spend most of their day indoors. In the bathroom. In the tub. Under a mattress. Guarded by fierce dogs.

But I digress.

I know that Christmas is upon us because Camilo and Kathryn have begun to argue about Jesus again. Believe it or not, this is a bit of a relief, because of late, our Carpools-with-Camilo arguments have avoided safe topics, such as religion, and gone into the social sphere. Apparently their elementary school is home to a little more than eight hundred thousand secret first-grade clubs and it is very important for both Kathryn and Camilo to loudly and repeatedly proclaim their (1) membership in, or (2) opposition to, each of these secret clubs.

There's the Spider Club, the Care Bear Club, the Baby Bear Club, the Magic Witch Club, the Lunchtime Club, the Playground Club, the Spider-Bear Club, the Baby Spider Lunchtime Club, the Magic Baby Care Bear Witch Club, and a bunch of others with names so complicated that it confirms my long-held suspicion that First Graders should never be allowed to congregate in groups greater than one.  And Kathryn and Camilo are in about half of these clubs and enemies of the other half. And it is very tiring.

But now Kathryn and Camilo are back on their old favorite, Jesus. Today's argument was about how Jesus died. Camilo was adamant that Jesus was hung. Kathryn was equally insistent that Jesus had been nailed to death. Both children brought forth a truly staggering list of supporting sources, pictures they had seen, videos they had watched, members of the clergy they had consulted, peyote buttons they had chewed, that proved with no doubt that they were correct. Finally, Kathryn turned to me.

"Daddy, how did Jesus die?"

But there was no way I was getting into this one. Not in an election year.

Carpools with Camilo

My brood carpools to school with a former classmate of Kathryn's. He is also in first grade and every day he and Kathryn argue like an old married couple for the entire 6-minute car trip. They will argue about anything, but they mostly stick to elementary school topics: who is older (he is), who's dad has the bigger car (I do), who can cross the monkey bars faster (he can), who's baby sisters or brother can say the most words (hers can). But this young man, whom we'll call Camilo because that's his name, has a secret weapon he employs to win every argument, sort of a trump card if you will. Here's the exact transcript of an argument that the two had last winter:

Kathryn said, "I'm taking ice skating lessons."

Camilo, always the optimist, replied, "If you fall on the ice, you'll break your knee."

"No, I won't."

"Yes, you will. My friend's mom fell on the ice and she broke her knee. She had to go to the hospital and get a new knee."

"I won't break my knee."

"If I fall on the ice, I would break the ice, not my knee." Camilo is such a boy.

"You can't break the ice when you fall, Camilo."

"Yes, I can."

"No, you can't."

For brevity and flow, I will not include all of the yes-I-cans and no-you-can'ts that followed. There were probably around forty or fifty of them before I finally intervened.

"The ice at a skating rink is pretty thick. I don't think anyone can break it by falling."

At this point, you might think Kathryn has won the argument, right? Wrong. Camilo plays his trump card.

"Jesus can."

Jesus ends almost every argument between these two. According to Camilo, Jesus has the biggest car and the most brothers and sisters, he can jump the highest, and do the monkey bars fifty times in a row. Jesus can jump over the school and run across the gym faster than even the PE teacher. Kathryn, of course, has no answer to this, but it never seems to bother her. In fact, it almost seems like the only reason they argue so incessantly is to discover new and exciting facts about the Son of God.

Camilo's dad, the only other stay-at-home dad I know, claims he has no idea where Camilo gets these views about Jesus, but I don't believe him. I think every day as I drive up, he hands Camilo his backpack and tells his son something like, "Okay, Camilo, have a good day at school. And remember that Jesus' lawn mower is bigger than Kathryn's dad's lawn mower." Then he kisses Camilo on the head and sends him out to my car to spread the good word.

Update: Before I posted this, I forwarded this to Camilo's dad for approval. He wrote me back and said Yes, I could post it, but I should remember that Jesus' blog is bigger than my blog.