The Ramblings of a Teenager’s Father

Yesterday my oldest daughter became a teenager. She’s been teetering on the edge for a few years, and now it’s official. The dark and brooding years are upon us. May she arise some day unscathed.

And tonight, I’m taking her and a friend to her first real concert: Fall Out Boy. That’s the band I famously called “Fall Out Guy” to another parent in an ill-conceived effort to look cool a few months ago. The mom quickly corrected me, and I laughed because I am so beyond being cool it’s helpless. But I digress.

My wife and I are parents of a teenager. How did this happen? I don’t know.

But her turning 13 and going to this concert reminded me of a few paragraphs I wrote two months ago and then tucked back into my computer documents file unfinished and uncertain. Here it is.

*****

The white dashes flash by to the approximate beat of the Fall Out Boy album blasting from my empty minivan’s speakers. I’ve grown to like FOB in recent months as I prepare for a planned concert I’ll be attending with my daughter at a future day. They remind me of the bands I liked on the periphery of my musical tastes when I was younger. Worth a listen.

I’m traveling alone this night, a rare treat. Heading to the in-laws in Pennsylvania. Meeting my wife there, who has been in Washington working for a few days. The kiddos are left behind, being watched by their other grandparents.

Our trip has a purpose: to help my wife’s parents tie up the loose ends on the selling of the little store they've owned for 27 years.

27 years.

Clearly, my obsession with the passage of time has yet to abate.

I’ve always found it interesting how an hour on the road can creep by when that’s the length of the trip. And yet the same hour can fly by when it's part of a three hour trip. And, when part of a ten hour trip, the hours can click by like the lines in the middle of the road.

I guess time is relative, and you don’t need complicated formulas to see it.

Despite warnings from my elders, I’ve been truly amazed at how the years do click by faster and faster as you get older. The holidays upon us each year before you can blink. The adage “Boy, this year is flying by” said with more earnestness and sincerity each time. 

The whole of my youth stands in my mind as a millennia compared to the decades packed on since college. Yet the memories of both fade.

There’s a line from the Jimmy Buffet song, He Went To Paris, that used to confound me. It’s on the Margaritaville album, which anyone who’s spent time dreaming has listened to in its entirety countless times. Not my favorite song from the album, but it grows on you. The song chronicles the bulk of someone’s life, saying at one point, “And four to five years slipped away.”

I used to think, how can four to five years slip away?

Now I know.  

If nothing else, this dumb blog thing has helped me put into writing some of the precious experiences (and not so precious).  More and more, I think I need to do that, as the potential memories evaporate like dreams you neglect to talk about the morning after.

I joke with my eldest child that my mind isn’t what it used to be. Words don’t come as easily to my lips, and memories from last week slip through the crack before they make it to the long term file. I worry sometimes that I have early onset something-or-other. But I think it’s just life.

Then again, I haven’t written as much lately. Which only I notice, really. So there’s no need to apologize. I have a new job I’m enjoying and use the rest of my free time to eat with my family and sleep.

The other day, someone mentioned they saw something I wrote somewhere, and then cocked their head and asked how I liked the new job. I told the truth, that I like it a lot. I get to do good work.

It made me think about that question we all ask each other, what do you do? It’s a simple curiosity, but it’s also kind of profound how we use it to put people and their lives in a box. But it’s never that easy, is it? 

In the eighties there was an old show called Taxi. For some reason we watched it often and mourned when it got canceled. I remember one thing about it in particular. In their minds, none of the taxi drivers were actually taxi drivers. They were struggling actors, aspiring boxers, and other dream chasers. All except Alex, who’d come to grips with the notion he was just a taxi driver. And that was enough. He was okay with it.

I think about my answers to that question over the years: a journalist, a speechwriter, a chief of staff, a political consultant, a public relations consultant, a freelance writer, an adjunct. I've always struggled with this question, both asking it and answering it. I always just want to say writer. But that's rarely been true.

Maybe I don't like boxes. Maybe I'm just not okay with it.

*****

Like I said, it was unfinished and uncertain.

More recently I went to a writers’ convention that I’ve mentioned before. One of the main speakers talked about legacy. He referenced that same question. What do you do? And he put that question in its place when he said this: Nobody cares about your resume when you’re gone. Your impact on this world is so much more important than just what you do for a living. It’s what you do in everything else that often matters more. And, most important, what you leave behind.

That’s what he said, anyway. It spoke to me as the parent to some amazing kids. Kids who are growing up too fast and becoming interesting, curious and complicated people way before my wife and I are ready. They are going to be my legacy.

Tonight I get to take one of them to a concert.

How did my wife and I become parents to a teenager? I don’t know. We just did. The white dashes keep passing by.

And I’m okay with it.


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Finding Our Version of Perfect a Few Rows Down

My son walked through the tunnel connecting the upper concourse and the actual arena and paused as he took in the massive space that is the largest college basketball stadium in the country.  

“Whoa,” he muttered.  Whoa is right.


The boy's first glance at the Dome.

It was this five-year-old little boy’s first visit to Syracuse University's Carrier Dome. And, it was an awesome sight to behold: a world within a building, with a bulbous white roof like a puffy cloud arched over a coliseum big enough to hold 50,000 people and an entire football field, to boot.

For basketball games, they only use half the stadium, tucking a court into the one end. But the whole space is still there before you. And it’s immense.

All four of the kids stopped at the railing at the end of the tunnel and just gazed at the sight before them. We were three levels up, which added an element of height to the view as well. Our 8-year-old daughter, who happens to be afraid of heights, stood less close to the railing than the others. And while the dome looked bigger than they expected, I’m sure the court looked a bit smaller.

Then we turned away from the railing and showed our tickets to the usher. He pointed up the steep concrete stairs toward the rafters.

“Whoa,” I mumbled.  Whoa is right.

One of the older kids look at me as their expression of amazement, turned to disappointment. And it was then I knew I’d screwed up. On the day weeks before when I planned this rare family outing, my intuitive frugality – a.k.a. my tendency to be a cheap ass – had steered me toward more affordable tickets. And now, the usher was steering us to the cheap seats.

*****

You learn pretty early on as a parent that perfection is impossible. It’s never more true than when it comes to the plans you make for you and your family. I’m not talking about the big plans, like where you’re going to be in five years. But the small plans, like what are we going to do this Saturday.

You can make all the plans you want, and envision all the perfect outcomes. When reality happens, one unforeseen variable can turn the whole affair on its head. Often that variable is out of your control: an unexpected toddler meltdown, an unsuspected stomach bug. Life has no shortage of flat tires. But, occasionally, the unforeseen variable was seeable. And you just ignored it because you’re dense, or overly optimistic, or cheap.

The day we went to the Dome for a basketball game started out pretty well. We decked ourselves in Orange and then piled into the van to make our way to the stadium. The excitement was palpable. For two of our children, it would be the first time to an SU game. For the rest of us, it was the first time we were going with the entire family.

I’d made the plan for this family outing to the Dome around Christmas. I’d picked a game on a Saturday against a lesser ACC opponent – as in not Duke or Carolina. Then I bought six tickets. It wasn’t cheap.

The plan felt perfect. I’d looked forward to it for weeks. Then reality arrived.

****

Picture it: A husband, a wife and four kids sitting on a cold, hard bench in the nose bleed section of the Carrier Dome, with row upon row of empty, cushioned seats between them and the third level railing. Picture, too, a miniature basketball court in the distance, complete with small ants in warmup suits doing what looked like lay-up drills. It was hard to tell.

Did I mention the 14 rows of seats between us and the third level overlook were all cushioned … and empty. Cushioned seats; all empty.

After the usher pointed us up the concrete staircase, one of the “glass-half-full” kids in our family saw the orange and white cushions and exclaimed, “Cushions! Yes!”

That lifted my heart momentarily.

Then we began our ascent to section 318, Row N. When we passed Row J, I realized the cushions were ending in a few rows, and it was cold metal from there on.

Row K? Cushions. L? Cushions. M? Cushions. N? No cushions. I could hear the air being let out of my pre-teen daughter’s mouth as she sighed at our cushion-less future.

She, too, was the one who vocalized our collective frustration as tip-off arrived and the seats in front of us remained empty.  “Really?!” she said.

Row M had cushions. It was also a few bucks more.
So, no cushions for us.

I kept smiling, and we did a few family selfies, as prompted by the Jumbotron. Then we tweeted the selfies to an appropriate hashtag to let the whole stadium see how happy we were despite having the worst seats for miles.

I tried to focus for a moment on exactly why I’d dragged the family there. And I knew it wasn’t for the views, or even the game. It was for the memories.

I’m getting older, and the memories of my youth are further and foggier than ever. But I do remember the first time I went to a real baseball game. It was Memorial Stadium in Baltimore. Orioles vs. Yankees. I was there. My dad was there. I don’t remember what our seats were like, probably not that great. I come from a 300 section kind of family. It’s just reality.

I also don’t remember many details of that game. Reggie Jackson was in the outfield. And Cal Ripken was probably playing – though that’s kind of cheating. I don’t recall if he was.

The truth is I don’t remember much about it. But I remember it. I remember the feeling it gave me.

That’s what we’re doing with our kids, why we plan so much, and drive so much, and fill our weekends – and most of our weeknights – with adventures and outings. It’s so a handful of those experiences will make it through the great distiller that is childhood memories and that they and us will come out on the other end happier.

And yet, it seemed there was a dearth of happiness in Section 318, Row N of the Carrier Dome that Saturday.

Luckily, I’m married to a woman who knows how to fix such problems. With a break in the basketball action – we knew because the ants all huddled on the sidelines -- she asked the kids if anyone wanted a pretzel. One thing I’ve learned in the many professional and college sporting events I’ve attended since that trip to Memorial Stadium is that the food makes up a quintessential part of the experience.

So, down the steps she went with a couple of kids in tow in search of overpriced pretzels.

I sulked in the seats with the remaining kids and contemplated the benefits of moving down one row into the empty cushioned seats before us. Would the usher notice? Would the kids learn the wrong lesson?  The truth is, most 300 sections let you move down to the better seats once it’s clear nobody’s coming to fill the slightly more expensive rows. Yet I couldn’t muster the will to decide what to do.

Then I saw my wife returning with the pretzels, rounding out of the tunnel to begin her ascent. And she did something brilliant; She sat down in the empty, cushioned row of seats by the railing. The usher didn’t even glance her way. Then she waved at us to come down.

It didn’t take much convincing to move the rest of the kids down to where she was.  It was only 14 rows closer than our seats. But the court was that much bigger, the players that much clearer and the seats that much better.

Suddenly, the kids were into it. The moment I’d planned for had arrived.

Can you guess who we were rooting for?

It helped that the game was a good one, with leads exchanged back and forth, and long shots made, and the crowd rapt with it all. The band played, and my kids chanted, “Let’s Go Orange” along with 23,000 others. The drama was so intense that my almost-teenaged daughter at one point anxiously exclaimed, “I didn’t sign on for this,” which is pre-teen lingo for “This is intense and awesome and I’m so into it.”

We all felt the same.

To top it off, Syracuse won -- in exciting fashion, no less. 

The A-team’s John “Hannibal” Smith used to say, I love it when a plan comes together. Why I’m quoting a member of the A-team is beyond me. But I thought of that oft-repeated quote from the mid-80s as this plan of mine came together, despite my best efforts to derail it under the guise of frugality.

And I realized something else. As a parent, you learn what real perfection actually looks like. It’s not perfect.

We achieved our version of it that day. And I’m sure the kids will remember it.

 

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How to Make Virtual Friends And Find Your Tribe

Making friends after you've become a parent is hard. That’s one parenting truth people forget to warn you about. It can be a friendless endeavor.

Often, it starts by losing the friends you had before your kids came along. They fade away. Some do so by continuing on their pre-kid trajectory. Others have kids of their own and recoil into their new lives. You’re still “friends” with these people, technically, but you never see them.

The act of having a child then hinders your ability to replace those friends. Lack of sleep, diapers, soccer practice, it takes up all of your time. That challenge seems to grow exponentially with each child.

I know because I have four kids. And a few years ago, I had no friends.

Of course, I had my brothers. But they had to be friends with me. And they each had their own circle of friends. I had guys I’d been friends with my whole life who I’d hang out with and laugh with on the rare times I’d see them. But they all live hours away, or are so caught up in their own lives that the best we can do is say “We should get together more” when we happen to randomly see each other once a year or so.

When it came to regular interaction, I had no one I could chat with, laugh with, or interact with. I had no one who would ask me to get a beer after work, or to watch the big game, or just to complain to or listen to about dumb life stuff. You know: friends.

I took pride back then in thinking that my wife was my best friends. Which is an honest and sweet sounding thing, unless your wife is also your only friend.

Back when I had no friends, I also worked from home. You can probably see where this is going. Working from home also hinders the whole friendship thing. I had guys I’d meet up with on work conference calls every few days. But we didn’t exactly have conference calls after work hours, unless there was something really bad happening. And because I worked remotely from home, I couldn’t “grab beers” with them when the official crap was done for the day. Despite the fact I got along well with these guys, they didn’t exactly fill the friend void.

And here’s the thing about us people. We need friends. We’re social beings. We need people beyond our kids, and our spouse, and our coworkers, and our families. We really do. Because there’s stuff you can talk to friends about that families won’t react well to, that coworkers don’t want to hear, that your wife is sick of hearing, and that your kids won’t understand.

Back when I had no friends I also began writing this blog. Those two things aren’t related. At least, I don’t think so.

So to recap: I had kids, worked from home, wrote a blog, and had no friends.

And then the weirdest thing happened. A stranger who also happened to be a dad and a writer reached out to me. His name was Oren. It turns out, he had lots of friends. And he invited me into his group. It was a Facebook group of fellow dads and writers from all over the world.

Me and a few hundred of my closest friends listen to
Michael Strahan talk about fatherhood and life.
One of many highlights from Dad 2.016 Summit.

It sounded odd. But suddenly, when I wasn’t busy toiling away at work stuff, or driving kids to soccer practice, I had a group of people that I could laugh with and joke with, tease and debate. Some of them were work-at-home dads like me. Others were stay-at-home dads. And some worked at offices, and did their best to parent and write about it. There were divorced dads, gay dads and Canadian dads. There were funny guys and finance guys. Guys with 100,000 followers on Facebook and guys with 100. They were all dads who wrote. They were like me.

I had virtual friends. I’d found my tribe.

I know what you’re thinking -- or at least, I know what I was thinking at the time. I also know what my brothers were thinking, because they razzed me. Virtual friends aren’t real friends. They’re just pixels. Things that let out a “bing” when they respond to you.

I thought about that some. And it’s true, in the age of the Internet, and Facebook, and Twitter, it’s easy to make virtual connections. But it’s hard to make those connections feel real.

Still, for the past three years I’ve been interacting with these fellow dad writers online: laughing at their jokes, reading their articles, and hitting “like” when they post pictures of their families. We talked about world events, shared beers though “drink threads,” and picked on each other about whose professional football team sucked the most. These virtual friends filled a void in my life that was created by parenting, and was ironically refilled by the same endeavor. They helped me through a time when I needed friends.

I grew to really like these guys.

Then a very sad thing happened. One of them got sick and died. That was Oren.

I can tell you something I learned: If you think virtual friends aren’t real, then you’ve never lost one the way we did. I bawled. We all did. Hell, I’m crying as I write this. Sorry.

Also in the past three years, this dumb blog thing helped me reconnect with a lot of old friends, real friends who have scattered across the country since whence we met. Friends in places like Colorado, and Southern California, Maine and Florida, Saranac Lake and Rochester. People I’ve known throughout my life, who now have kids and struggle with all the same crap us parents face -- including the challenge of making friends -- but who just happen to live far away.

Some of the Old Friends I just met.

I’ve also broken through on a more local level, getting up the gumption to join a group of fellow dads who have kids at our local elementary school. And I started working from an office again, rather than home.

Now, I have people, both real and virtual, that I can get a beer with – though I rarely have time to do that.

Still, I felt I owed something to these virtual friends, the ones who befriended me when I had none. And I owed something to myself. I needed to make them real.

This past weekend, I went to a conference for dad bloggers, writers, and authors, and other people who just care about fatherhood issues. It’s called the Dad 2.0 Summit. This was the 5^th annual gathering and the first one I could attend.

To the uninitiated, it may sound like a strange thing – a bunch of dad bloggers hanging out at a hotel. It’s much more than that, though that would have been enough. It’s a conference for the people on the cutting edge of what modern fatherhood means. As I told my kids, it’s kind of a big deal.

For me, it was a homecoming. A surreal one at that. All those guys who were just “bings” and pixels were suddenly standing there before more, extending their hand to shake, and offering to buy me a real and actual beer.

It was surreal. And it was also very real.

One of the many cool things I got to take
back from the Dad 2.0 Summit.

I finally got to meet these guys I’ve known for three years, and to make some new friends, and laugh, and joke, and celebrate, and cry. I got to mourn the man who introduced me to all these dad writers and do that surrounded by these friends.

So today, I feel like a person with lots of friends. And you’ll be happy to know that my wife is still my best friend, and that doesn’t sound lame to me at all.

But there’s a lesson here that I hope others can draw from my story. It can be hard to make friends. But none of us are truly alone. There’s people out there who are struggling with all the things you’re struggling with, facing the same obstacles, enjoying the same outlets. You just have to find them. Because they are there, and they are real.

So, find your tribe, befriend them, and meet them. You won’t regret it.

I certainly don’t.


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Alexander, My Daughter and Me

My 12-year-old daughter has become obsessed with Alexander Hamilton, and I don't know what to do about it.

That’s one sentence I never imagined I’d write. Really didn’t see this one coming. But it’s true. Alex, as she calls him, permeates her every waking thought.

You’d think a typical dad like myself would be pleased that his precocious and energetic child was focusing her young intellect on the life and philosophy of one of the greatest minds in American history. But no.

I fondly miss her past days of being singularly pre-occupied with a certain insufferable British YouTube duo, named Dan and Phil, which she still is when not talking, singing, or reciting random facts about our nation's first secretary of the treasury.

What's next, a musical about math?
Or cumulus clouds? Or cats?
... Oh wait, never mind. 
(I also just noticed the "Parental Advisory"
label -- wish I saw that earlier).

And what ever happened to the happier days of her youth when she would endlessly belt Fall Out Boy lyrics, or wistfully engage in a game of name that obscure Disney tune with her siblings. Ever heard your kid sing “Great Spirits” from Brother Bear? I have. Or at least, I used to.

Now, she’s more likely to rap the preamble to the Constitution, or shake her shoulders and sing, “I’m not throwing away my … shot.”

Not to mention, she knows more random facts about Alexander Hamilton than any 12-year-old should. Heck, I have a graduate degree in political science – which I’m still paying for, by the way – and she has more Hamiltonian and revolutionary facts stored in her young brain then I was ever exposed to in all of college, and I had a whole grad-level class on Alexander Hamilton and the constitutional convention, taught by a renowned expert on Hamilton. This play's soundtrack has taught her more about the founding of our country than I learned in grad school.

Sure, that was a while ago. But I didn’t recall that Hamilton wrote 50 of the 85 Federalist Papers.

[Daughter chimes in]: “Actually, he wrote 51, dad.”

What?

“The plan was to write 25. John Jay got sick after writing 5. James Madison wrote 29. Hamilton wrote the other … 51.”

Oh. Thanks.

“He also wrote an 80 page essay to a supporter of King George III named Sam Seabury about how colonial England was a tyrannical government.”

See what I mean. It’s not that I have anything against Hamilton, though truthfully I always considered myself more of a Jefferson guy. It’s just kind of weird to have my days filled with all these random facts from American history.  You know, I mean, political philosophy and the fundamental questions about democratic principles have their place. But do we really have to talk about Hamilton’s design of our national financial system at the dinner table. Can’t we just talk about how school went today?

I’m sure many people reading this know the root cause of my problem. It’s her mother. She’s the one who studied theater in college, and turned my daughter on to classics like Les Miserable, years ago. The soundtrack to Les Mis was actually the first album she put on her first MP3 player when she was little. (Yes, that was her first electronic gadget – a true gateway electronic, if you ask me).

She used to sing “On My Own” ad nauseam when she was a spritely 7 years old. Which, in hindsight, was kind of cute.

Which gets us to the actual cause of my Hamilton-obsessed-child problem: Theater.

For those who don’t know, and I counted myself among you until recently, there is a new “smash hit” on Broadway about the life and times of, get this, Alexander Hamilton. Apparently, it’s a cross-genre, hip-hop and classic, historically accurate, tear-jerker of a musical that follows this founding father through the revolution and early years of our great democratic experiment. It sounds like a total flop, right? But the aptly-titled Hamilton, which began off-Broadway last January, made the move to the bigger stage in August and is now sold out for the foreseeable future and, good-money has it, it’s a shoo-in to win a bunch of Tony Awards. I heard that last part.

About a month and a half ago, my daughter was introduced to the soundtrack by one of her theater friends (a reminder how important it is to make sure your kid hangs out with the right crowd).

Anyway, flash forward to now, and she’s singing, dancing and rapping about the founding of our country and one of its chief architects.

Worse yet, she forced me to start listening to the darn thing as prerequisite to writing this – I’ve gotten through the first act, so far -- and now I’m hooked, as well. It’s amazing, on so many bizarre levels. Genius, really. Who would’ve thought the subject I studied in boring grad school classes had the makings of a Broadway classic. Not me, for sure.

And now I’m learning random facts about Hamilton that I never knew, or completely forgot.

For instance, I did not even recall that he and Aaron Burr were actually friends going way back.

“They were quite close. Their rift had to do with Alex’s belief that Burr was unprincipled and an opportunist, and that’s what led to …”

Stop. Don’t give away a spoiler.

“I can’t spoil it, dad. It’s actual history.”

Oh. Right.

Anyway. This is our latest obsession. And maybe sometime in the not too distant future, we’ll feed this obsession with a trip to New York and a visit to Broadway. If we can even get any tickets.

In the meantime, I’ve got a soundtrack to finish.

I wonder how it’s going to end?



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Elf You and Your Elfing Elf on the Shelf

Like the Christmas season wasn’t elfing stressful enough. Now, there’s a magical elf in the house that supposedly reports to Santa every gosh darn night in December – or at least most nights -- and changes places upon its return.

What an elfing awesome idea! Thanks so much to the magical creators from the North Pole who came up with this challenging addition to our holiday routine. We really needed this wakeup call, this extra check on our attentiveness, this daily reminder that we are far from the parents we set out to be each day.

For the record, our family resisted this elfing movement for many years. We did. Then last year, as the kiddos exchanged their traditional Christmas Eve secret Santa gifts, one sibling got the other a brand spanking new Elf on the Shelf. So, our introduction into elf-on-the-shelfdom officially happened on December 24, 2014. The elf’s arrival initially set off a bit of family squabbling over whether to name him Abraham or Stanley. Why either name was the choice, I have no idea. A compromise was reached, and he was promptly named “Abraham Stanley.”

Our boring Elf on the Shelf, boringly sitting on a
boring shelf, where he'll likely be for more than
one morning in a row.

That very night, Santa came to our house and picked up Abraham Stanley and took him back to the North Pole, as the legend goes, until the next holiday season. (And by legend I mean the instructions in box he came in).

From last Christmas until this December, Abraham Stanley hasn’t caused us any trouble, spending the better part of the year with his friends and colleagues at Santa’s Workshop. Then, on December 1^st of this year, he magically arrived on a shelf in our once happy home. Now each morning begins with a frantic kid-led search for our little yuletide spy. That search is often preceded by a frantic parent moment where one of us asks the other, did the elf move? It's amazing how this little question, which I had never asked before this year, can now shake me to my parental core.

Despite our united focus on this nightly task, and the google calendar alert set to 5:00 a.m. each day that simply reads, “Elf,” our little Abraham Stanley doesn’t always move. He’s a bit of a slacker, really. And that has left the kids a bit perplexed.

Apparently, he’s also not the most creative elf in the world. The kids regularly come home from school with stories of how other elves in the neighborhood always do funny things, having tea with dinosaurs and toilet papering the doll house. Ours just sits on shelves and atop rather predictable book cases.

“Why is Abraham Stanley so boring?” one of them asked me the other morning. Dagger.

Like I said, the only thing our elf does consistently is serve as a daily reminder that we are just hanging on as parents.

Not to deflect the criticism, but I think I know why he’s such a slacker. Let’s face it, any elf worth their salt spends December working on a serious toy production deadline. This whole Elf of the Shelf mass arrival is really just Santa’s – or someone else’s – plan to clean out the elf riff-raff. Personally, I’d like to send all these little red interlopers back where they came from.

Oh no. I think my frustration with Abraham Stanley has led me to go full Trump on these holiday helpers.

But honestly, we really don’t need their help. The mere threat that “Santa is watching” has worked to keep our kids on the straight and narrow – a few weeks a year, anyway – for as long as we’ve had kids. Having a physical presence on the premises only moves the good behavior needle a fraction, while causing more grief than anything. Our Elf on the Shelf is just not elfing worth the hassle.

I know darn well there are many parents who’ve complained about these magical little additions to the Christmas rigmarole before. And maybe we can’t just deport all the elfs currently in homes across the nation. But something needs to be done.

Because we simply don’t need more elfing stress this time of year. So, here’s my message to all the parents who have yet to go down the Elf on the Shelf rabbit hole: resist it. This is one new tradition that just isn't sustainable. To the parents who go over the top with your elf-written poems and hilarious antics: please tone it down a bit. I shouldn't have to resort to Pinterest to figure out which crazy predicament Abraham Stanley is going to be found in tomorrow morning.

And, to all the Elves on Shelves and the institutions pushing them on overstressed families everywhere: “Elf Off!”

I sure hope Abraham Stanley doesn’t read this.  

Please visit Ruddy Bits on Facebook for more random crap only parents could enjoy.
 

 

Luna and the Chipmunks

“I think it pooped everywhere!” My wife exclaimed, aghast, looking at scores of tiny black pellets strewn about our foyer and staircase. Not exactly the kind of thing you want to hear on a relaxing fall weekend morning.

“No … those are nuts,” I responded, based on reason and the sound made when the shower of tiny particles exploded a few steps up the stairs from our front door.

“What?”

“You know, like sunflower seeds.”

Our 12-year-old, wise in the ways of animal culture, added, “They gather nuts in their cheeks for winter, mom.”

“Nuts?!”

Yes. Nuts. That’s the only way to describe a recent morning in our usually quiet home, on our quiet street, in our quiet little village -- absolutely nuts.

To explain, I should probably back up a bit.

If you’d visited our street just an hour earlier, you would’ve found our front door and screen wide open, with our big, cushy over-sized and over-priced armchair in the front yard on its side with me poised above it with my eyes bulging out and a fishing net in hand ready to pounce.

Maybe we should back up even more. Let’s start with the cat: Luna. You may remember her from such classics as the cat that climbed the 40 foot pine and the pet poo mystery.

Our family adopted Luna about two years ago. Since then she’s asserted herself as an outdoor cat, and she’s also grown into quite the able hunter. Her prey of choice: chipmunks. If I could catch fish as efficiently as she catches chipmunks I’d get sponsors and join the professional flyfishing tour. She often returns after a brief stint outside with a chipmunk, mouse or mole in her clutches, pawing at the door to show us her kill. Though, ironically, she doesn’t always kill them – at least, not at first. And I often intervene before she finishes the job. When I see her in the yard with a creature in her mouth, I’ll chase her and, when I can catch her, pick her up. She’ll drop her new toy and, though sometimes they land with a thud, nine times out of ten the rodent will hit the ground and scamper off into the nearest underbrush. She always looks at me like, “What’d you go and do that for?!”

Chipmunk, with cheeks full of nuts and seeds, rubs
his hand together while doing an evil laugh.

It’s not like I’m a chipmunk pacifist, I just find it easier and cleaner to break things up at that point rather than be stuck getting rid of the body later, which I have to do often. Trust me; there’s a small stack of formerly-cute little carcasses behind the stone wall in our back yard. So, I try to step in early when possible.

On this particular morning, I was in the garage preparing to do still more yard work. My wife and eldest daughter were out shopping for something critically important, I’m sure. As I came out of the garage with a rake, or shovel, or something yardy in hand, I saw Luna jog by me with a little furry ball hanging from her teeth.

I sprang into action.

Unfortunately, just as I sprang my youngest daughter came bounding out the front door, and prancing in went Luna with her chipmunk.

NO! I shrieked in my head. In that moment, I prayed the little guy was dead.

Before I was in the door, I learned my prayers had gone unanswered. Luna dropped the very much alive chipmunk, and it scurried into the corner of our living room. Game on.

She flew toward it, rearing up and lunging with her cute little paws extended like the villain from a jump-scare movie. The chipmunk, let’s just call him Chip, darted left, then right, and found himself behind a floor-length curtain – momentarily safe. Luna circled around, playfully padding at the curtain from one side and the next.

This continued for what felt like an eternity.

While the animals danced their deadly tango, the children screamed, scattered and climbed on the furniture like 1950s housewives with a mouse afoot.

“It could have rabies!” They each screamed in one version or another.

In that moment I thought how I hadn’t written any blog post lately. Not for a total lack of content, mind you, just nothing had occurred to compel me to break through the daily grind long enough to put pen to paper. Apparently, my inaction had upset the blog gods. And now their wrath was raining down on me with material I couldn’t ignore. I was witnessing, without a doubt, a “blogworthy” event unfolding in my living room. And it would only get better. By better, of course, I mean worse.

Always calm under duress, I began dispensing orders.

Sadie stop screaming rabies and open the front door!

Drew get upstairs and stay on the bed!

Chloe, get to the basement and find an empty laundry basket!

I was going to catch the darn thing or shoo it out the door trying.

“But I’m afraid!” Chloe replied.

Of what!? The basement or the rabid chipmunk!?

She pointed to the basement.

Fine, Sadie go with Chloe to the basement, I barked as I kept an eye on the chipmunk’s little toes sticking out from under the curtain. To think, my kids used to stand in the same spot during hide and seek. For the record, I could see them then, too.

When Chloe emerged from the basement she had the tiniest box she could find.  She clearly didn’t understand my plan. I sent her again for a LAUNDRY BASKET while I kept my eyes on Chip.

She finally came back with a laundry basket, but it happened to be the only one in the house with wide two inch slots on the sides -- clearly not chipmunk impervious. In her defense, it was likely the only empty one in the house.

Forget it, I said. And I took my eyes off the cornered rodent long enough to sprint to the garage and grab my fishing net. When I came back to the living room, where I’d left the Luna and Chip 23 seconds before, the cat was just walking around the big cushy chair that sits a few feet from the curtain.

“Where’s the chipmunk?” I asked, as shrill as I’d ever asked anything of a cat.

Luna just kept pacing around the chair and looking confused.

I looked behind the curtain. Nothing. And the next curtain. Nothing. The corners of the room. Nothing. Under the chair. Nope. The couch. Clear. I kept crawling around the room like a mad man. The cat sat down, looking at me, and then she started licking her underside like there wasn’t a live rodent loose in our living room. Eff-ing cats.

The trail had gone cold. I deduced that there was only three things that could have occurred while I was momentarily out of the room. The first theory, and most hopeful, was that it had run through the living room and out the propped-open front door without the cat noticing. Unlikely, but hopeful. The second, that it had scurried behind any number of pieces of furniture and floor-length curtain and was hiding in this room or another. Or the third, that it had found a way into the underside of the big cushy chair – which has some holes on its underside thanks to Luna’s other bad habits – and had climbed up inside the interior architecture of its oversized framework. I decided that was the most likely.

I promptly carried the chair out the front door, with the help of a reluctant daughter, and set it on its side so that a rodent could climb easily out of one of the underside holes. Then I watched it. And watched it. For some reason I still had my fishing net poised over it, like I had some reason to catch chip outside.

This lasted until it became clear it was about to rain. The raindrops were the real clue. So I carried the chair back inside with the help of a neighbor who’d come over to check on my sanity.

Time passed. The wife came home. I explained the predicament. She laughed and moaned.

We looked online and the good people of the internet told us to leave a door open, because chipmunks often let themselves out. So the front remained opened as we tried to go back to our lives with Chip missing, last seen in our living room.

And that’s when our wonderful, little cat strolled back in the open door carrying yet another chipmunk in her mouth. We’ll call this one Dale.

I could tell right away that Dale was still alive, as I saw his tail unfurl then furl like a paper noisemaker.

Already on alert, the family sprang into action. We all took up positions in the hall and at entrances to various rooms all trying to steer the cat away and herd her out the door. We were cowboys with a loose steer, though many of us looked more like rodeo clowns when the cat and her catch got near.

She tried to dart left to the living room. Blocked. She tried the kitchen and family room. Blocked, herded and harassed. She ran back toward the open front door, yes, and then took a hard right and headed up the stairs.

“Luna! … No!” my wife let out a guttural call.

I sprinted up the stairs behind the cat and corned her in one of the bedrooms.  Dale was still in her mouth, looking at me with its frightened eyes and puffed out cheeks.

I slowly approached the cat, and picked her up gently making certain not to entice her to drop the rodent. I held her carefully in front of me and walked briskly toward the staircase. We made it halfway down the stairs when Dale saw the light of the door and gave a productive shake, falling from the cat’s mouth and landing with an explosion on the fifth stair from the bottom. The chipmunk hadn’t exploded, but the contents of its cheeks had.

Dale was very much alive. And we all watched frozen as he scampered and scurried toward the open door, his rear legs swinging and swerving widely like a drag racer on wet pavement. Then, he was gone.

Two chipmunks came into our house, and one certainly left. All we had to show for it was a pile of nuts.

In other news, if your family’s interested in a cat, I know one that’s free to a good home, has all her shots, and excels at catching mice … and chipmunks.

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Kid Quotes from a Family Hike

“Do we have to go?”
 
“I hate hikes.”
 
“How far is it to the top, dad?”
 
“I need a hiking stick.”
 
“Can I have a piggy back?”
 
“She hit me with her stick!”
 
“Do you think we’re halfway yet?”
 
"He fell."
 
“I’m okay … I’m tough”
 
"Wanna trade walking sticks?"
 
“I wish this was flatter.”
 
“Maybe we should go back.”
 
“Did we take a wrong turn?”
 
“Is this the top, yet?”
 
“This is sooo farrrr.”
 
“Ugh!”
 
“I think I see the top.”
 
“C’mon … race you.”
 
“Can I have the camera?”

“How high are we?”
 
“Did you bring snacks?”
 
“I want the red water bottle.”
 
“There are so many lady bugs. Do they bite?”
 
“Ahh! One bit me!”
 
“I hate lady bugs!”
 
“Can we go, please?”
 
“I want to go that way.”
 
“Please can we go that way.”
 
“You are the least fun dad ever.”
 
“I’m hungry.”
 
“First one to catch a falling leaf wins.”
 
“How much farther to the car?”
 
“I’m tired.”
 
“I caught a leaf!”
 
“Everyone has caught a leaf but me.”
 
“Owie, Owie, Owie! Daddy, Daddy. Daddy!
 
“Can you carry me?”
 
“Do we have Band Aids in the car?”
 
“I think I can make it.”
 
“This is so steep. Did we walk up this?”
 
“Can we go to the waterfall before we leave?”
 
“Can I go behind the waterfall?”
 
“We’ll be fine!”
 
“How about only people 12 and older can go behind the waterfall?”
 
“That’s not fair.”
 
“We’ll be safe, I promise.”
 
“Can I go too, daddy?”
 
“I’m scared.”
 
“She pushed me.”
 
“We’re so high!”
 
“This is amazing!”
 
“Can I have the camera?”

 

“Best day ever.”
 
“Thanks, dad. You were right.”
 
“I’m soooo hungry.”



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