African-American Friday

Well, my first Thanksgiving since The Fall went off without a hitch. It'll take a while to get used to spending the holidays without a complete family unit, but I think me and Mini-Me did alright. I made two stuffed cornish hens, yams, baked mac and cheese, collard greens, ham steak and a sweet potato pie. Three hours, I cooked. Three hours, and all my daughter wanted was the marshmallow topping on the yams. Oh, and "I want the macaroni in the refrigerator!" She was talking about the leftover Kraft from two days ago. I just scooped her up in my arms and kept whispering "I love you" over and over until I believed it again.

This whole week has been a learning opportunity. I realized that my idea of family and holidays will never actually materialize...and that's not a bad thing. The vision that I had in my head for Thanksgiving was very picturesque, very cliche and very stale. The two of us would sit at the table with hands folded and talk about what we were thankful for. She'd say something adorable like toys or candy, and I'd laugh. The 80s sitcom music would play as I told her that I was thankful for her. We'd embrace. The credits would roll.

Instead, I said "Come sit down" so much that I woke up saying it in the middle of the night. I watched her run away from the table screaming, "I'm late for school!" before putting her foot on top of a sheet of paper on the floor and pretending to skateboard away while hanging on to the back of the chair/car a la "Back to the Future."

After giving up on getting her to eat, we put up the Christmas tree. Again, reality trumped expectation. I couldn't even put the tree together because as I sat on the floor she kept creeping up behind me like a lion or something before leaping onto my back. I eventually put it up, and you can tell her contribution just by looking: All of her ornaments are bunched together 3 feet off the ground.

Finally, our very Brady Christmas photo was photobombed by her. I bought a santa hat for myself and an elf hat for her. Forty-seven pics, and every single one has her making a crazy face. The final one when I decided to just let go is the one I'll hang up: Both of us screaming at the camera with our tongues out. There's a fake Target tree in the background leaning to the right because someone tried to climb it.

I think these are much better memories than the preprogrammed ones I had in my head.

Crossroad

Le sigh.

I'm still alive, and no I haven't forgotten about the blog. Believe it or not, I have about fifty unpublished posts sitting in my draft box. They just don't feel right. I'm going through a period of transition. Before you start writing me words of encouragement, let me say that I'm not depressed in the slightest. I'm just...changing.

I remember being in gym class one day when all of my friends just started cutting up. Normally, I'd be the class clown joining in with them, but on that particular day I didn't find any of our usual hijinks funny. My teacher was like a stand-in parent to me at the time, so I talked to her about it. "I don't find the usual stuff fun anymore. I feel really serious and contemplative lately." She told me that sometimes growing up happens gradually while other times it happens in leaps and bounds.

I've been in a leaps and bounds mode lately. I had a lot of life events happen close together this year. When there's extensive structural damage to a building it's often cheaper to just demolish it and rebuild. With that, however, comes the very rare (and very, very fortunate) opportunity to decide whether or not you want to rebuild exactly as it was or make something new. I'm going for the latter.

So what does any of this have to do with posting? My posts were usually about my daughter, my grandmother, my childhood or my life as a stay-at-home dad. Well, my daughter has some things going on--things for which writing would be very therapeutic for me, but it's her life. When she's older she may take issue with that level of personal stuff being online, so I deal with it on my own.

My grandmother's gone and with her passing I kinda locked away the nostalgic part of me.  It's not out of pain or anything. I just don't need nostalgia anymore like I once did. There used to be a hole in my emotional cup. I'd keep pouring in memories to fill it up, but cleaning out my grandmother's house over the course of a month somehow sealed the hole.

Now that my daughter's in school there aren't as many stories to tell. If you follow me on Twitter or Facebook, then you get to hear snippets of my day. We had a Bobby Flay styled throw down last week. We each made a pizza. She beat me on taste, but I won thanks to the category of "Paid for Ingredients and Utilities."

So yeah, that's pretty much what I'm up to these days.

I've posted this a million times before, but it plays in my head a lot lately:

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ZSBt94MuNnU

Jack.

Well this will be quick. I have two minutes to go to bed and still get eight hours of sleep. Wish me luck. Anyway...Guess what I did this weekend.

I had whiskey for the very first time. Guess what else I did this weekend. I had whiskey for the very last time. Now if you're just tuning in then you missed the post I wrote a few years ago talking about what it was like being the only person I knew who didn't drink.

I went something like, "Blah blah blah, I don't drink because I don't really like the taste of alcohol. I have no moral opposition to it. It just isn't for me."

Then...my daughter left the (totally under appreciated) "I can't move on my own" stage. Many a naive parent mistakenly believes that their kids will be "more fun" once they learn to walk and (I laugh most about this one now) talk. So yeah...I drink now. Because I waited so long to join the club, wine was doing it for me. Occasionally I'd go to a Yelp event where they give out free drinks, but I'm pretty certain that those are watered down.

My host this weekend seemed to take special pleasure in the knowledge that I know nothing about nothing. I sat there and drank it like it was a soda. Then came the warning, "You're supposed to sip, not gulp!" But it was too late. You know that cliche action scene where there's some large metal door slowly descending and the hero has to run to get to it and then slide Indiana Jones-style under it? Well that's what I felt inside my head. I felt the alcohol slowly lowering down through me, and I knew that once it reached the bottom...Nothing but bad times would follow.

I'm a horrible drinking buddy. I'm a nerd, and like most nerds I believe that I have a really powerful brain. About 90% of my brain power is used to keep my thoughts at bay, because...I'm a nerd. The whiskey turned that off. You know the first thought that popped in my head?

"Hmm, I feel inebriated. Let me count how often I blink. I imagine that my glossy eyes will somehow have a bearing on my blinking. Yep...blinking more than average.The room is tilting left to right. I know this isn't really happening, but it feels so real. Perhaps the part of my brain that is perceiving this artificial vertigo could be tapped into for virtual reality simulators and flight training. I'm too drunk to consider patenting that. Now I wonder what effect a gyroscope would have on my perception of balance. If I could stare at the gyroscope and see that it is not moving, then perhaps my sense of balance would return..."

Yeah. Who the hell wants to drink around that guy? So...that's pretty much all I have to say for now. I'm going to bed.

Mustachioed

Over the weekend someone told me that my blog is starting to get depressing. I tried to explain the concept of "Tears of a Clown," but she brushed that off and suggested I write about something...anything. She suggested I write about all of the "perks" that she assumed came with having a mustache at 10. So here goes...

There were no perks. The "I have a mustache before everyone else" perks don't begin until junior high school. That's when I started having 16 year old girls hitting on my 12 year old self, only I was completely stupid back then. "I'm only 12" still echoes in my head to this day, and every single time I hear it I want to go back in time and slap myself.

Anyway...as I was saying, there were no perks. The peach fuzz started shortly after fourth grade. Back then, people just assume that you're dirty. "Did your mama water get cut off or something? Why your face dirty?" I had a substitute send me to the bathroom because she thought I had on makeup.

Sidebar: Remember when the networks used to play movies on Sundays or sometimes during the week? I think Fox used to play two or three movies back to back on Sunday afternoons. They called it the Triple Feature. Well, back then they used to play the hell out of Teen Wolf.

Once all the kids figured out I wasn't dirty, they started calling me a werewolf. I was an easy target. I was ten years old in the fifth grade with a mustache and size 10 mens shoe. Little did they know, the hair was starting to appear other places as well, and without a man around to talk to, I didn't know what the hell was going on. That human sexuality class with the light blue/pink pamphlets and the weird looking kids on the front was a year away. I wasn't stupid. I knew that men had mustaches, but I figured it was supposed to start way later...like 20. I assumed I was broken. I had to fix myself.

The hair in other places had started a few months prior. A pair of scissors and a few band aids later...I was back to normal. That wasn't an option, however, for the hair on my face. It was too low. I tried washing my face a lot, hoping that the hair would dry out and fall off. That brilliant idea came from a Salon Selectives commercial that talked about "other leading shampoos" drying out hair and causing split ends.

Eventually, I found a box in the basement with my uncle's old stuff in it. There was a rusty razor in there. I didn't know that the stuff men put on their face was shaving cream. I thought it was soap. I took some Ivory soap and applied it ALL OVER MY FACE.  Then I started shaving. Left to right, up and down...pretty much any direction that can cause lacerations.

Then I accidentally cut off a part of my eyebrow. Now how did I get all the way up there? Well, I saw faint baby hairs on the side of my brow. I just assumed they were mustaches in wait. So I tried to get those too. Since I cut one eyebrow, I had to even it out on the other side, only I made that one too narrow. I had to make them even, and eventually they were. The only problem was that they looked like dots on an "i" by that point. I cut them both off completely and prayed to God that no one would notice.

I don't remember exactly what my mother said when she got home. It took her a minute to notice though. I remember that. I do remember my grandmother telling me that I was too stupid for my own good. I also remember the praying the whole weekend that they'd grow back by Monday. I kept putting conditioner and that blue hair grease that my mother had on my face hoping that it would speed up the process.

If you thought they had jokes before, you should've seen my classmates that Monday.

Next time on MentalStorage, we'll talk about how puberty-stricken-me came up with the idea to put baking soda under his arms to stop the sweating...or maybe we won't. 

 

 

Harmony.

I'm actually writing this while visiting my grandmother's grave. I can't say that it just hit me that she's gone, but I guess you could say that I'm experiencing an aftershock. Supposedly they lessen with time.

So anyway, I'm sitting here watching the sunset. I picked an area on a hill next to a tree with a view of the city and the sunset. My grandmother wasn't very sensitive or girly, but if she was at church or trying to put on a front for someone important, then this is something she'd pretend that she liked.

While sitting here, I remembered that there will be no more memories. No more new stories to tell. The last actual memory is her taking her last breath. So as I sat here thinking about the cyclical nature of things: she was there in the delivery room for my first breath, and I was there in the ICU for her last.

As I thought about that, I felt this wave of grief. I don't think I felt it after she died. I was too busy planning things. So I was sitting here about to tear up, and I decided to pull out my phone and play a song she used to play all the time when I was little, Rough Side of the Mountain. Just as I was about to hit play, I heard her. I literally heard her voice.

"What the hell are you about to play that for. Turn that thing off. You ain't wanna listen to it when I wanted to hear it. Stop being stupid. What are you crying for. You better get in that damned car and go get something to eat. You wanna remember me...then go to Golden Corral and get a little piece of cornbread or one of them rolls. Wrap it up in a napkin and bring it back here, if you wanna do something for me. I told you, you can be sad but don't sit around here crying like a damned fool."

You know what? I feel a lot better. LOL
I'm going to get something to eat.

A Day in the Life

I have been trying to post something for the last few days, but every time I sit down to write...she happens. It is 10:14pm on 11/13/13. I feel like it's about 3AM. I'm tired, and I know that I sound like a broken record at this point. I don't care. The struggle is real, and my story needs to be told. In the event that my daughter succeeds in killing me, I'd like this to be read at my funeral.

[5:40 AM]
Wake up...barely. The oven was programmed the night before to cut itself on 20 minutes prior. All I have to do is open the Pillsbury biscuit canister and put them on the parchment paper that I lined on a baking sheet the night before. I do that, put them in the oven, and start the bacon.

[6:00 AM]
Co-Parent drops off the child, so that I can take her to school. It is my daily task. I am Lord of the Drop-Off. The child immediately demands a biscuit, bacon and orange juice. They're already sitting in her spot at the table.

[6:30 AM]
Time to go. The child wants to play with her toys. She refuses to put on her coat. I wrestle her to the ground using a jiu-jitsu move I learned watching Ninja Turtles II years ago, and I entrap her in her coat.

[6:45 AM]
We're a half mile from home headed to the train. It is 32 degrees outside with a wind chill of "wasn't it 70 degrees two weeks ago." The child is on my shoulders, because it's too damned cold to force her to walk in this weather.

[7:00 AM]
Metro happens.

[7:05 AM]
The child is bored on the train. She is 2 minutes away from Katie Kabooming the car. I open my backpack aka Metro Survival Kit. It contains four books, four toys, Goldfish, bottled water, tissues, sanitizer, band-aids, and an emergency biscuit and strip of bacon in a ziploc bag. We read Curious George and the Car Wash 17 times.

[7:30 AM]
Off the train, the child is back on my shoulders, and we're walking one mile to her school. I will the vertebrae in my spine not to collapse with the 40 lbs I'm carrying on my neck.

[7:40 AM]
Child is dropped off, as is the second breakfast and lunch that I made her that morning since she won't eat the food provided by the school. I begin my 3 mile walk through Rock Creek Park back home. It's 33 degrees, so I decide to jog.

[3:30 PM]I deny the urge to buy myself the porterhouse steak that's smiling at me from behind the "SALE" sign, in favor of something my daughter will enjoy as well. I settle on wings. I want to make mashed potatoes, but I want to make something new that my daughter will like. Rice-a-Roni. It's processed to hell, but it's the cheesy kind. She likes cheese, so I get that.

[4:00 PM]
I'm home now, and standing in front of the stove making Rice-a-Roni while the lemon pepper wings are roasting in the oven.

[4:40 PM]
Food is done. I now leave to make the 3 mile trek through Rock Creek Park to go pick her up. It's getting dark earlier than I expected.

[5:00 PM]
It's dark as hell in the park, and I just know in my heart that someone will turn up missing and I'll end up a suspect because I'm walking through the park at night like an idiot. I start to run, then wonder if that makes me look guilty of something to the cars going by. I go back to walking. Then I start to consider that I could actually become a victim myself. I go back to running.

[5:30 PM]
Arrive at the school. Sign my daughter out of kiddie jail, take her to the bathroom, hunt down my tupperware that carried her lunch, and promise the front desk person to get her dental forms updated by the deadline. Begin the one mile walk to the train. A gust of 33 degree wind hits us. I put her on my shoulders again and start to walk.

[5:50 PM]Child loses her mind and throws a tantrum on the platform because I won't let her get on the elevator. Too many witnesses to handle appropriately. I try talking to her. She stares at me, assumes she's won the battle of wills, and proceeds to shout triumphantly on the train. People stare. I stare back and then try the "mommy" church pinch. It is unsuccessful. I hand her toys from the survival kit.

[6:00 PM]
Metro happens...again.

[7:00 PM]
Arrive home after another half mile walk. Wash child's hands, prepare her plate, and hope for the best. The child looks at the lemon pepper wings, the rice-a-roni, the green peas, and the cup of water with fish-shaped ice from the Ikea toddler mold. "I want a peanut butter and jelly sandwich!"

[7:01 PM]
I barricade myself in the bathroom for the child's protection.

[7:03 PM]
I return to the dining room and inform the child that she will not leave the table until she finishes her food.

[7:45 PM]
The child is still sitting at the table. It is now time for a bath. I do whatever the food equivalent of waterboarding is. I place the child in the tub.

[7:48 PM]
I begin to eat my food.

[7:50 PM]
The child is too quiet. I make sure she hasn't drowned, although I'm pretty certain that only fire can kill her.

[7:59 PM]
Bath is done. Begin reading two stories. FaceTime Co-Parent so that she can say goodnight. Brush her teeth. One last potty run.

[8:15 PM]
Sing Twinkle Twinkle Little Star. Turn off the light. Head back to dining table to finish food that has begun to fossilize.

[8:20 PM]
Start making tomorrow's lunch. Set the oven to cut on for tomorrow's biscuits.

The Dark Knight

The theme for 2013 seems to be letting go. Letting go of the illusion of control is something that I'm still coming to terms with. I was watching Kevin Hart yesterday and he had a bit about realizing that eventually his ex-wife will have another man around his kids. That's something that I'm just not ready for. It has nothing to do with me trying to control what my ex-wife does. I'm concerned about my daughter.

Every man--at least every decent one--wants to be his child's superhero. You want to be strong, you want to be everywhere at once, and you want to protect them from everything. The truth is that it's impossible. I'm not Superman. Long before the divorce I had to accept that I couldn't protect her from life. And even if I could, I shouldn't. Some things she'll just have to experience in order to learn to stand up on her own.

I stopped trying to be Superman. Not only did I stop hovering over her, I also stopped trying to appear invincible to her. She needs to see a man being vulnerable. She needs to learn that how a man handles his insecurities is far more important than him pretending they don't exist. Instead of being Superman, I relegated myself to being Batman. I don't have any superpowers. It's what I do with ordinary that makes me extraordinary.

But now I'm divorced and this job just got a lot harder. My daughter is now split between two houses, with two totally different parents. Remember, opposites attract. That worked when we were married. We balanced each other out and we compromised in order to present a unified front to our kid. That's just not possible now. No matter what anyone says about being on the same page, there will always be differences.

My house looks like Disneyland. Her house looks like a museum. She plays music and has flowers and stuff up. My house looks EXACTLY like a man lives here. It took four different women coming by to finally convince me to buy one of those little trashcans for my bathroom. And these are just cosmetic differences. Don't get me started on our personalities. So right off the bat I'm trying to figure out to adjust to the new parenting dynamic.

But that's an adjustment I'm trying to make with a person that I know extremely well. If that's difficult, then imagine how hard it's gonna be to add in a person I know absolutely nothing about. I'm sure that when the time comes I'll get to meet the guy, but that's about it. In a perfect world, I'd be given the names and social security numbers of every guy she's halfway interested in from the guy at work to the guy she locked eyes with on the train. Then, I'd take their info, run some background checks, kidnap them and inject them with truth serum to find out if they're pedophiles or not, and then let her know who passes ROUND ONE of my tests.

But something tells me she just won't go for that.

So here Batman sits...wondering. When the time comes will the guy by worthy? This sounds harsh, but I could give a damn what makes my ex-wife happy. The ideal guy to be around my daughter, besides myself, is a 70 year old blind, impotent, and extremely patient old man who enjoys nothing more than telling my daughter a bunch of cool stories about being in the Navy and the importance of financial responsibility. Anyone else is on my terrorist watch list. And trust me...the NSA ain't got nothing on my detective skills.

My daughter was invited to a play date once. Within five minutes I had the woman's name--but more important to me--her husband's name, where he worked, a deed and layout of their house, their 5 year old wedding registry, pictures from the wedding and a list of sports they played in high school and college.

Know your enemy.

I say a lot of this half jokingly, but the truth is that I was eleven the first time someone ever shared with me their secret of being raped by her mom's boyfriend. Back then I didn't know any better and kept her confidence. Since then, I've heard similar stories at least three dozen times, and they haunt me to this day. Coworkers, friends, classmates, ex-girlfriends...so much can happen when love is mistaken for trust. And all it takes is one time to ruin someone's life forever. So, I'll happily accept paranoia over the alternative.

Ex-wife knows this about me, and that's probably why I won't meet her future beau until five minutes before the wedding. What she doesn't know is that within three I'll have a blood and urine sample, and either a right hook or a handshake for the guy. Even in the case of the latter, I'll still be sitting on the roof across the street watching for my daughter's bat signal...

Because I'm Batman.

Me Time

There's an episode of The Cosby Show that brings tears to my eyes every time I think about it. It's the one where Claire is about to put some of the children up for adoption, because they won't leave her alone (or something like that). As an alternative, Cliff converts an empty room into her own private soundproof, electronically locked sanctuary. I need to marry a woman like Cliff...a Cliffette.

Since 12:30 today my daughter has been following me around...literally. If I sit on the couch, she sits on the couch. I went to the kitchen for some water, and I looked over to see her grabbing one of her little tumblers out of the dishwasher. I went to the bathroom and (no lie) she grabbed my waist from behind and started doing the conga line chant (dun-dun-dun-dun-dun-HEY!) as I walked to the bathroom. She let me close the door, but as soon as she heard it flush she burst through the door.

When she realized that my sitting on the couch to watch the game was gonna take a while, she started asking me to do things with her. "Let's play hide and go seek!" "Can we read The Three Bears?" "Can we go to Giant and get Goldfish?" Now mind you, we sang and danced and colored and recreated the Michael Jackson Scream video with two Penguins for at least two hours prior to me watching the game. It wasn't enough. Her affection requires a blood sacrifice, and in this case it was every touchdown, interception or Red Zone play.

A normal man wouldn't have made the cut, but not me. I kept thinking about how much I love her and that she was worth it. Okay, that's more like the theme of what I was actually thinking. It all boils down to love, but my actual thought was, "She's gonna end up on the pole, because I wanna see if they get a first down." I have to say that The Players Club has encouraged me to be a better parent than any parenting book out there.

So I ended up missing most of the game. She stretched out on the kitchen floor directly behind me while I cooked, and she pulled up a chair beside me ten minutes ago when I sat down to check the weather on my computer. It was when she started reaching for the trackpad in an attempt to navigate to the bookmarks in order to get to her Youtube playlist that I decided enough was enough.

"GO SIT DOWN ALL THE WAY OVER THERE!"

She wasn't amused. She screamed, hollered, shouted, and kicked, which normally would've been followed up by a scene from my upcoming play, "Joe Jackson: The Musical," but when she kicked she accidentally hit the table with her foot. I think God beat her to save her life. So anyway that prompted her to just sit on the couch pouting. 63 seconds later, I heard her snoring. That was 17 minutes ago. It's 5:25pm...too damned late for a nap, but I need some me time. This is my sanctuary. In the last 17 minutes I've eaten, read the news, played a round of Tetris on my phone, watched highlights of the game I missed (with the volume completely down), eaten the last Reese Cup out of the freezer, and now I'm just waiting out my last minute and eighteen seconds before I have to wake her up. I can live a whole lifetime in that amount of time.

*and of course the *$*$&#&#@* fire drill just went off in my building!

Gotta go. I bet she set that ______ off with her subconscious.

Reorganization

[caption id="attachment_3698" align="aligncenter" width="300"] What the hell is this?[/caption]

I know she's only three, but this is the worst Halloween score ever. Now granted, my feet were hurting and I was tired, so we only did two blocks, but still there is no excuse. When I was her age I could've hit up a diabetic wing of a retirement village and gotten a better take. Who is this kid?

We went up to houses where there were Reese's, Snickers, and M&Ms. She picked the York Peppermint Patty. WHO TAKES THE PEPPERMINT PATTY!? One woman told her she could have two pieces, she only took one. I just stood there with the Joe Jackson smile. "Thank you so much. Have a good evening!" That's what my mouth said. My eyes said, "I'm putting you up for adoption tomorrow." Ike Turner said it best, "Tell her if she miss a step tonight, she gonna be frying fish tomorrow."

She's out the family.

I remember one year I dressed up as Superman. I WAS Superman. I embraced that ish. We left at 6:00 and I didn't come back home until 10:30. My feet hurt. I was about six or seven. Of course they hurt. That cheap ass mask was soaked with sweat and condensation from my breath. My tongue had that red ring around it from me scratching it against the tiny slit where the mouth was. Hell, I think I lost the cape somewhere between my house and Hechinger Mall. But guess what...Superman doesn't quit. I didn't come home until I had three grocery bags full of candy.

I knew what the deal was. My mother was going to check my candy, and long before I'd ever hold a retail job I was well aware of the concept of "shrinkage." There was no way in hell that all of those Snickers looked tampered with. But that's the cost of doing business with the mob. I overcompensated for her protection money.

But that was me and my hustle. This little girl has none of that.

A peppermint patty. Really?

What's wrong with kids these days?

[Sidebar: I'm going to chaperone my first field trip today. Pray...a lot.]