Slow and Steady Will Get You Trapped In A Clear Box

“You aren’t sugar, you won’t melt. Now get the fuck out of this house”
- my mother

As a child the weather never really stopped my family from doing anything. During a 10 day black out after the great ice storm of 1998 in my home town of Smiths Falls we still went ahead and did all the everyday things we normally did. You know, like stealing other people’s generators and whatnot.

Because I was a teenager and due to sense memory, I rubbed that branch until the ice melted.

I don’t recall using an umbrella until I was an adult or even having a rain coat. The latter may have been because I looked so damned good in denim jeans and a jacket.

Because everyone respects a guy dressed totally in denim, right? Also, are his pants unzipped?

As a kid I was outside most of the day. I remember scarfing down my dinner as quickly as I could so I could get back outside to play. It was awkward when I had a friend over for dinner and just ran outside while they were still eating. My girls are similar and are not accustomed to having a day inside. When they are in the house for more than a few hours they become human pinballs both physically and emotionally bouncing off everyone and everything.

That’s why last week on a morning that was particularly rainy and dreary I announced a snail hunt. The girls are obsessed with snails. We went out and immediately found about a dozen of them to put in a bug box. From here we went to the local drop in to horrify mothers who were attending a special kindergarten orientation day by shoving the snails in their faces to look at. Nothing makes me happier by the way then watching an adult be brave about these things in front of children. But I do enjoy any form of squirming.

At the request of the coordinator we set up at a small table and let the snails crawl around. It quickly became a makeshift snail info centre dolling out bad information like “They are worms with houses.” and handing out snails for small children to suck on.

"Those snails are wrestling." (snorgy)

This was followed by bringing them to school, where my oldest takes French Immersion. Quickly she learned a song about escargot. She told me the teacher didn’t seem very excited about the snails. Perhaps she was dégoûtant by them.

The next morning the snails were brought out and a city built by my daughter and her friend. They quickly lost interest and upon entering the empty kitchen I found snails crawling everywhere. Here are just a few of the scenes I witnessed:

That's french bread, also known as an Apéritif

Reenacting a scene from Lord of The Rings

Note the Star of David on this block of wood...

Not one, but two snail Jesus to honour Easter. What is the plural of Jesus? A flock of Jesus, A murder of Jesus? I just don't know.

Damn it! That's my morning vodka. I just can't get the day started without it.

Little did this Olympic high diver know that it was a salt water pool.

My snail just won't sleep it's crib. It keeps me up all night.

This snail questions it's purpose in life:

It did not seem to like the answer it came up with:

Alternatively, this well adjusted snail retired early and enjoys just rocking on the porch.
  

Damned kids sliming through my corn fields!

 As for what my youngest daughter was doing:

With those idiots distracted, I finally get the good toys to myself.

In-A-Gadda-Da-Vida Baby!

"I'm suited up and ready for adventure!"

I’ve always thought it must be rather exciting to be a baby. You would fall asleep somewhere and wake up somewhere new. And this can happen multiple times in a day! Imagine each time you woke up you were in a whole new world. It would be like Alice in Wonderland but with a stroller.

Just make sure it's not the Tim Burton version, Jesus Fuck!

One of the more magical places for this to happen is Allan Gardens, a beautiful huge greenhouse in the centre of Toronto.

When the baby awakens here after falling asleep in a crowded smelly streetcar (I suspect babies fall asleep as a defensive mechanism), she squeals with delight.

Also, dirt magically attaches itself to her

It’s a great place with wonderful breathtaking flowers and really sharp cactuses at small person height, just to remind you that nature will fuck you up. Years ago my eldest daughter got a cactus during a show and ran to show us. I didn’t see much of the cactus, but I did see the needles grotesquely sticking out of her face and hands after she tripped.

All these plants want to high-five you

My daughter and her friends like to spot struggling artists sketching in the gardens who live a bohemian lifestyle and thus have no idea how to talk to small children. They then stand around the artist and once the artist is calmed to the fact that these kids are watching her, suddenly ask if they can “help”. Anyone with children can attest to the fact that when children wish to “help” with something it usually means you will be forced to fix something in the near future. That’s how many of the professors at the Ontario College of Art & Design have come to find crudely drawn unicorns floating above stunning sketches of hydrangeas.

"I'll give you an A+, just don't hurt me."

The baby who is as antisocial as I am is content with walking around sampling the menu at the gardens or being frightened of the large water wheel cranking away in the south-west wing.

"Man, don't bother me. I ate too many red flowers."

Outside the Gardens is a dog park, where both girls like to watch the dogs. The baby likes dog until they come anywhere near her. That’s when the laughter quickly turns to screams that only the dogs can hear. My older daughter likes to follow the “dog trains” around the park. She calls it a train, I call it a doggy orgy.

Choo-Choo!

It’s strange that such a magical place be located right smack dab in the middle of one of the scariest neighbourhoods in Toronto. It’s such a notorious spot that a documentary was produced about it, East Side Showdown.

It certainly makes for a colourful walk to the streetcar to get home. The first person who crosses our path is a man who announces that for two dollars he would do his “act” for us. Seeing as he had no top hat, musical instrument or shoes I fear that his act only consists of parting a curtain behind which is the only “member” of his repertory company.

This was followed by a woman draped only in a sleeping bag, the zipper of which had less teeth than she did, mumbling about how adorable my baby is. The baby with reflexes like a sea cucumber has of course fallen asleep. She then tells my older girl not to trust me because I’m lying to her. Of course I am. I’m telling them not to be afraid.

Finally the last person we see is a ragged fellow leaning against a corner just randomly screaming unintelligible things at passers by.

All these run ins just lead to the discussion of how there are good drugs and bad drugs. The bad drugs make people lose control of what they say and do, while the good ones will get you laid in College. Rim shot please...

RAWR!

Nine Lives Well Spent

Prickly, unfriendly, antisocial. These are all words that have been used to describe me. They are also the same words used to describe my cat. In addition to the standard pre-leaving the house body check for snot, vomit, poop and stickers I also had to check for cat hair.

I’ve always liked cats better than dogs. I’ve always found dogs too needy. Always wanting pet or running to meet you at the door. I’ve always liked my pets the way I liked my women when I was in College, standoffish, untouchable, uncommunicative and as a result obviously gay.

Forget purse dogs, backpack cats is where it's at brother.

Smudgie, or as family and friends nicknamed him, “Devil Cat” was totally unfriendly to adults. He would hiss and claw at anyone tall enough to ride the Scooby Doo Ghoster Coaster, whether they were coming by while we were out of town to feed him or deliver our baby (for those confused, we were home when the baby was delivered, mainly because she was sent C.O.D.). The latter resulted in his first night out of the house ever.

"They won't even see me until I am upon their heads!"

However to kids he was tolerant. I wouldn’t go so far to say he was good, nice or fun, but tolerant. The girls loved him. We got him before we had kids and probably took him from his mother a little too early. I’m pretty sure I never saw him properly clean himself, but instead would lick his chest hair twice and decide it was good enough, like a newly divorced man washing his underwear with Lysol.

Now in travel size for the man on the go.

He would look for body heat wherever possible and lay on our faces while we slept or snuggle with one of the children. I’m still pretty sure he was trying to smother the adults. “Without them I can dress in their clothes and hit the pet food store. I am so jonesing for a hit of the nip!”

"Am I high, or is a tiny octopus attacking me?"

Having a cat with small children is a great thing. When my oldest was a baby she would throw herself into a fit similar to Tasmanian Devil. For some reason the sight of Smudgie would calm her right down. Our youngest got so excited by the sight of him she would tremble and squeal. This of course made the cat run away in fright.

"They get even warmer when they are angry."

Cats also teach children how to touch gently. One nip or swat from the cat was enough to let them know that not everyone wants a feather boa tied around their waist. This is a lesson that will also serve them well in adulthood.

"I will not sleep until the mission is complete."

Though the cat tolerated the kids, I think he was annoyed that he had moved from the number one position to number three in the past five years. He was a very smart and diabolical revenge seeker. He decided the litter box was beneath him (not literally, because it wouldn’t have been a problem if it was) and started pissing in front of the washing machine. The only carpeted area in the house that I have to kneel on, ensuring my knees smell of cat urine, but is just far enough away from my nose that I search the house for the puddle. We will never again buy a front loader, I’ll tell you that!

Sharp eyed readers will have by now noticed that the cat is mentioned only in the past tense. If you didn’t notice, go back and read it again, but this time in a German accent. It will become clear. Sadly, Smudgie went to the big front loader in the sky last Monday. With his rebellious nature and floor peeing we started letting him out of the house. It was win-win. He was happier getting outside and we were stepping in less bodily fluids around the house. I still have two children, so I say “less”. The front and back yard however were not too happy. It appeared that the cat never left our property. That’s why is was such a shock when a neighbor came to the door to tell me the cat had been struck by a car and was dead.

"Together my Friend we will have our freedom."

Thankfully this was late in the evening after the girls had gone to bed so they didn’t have to witness it. Worrying about his nemesis, the raccoon, being able to say they won the battle, I placed his body in a cooler and placed him in the shed weighted down by power tools. You know because of the raccoons, not because I was afraid of a kitty zombie.

The other benefit to when this happened was it gave my wife and I the night to game plan on how to tell my eldest daughter. We very carefully planned what to say and when to say it. I was to take the cat to the vet while she ate breakfast and then tell her afterwards. As the saying goes, “the best-laid plans of mice and men often go awry.” Because mice are such great planners. I can’t even count how many times have I found tiny day-planners in our cupboards. Anyway in the morning while she was just waking up I mentioned I was having trouble reaching the vet. She’s a smart kid, we had to tell her then.

Kitty likes retro gaming.

She cried heartbroken tears, as did we. No matter how tough sounding my wife and I were when discussing that cat, we loved him. We cried for fifteen minutes straight, and then my daughter wiped her tears away and asked, “Can we get a hamster now?”

Later in the day she would speak to her friend on the phone about what happened, and in her mind the whole thing went down like this. “I think it was two cars that banged together. One bad guy going the wrong way and a good guy going the right way that banged together. Smudgie thought he was an ambulance cat and tried to stop them, thinking he could talk like us, but he forgot he can’t talk. He ran at them and meowed. Then he was dead.”


We decided it would be best that we all walk down to the vet with the cat so we could have a chance to say goodbye and have some closure. My daughter wanted to see him, but I couldn’t let that happen. So I told her no, because he didn’t look good. She wanted details. I refused. I explained that we wanted to remember him how he looked yesterday when he was alive. Thankfully that worked.

We walked down the street dragging this cooler behind us, hoping that neighbors wouldn’t come out and ask where we were going to have a picnic. My social network genius wife had posted about it before we left the house. Thankfully my neighbors are addicted to Facebook so no one asked.

The cooler was loud, so my wife asked me to carry the cooler, rather than drag is on it’s plastic wheels. The cat was no a fit cat, so his weight and the cooler was heavy. I had to stop every half block to rest my arms. Finally we decided the noise was better than my being laid up with a wrenched back. Our sad funeral procession made our way to the vet office, where we took turns placing our hands on the lid of the cooler and saying goodbye. To the cat, not the cooler.

We are trying not to dwell on thinking of how he died, but instead how we loved him. My daughter said it best, “Yesterday he was alive and funner than now.”

Good kitty

Water Logged

Years ago, when I was a young man with a mane of golden wavy locks on either side of my head (I had male pattern baldness early in life), I taught an after school acting class to small children at a French Immersion Catholic school. After a long day of being forced to talk in a language not their own about the seemingly impossible magic that is the Christian religion (spoiler alert: it is impossible), children are not at their most attentive. This is why I have a lot of respect for teachers of these types of programs. They see the children once a week for an hour, which is not enough time to get to know how to teach each kid to their own individual level, or figure out a way to mock them without it getting back to the parents.

Mock: My favourite pastime and food

I recall one time I asked a little girl, likely in grade one or two, what else she did after school. The kid broke out a day-timer and started rhyming off what she did each day. Between tennis, horseback riding, acting and painting there wasn’t a spare day. There were even a few days with multiple activities. I was horrified. I asked the kid when she had time to play, to be a kid.

My eyes are playing hide-and-seek with my brain right now

I was a stupid single man with no children back them. Now I know what her parents were thinking. “I need a break”. Children are tiring and because we live in a country that discourages under-aged employment we have to find extra curricular activities to get them out of our faces for an hour.

"Guys, lets get going! The way you are working we'll only be called a perspiration shop."

With this in mind, tomorrow is the dreaded registration for city programming in Toronto. For the last three days parents have had the cold sweats, and planned on who would be manning the phones, staying sober and who would be keeping the children at bay. If nothing else we need to get our oldest into swimming.

I come from a line of people who grew up and worked on the Rideau Canal. My Grandfather and Uncle were lockmasters. I wish that meant I came from a line of sexy cat buglers stealing diamonds in the middle of the night. Actually they let boats in and out of the canal. Suffice to say you would think that my family would be great swimmers and love the water. That is not the case. Knowing everything there is to know about undertow and freak water flow does not make one very excited about swimming. We fear the water and would be happier being where we can touch bottom at any time (so long as there are no yucky seaweed down there- blech!).

It's like underwater salad. And like surface salad kids don't want to touch it.

Also, I am a sinker. If I stop treading water for even a second, down I go to the depths of the sea. This makes it difficult to swim with two children. Children think it’s the best to crawl on you while in the water. Little do they know it means certain death. So whenever swimming with my kids in the lake I wear a life jacket to keep me above water. This makes me look and feel like an idiot. Believe me, as a teenager I wore a t-shirt swimming so I know how to look ridiculous.

When my oldest was nearly two we took great pains to teach her to enjoy the water so that she wouldn’t be a victim to my family history.  This was a year where the temperature rarely went above about 18 degrees Celsius so my wife and I would try to smile as our bathing suit areas were submerged in the icy cold water. “L-l-l-l-l-look h-h-h-h-ow m-m-much fun this i-i-i-i-is!” we would shout at her. She would have none of it.

Then this happened:





 That was a set back.

Somehow we managed to convince her that swimming was fun. We spend a lot of time at my wife’s family cottage, where everyone has worked as a lifeguard or swimming instructor (except me, see the comment about wearing a shirt swimming), so being able to swim is extremely important.

That’s why every week I schlep the kids 10 blocks to a city recreation center. This particular center does not have a family change room. The first time I was there I was going to take them into the mens changing area as I figure having two small girls in there is better than having me in the women’s changing room with a ton of small girls and their mothers. I was about to walk in when another father looked at me and said, “You aren’t going to take them in there are you? You should take them into the mens washroom, where it’s more private. I decided to go for this option only to find that I had the girls getting dressed next to a toilet that badly needed a flush on a floor that also badly needed flushed.

It was somewhere between Dumb and Dumber and Trainspotting.

From that point on I took the girls into the men’s room, which for some reason was always occupied by old Asian men. Though I tucked the girls away in the handicapped stall where there were a few walls to separate them from the larger change room, the old Asian men refused to get dressed while the girls where there. Instead they sat fully dressed, or in their swimsuits staring at the floor until we left. It gave me the same anxiety that the grocery store does since they all moved to self bagging.

No the next guys food is about to touch mine! Hurry hurry hurry!

On those times when someone does decide to get changed in the company of my kids I would catch the oldest staring at them. I know it’s not out of anything more than she is bored and procrastinating on getting herself dressed, but it is fun to shout out, “Quit judging that man’s junk! It’s not his fault it’s cold out!”

I also quickly found out I am completely biased when it comes to the swimming instructors. One the first class I walked in and a middle aged heavy set man with glasses greeted me. I was sure this had to be an administrator or an accountant or something. Swimming instructors are supposed to be emotionless teens with necklaces made of twine and beads, not hairy backed dudes. Turns out he was an instructor, but not ours. We had the bored looking teen with Bieber hair who looked at the clock more than at my kid, instead of the heavy guy who seems both excited to teach and was engaged with the children. So you know, we dodged a bullet there.

No less than four times over a nine week session have we made our way to the recreation centre to find that class was cancelled. Begin old man rant: In this day and age I don’t understand why an email or phone call can’t be made to those people expecting to have a class that day to tell them it’s not on. We don’t own a car (still better than you) so that 10 block trip is actually pretty significant. A heads up could save us over an hour of prep and travel time.

The one cancellation I don’t feel badly about is when there was a pool fouling. That’s lifeguard speak for “someone shat the pool”.  Without any grumbling we changed back into out regular clothes and went home. Later, from a friend that swims regularly at that pool, I was notified that they were still fishing out full pieces of broccoli hours later.

Someone's digestive track is seriously fucked up.

The Road to Hell is Paved... That's All It's Just Paved.

There are many things you can do in the span of eight hours. You could take a flight to to France, have tantric sex or wait for a Joe Louis to pass through your body. All of which are way more fun than waiting in a traffic jam on the 401.

Both take 8 hours to pass through the intestines

I live in a province where Family Day is observed, a day off to spend with your loved ones. Suck on it New Brunswick, enjoy your work day.  What better way to spend Family Day then in a car where every idiosyncrasy of your loved ones are magnified to the point where it’s probably best you can’t gain enough momentum to careen your car into the median killing you all.

I blame my parents who were selfish enough not to move from the community they’ve lived in and made lives for themselves for 32 years rather than move to a giant smog filled impersonal city.

Monsters

That, and this mess...

Ironically the transport was carrying a shipment of Weebles

This is what kept us trapped in a car for eight hours, a trip that should take about three-and-a-half. Traffic jams of this magnitude are a true test of sanity. When we first stopped I was steadfast about not moving to another lane. As history and comedians from the 80‘s has proven, that lane immediately stops once you enter it. It was so tantalizing that lane... moving at 10km/hour instead of our 5km/hour. That’s like -15 for you Americans. I didn’t do it though. Then we came to an offramp. I got into that lane and suddenly the highway was clear. It called to me like a siren’s song, “Clear, clear, join me, lay your tires upon my face.” I did it only to discover this around the bend.

Sonabitch!

That’s when we were trapped in traffic for the majority of the eight hours.

When trapped in a car that long you go through all five stages of grief.

1. Denial
“This can’t be that long a traffic jam. Really how long can it take to get to the next exit. If I just restart my phone twenty times to get a connection we’ll see that the next exit is only seconds away.”

2. Anger
“Goddamn it! Why the hell are there so many assholes in front of me? Why is my wife breathing so loudly? I’m going to punch this traffic jam in the throat.”

3. Bargaining
“Okay, so if we start moving right now I’ll stop masturbating for a year...” I left out the part where I said a year on Mercury. You know, just in case it worked.

4. Depression
“If we drove a winnebago I might be able to hang myself and bring sweet relief to this day. Stupid Sedan.”

5. Acceptance
“Okay, if we set the front seats on fire we could cook and eat the dropped Cheerios on the floor as well as stay warm tonight. Once we get internet access we’ll change our mailing address to here. I wonder what the postal code is for the 401?”

The highlight of the trip was when my five-year-old announced she needed to have a poo. I threw on the emergency lights and parked by the side of the road. My wife went to the bushes with her as I watched cars slowly moved past us, jealous of the five car lengths they got before she returned to the car.

It turned out that my daughter has a shy anus and refused to poop in the woods saying she didn’t need to. I merged back into the parking lot and ten minutes later my daughter once again announced she had to poo. It was my turn to go to the woods.

Once we were there she refused again. I begged and pleaded, explaining that I had no idea when we would make it to a bathroom. I offered to hold her up in my arms so she wouldn’t have to squat in the snow. I would have tried to aim at something, using her bottom like a disgusting Nerf gun. No dice. Back to the car we went.

We drove again, and again ten minutes later she made the announcement, with the same results in the woods. As a parent it’s important to not make a big deal about using the washroom for a kid. If you do, you could give them some weird complex later in life. However, panic does start to set in when there is the possibly of sitting in a car with soiled pants. Especially when the wearer of said pants just ate McDonalds food.

We sang her songs of pooping our pants as children and how humiliating and uncomfortable it was. Mine involved an autumn pants pooping at recess and an attempt to clean up before class using fallen leaves. Scratchy and I’m sure a joy for my mother to clean up.

Now do you want to jump in it?

We decided to ignore the issue and continue quietly seething about the traffic. At some point we went off the deep end. My wife started playing ukelele, while I entertained passing motorists with a moose hand puppet that the kids had grown tired off two hours earlier.

"Hi I'm Morton Moose. I'll suck your cock for a helicopter ride out of here."

Madness sure does make the time fly by. At once point I went on a diatribe of how I had become one with the car. My hands permanently fused to the steering wheel, my eyes changing shape to that of headlights. I was to be known as Sedanson from this point on. “Put the gas nozzle in my bellybutton and feed me premium you cheap bastard!”

To my daughter’s credit she made it to the next exit another three hours later. Where a Tim Hortons was overrun with bulging bladders.

Come to poop and stay for the Tim Bits, they look the same.

I changed the baby in the front seat of the car while my wife took the eldest into the restaurant. She pleaded with people to let her cut in line as it stretched out the door. Most adults were sympathetic and let them go ahead, until she reached the first two women in line who said they had to go too. My wife explained the situation, that my daughter is five-years-old and has had to go for hours. One woman said she was forty-five, “Forty-five, five, what’s the difference?” I believe the answer is that the five-year-old was more mature.

We got home in time to put the kids to bed and lay down ourselves, our bodies still contorted into sitting position. We can’t wait for our Easter trip to visit family. I know it will be different. For one we will all be wearing diapers...


**special thanks to Jen Hendriks at My Sensitive Girl Hole for the picture of Morton Moose.

Walking in A Winter Wasteland

A few weeks ago Toronto had the largest snowfall in five years. Air travel was cancelled, businesses closed and people gave up and carried their Smart Cars under their arms the rest of the way to work.

Both my wife and I grew up in areas where large snowfalls were commonplace, so for us it was business as usual. I’m happy my oldest daughter is only five-years old and still enjoys school, because when I was a kid, the sentence, “Busses are cancelled, but schools are still open,” would have sent me into a tantrum not seen since God turned that dude’s wife into salt, thus dooming us to worry about our sodium intake forevermore.

A herd of deer and cows devoured her moments afterwards

For us it just meant bundling up and heading out. I do sometimes feel bad for the baby. I bundle her up in a fleece onesie, a snowsuit, boots, hats and bubble wrap, only to take her out of it again twenty minutes later. We do this four times a day between errands, shoveling the walk and taking her older sister to school and back. She does tend to get crabby after the third time it happens.

"For the love of God help me up, I don't know whose hands those are that are reaching for me."

"Enough of this shit. I'm moving to Florida."

When there is this much snow, traveling with children can be difficult. I heard many stories of strollers abandoned in neighbor's front yards, like a toddler version of an apocalypse movie where cars have been abandoned and the passengers either eaten or fled. I have a million dollar idea for parents. A snowblower with a baby carrier on it. This would clear the snow as you walked your baby. I call it, “The Baby Blower”. On second thought I may rethink that name.

Trust me, this will sell better than my baby wood chipper/stroller

I didn’t attempt the stroller, instead opting for the trusted carrier which goes on my back. The only issue with the carrier is that it acts like a roofie making my daughter fall asleep instantly, with her head hanging at unnatural angles. I’ve been often told by strangers that my baby must be dead as necks aren’t supposed to bend like that. I normally reply by shrugging and saying, “Oh well, I guess I’ll just go sex up the wife to make another one. Babies are the ultimate renewable natural resource after all.”

Whoops broke another one. This is why we can't have nice things*

When my oldest was under two years old and before I became a pro baby carrier, I only wore her on my front. In the winter I would wear a large coat and zip her up inside it. This opened the door for old men, who likely only ever carried cigars when their children were born and never an actual child, to comment that I was obviously smothering my child and that I should be ashamed of myself. My only retort was to flick their varicose veins and run away.

I can't help it is she keeps dropping her breathing tube!

With the heavy snowfall I got a new concerned citizen comment regarding the baby on my back. “Snow is gathering on her face.” Sure enough a small drift had formed on her sleeping face that was pointing straight up at the sky. I did not have a snow scraper and had to ask strangers to help clear her face. Had I been thinking I should have salted her face before leaving the house.

Getting the five-year-old to school was another issue. I thought I was brilliant in pulling her and her friend to school in a toboggan. Two five-year-olds in a toboggan, me pulling and carrying a baby on my back and fresh soft snow did not make for an efficient trip. I imagined that I was a part of an avalanche rescue team saving three people from a fresh slide.

Exactly like this, but with Baby Mum Mums.

When we arrived there was dozens of other parents who walked their kids there in hopes of an afternoon nap while they were in school. I saw one mother coaching her child who was making snow angels. She instructed him to "wave your arms like you are on fire." This lead to a lot of thoughts for me. First, how is being on fire in his frame of reference. Was he once on fire, and if so why would this mother make him relive that? Second, when on fire you stop, drop and roll, not lie on the ground and wave your arms up and down.

I swept away the ashes before taking this picture.

*Thanks to Jen Hendriks for the photo. See her blog at My Sensitive Girl Hole

Daddy's Night Off

As a full time parent it’s important to to find time for yourself. Time to reflect on who you are, what your goals are, how you are going to get that shit stain from an explosive diaper out of your pillow. Suffice to say I find it difficult to separate myself from home life.

Fact: Pillows can hold twenty times their own weight in bodily fluids. Don't believe me, try it at home, or better yet a Motel.

I try hard to find small moments in the day for myself. The 45 minutes between bedtime and the first wake up, in the shower (cut out masturbation and I gain a good three minutes of thinking time), or after being knocked unconscious from banging my head on the changing table while picking up a feces filled diaper that’s fallen poop side down on the floor.

Injuries like this should occur only when picking up awesome things like gold or jelly rolls.

My wife is very good about urging me to, as she puts it, “get the fuck out of the house.” I suspect I get tedious to listen to. My wife will ask my daughter questions about her day, which I will answer like it’s some sort of sick game show where adults are pitted against small children. Imagine how much an adult of average intelligent would dominate over a five-year old at Jeopardy, let alone a hylee intelleigent persun like me.

"Seriously kid, you are an Troglobite."

Every few weeks I take a night to go out on my own. I normally try to go see a movie, but have recently become super focussed and worried about how bad a night will be with children waking up. The youngest has recently had a few weeks of bad nights which means my wife and I have bad nights, which means we have bad days, which will eventually lead to a bad divorce.

So a movie has to be close to the house so that travel won’t take much time and it has to be close to an hour and a half, so I can get back home to bed for a snooze before the festivities of waking children begin. Quentin Tarantino obviously does not care enough for his audiences who have children.

Hates children and silence.

On Thursday I decided to skip a movie and do some window shopping. Before kids I was able to wander the streets of Toronto for hours on my own, window shopping at used book and record stores with no issues. The first sign that this was not going to be a satisfying evening out was noticing that I was standing on the subway platform rocking back and forth as though I had a child in a sling attached to me.

Next I was walking the streets and started to miss being asked a million questions about everything around us, “How do all those lights work,” or “Tell me about the olden days, when you were a kid,” or “Why is that man sleeping in the alley with a belt around his arm?”

"His sleeves are too loose sweetie."

I don’t care for eating at restaurants by myself. This stems from years ago, where I went into a sit down restaurant by myself and they sat me directly in front of the entrance and ceremoniously removed all the plates and cutlery from the opposite side of the table. I was left trying to avoid eye contact of people entering the restaurant for the entire meal. If I was in a speed eating contest I would have won that night.

So instead I opt for fast food, that I can either eat while walking, or sit in silence with numerous other people sitting in silence. All of us judging each other while wishing someone would start a conversation. Fast food joints are a gathering place for the introvert who wishes to be an extrovert.

On this day out went to a fast food place that I had never been to before, let’s call it Hero Certified Burger, because that’s it’s name. Also, if they wish to sue me, they won’t get much unless they are interested in my vault of cloth diapers and Penaten riches. This place has been around a while so I imagine most people in the city are familiar with it. I was not. The cashier asked if I wanted “Hero Certified Sauce”, this meant nothing to me. She might as well have asked me if I wanted “Monkey Doodle Frazenbutt” on my burger.

Monkey Doodle Frazenbutt

I asked what exactly the sauce was. She looked at me like I was the one speaking another language and answered “a sauce”.  Good enough for me! Shoot some of that undescribeable goo on my food please. It tasted like undescribeable goo too.

With goo in my belly and boredom in my heart I headed for home. Knowing my wife would be concerned (read: annoyed) that I had returned home within an hour and a half, I was smart and brought home a magnum of the finest wine a twenty dollar bill can buy.