Trip to Indy

In life I generally live for the weekends.  Lately, Not so much.  In the past few months, I have welcomed Monday morning for the simple fact that I am comfortable sitting in a chair behind a desk being invisible.  Sad, but true. 

This past weekend my wife and I road tripped down to Indy for a half marathon that was being ran by one of my best friends and his wife.  It was a tough trip since I had to twist balloons at Nero’s Friday night and then we had to drive the four hours down to Indy after I was done.  We didn’t leave my house until after 9pm and rolled up to the hotel at 1am (2am local time).  My head hadn’t created an impression on the pillow before I was out like a light needing to be up in a little more than three hours. 

The nice thing was that my friend bought our hotel room for us using reward points, so this favor didn’t cost us anything other than gas money and time.  Our room was right across the hallway from their room.  The alarm clock went off and I went over to their room while their three children continued sleeping. They took our car off to the marathon start point and I laid down in the room while the children continued sleeping.  Within 5 minutes of arriving their 4 year old girl awoke.  My wife took her to the other room so she could watch cartoons while I stayed with the sleeping 6 year old and 2 year old boys. 

45 minutes later everyone was up and I changed my first diaper in a good 15 years.  My God son Lucio is apparently old enough to know when someone doesn’t know what he is doing in regards to diaper changing and laughed as I tried standing him up after the fact that I did it all wrong.  Three tries later and we were good to go.  Thirty minutes later I changed my second diaper in 15 years.  Good times. 

We got all three children dressed, took them down for breakfast, loaded them up in the car, drove down to the race, found parking, pulled out the stroller and off we went walking half a mile to get to the half marathon finish.  After waiting for 15 minutes, our friends met us at the family reunion area and all was good.  My friend ran a half marathon for the first time and finished well under the time he expected to.   It was neat to see a good friend achieve something that he had worked so hard for.  Having never ran before in his life, he went from hating the thought of running to running his first half marathon. 

When they were done, we headed back to the hotel with the children and handed them off to enjoy the rest of our weekend in Indy.  Met up with some of my wife’s college friends to watch their son’s 3 hour long pee wee baseball game (oh the humanity).  Luckily it was beautiful out so it was purely three hours of socializing with friends while we cheered their son whenever he was up to bat.  We did dinner with her friends and headed back the four hour drive home to enjoy a relaxing Sunday. 

This past weekend really opened my eyes to fatherhood.  It was pretty much the closest glimpse I have had to what it would be like having children.  We will give it a go.  One at first. Then maybe a second.  I doubt three because I could hardly take three on this trip.  I changed diapers, got children up, dressed them, fed them, hauled them in a car, pushed them around in strollers and everything else involved with taking care of a child.  It’s eye opening hard work.  It was hard enough to take care of three, much less 14 like that crazy octomom who just had 8 more.  Nuts. I think I’m kind of looking forward to fatherhood.

Filed under: Babies, weekend, wife

It’s not rocket science

It really isn’t. 

When walking, don’t walk on train tracks. 

When crossing train tracks, don’t cross when a train is coming. 

When living by train tracks, don’t let children young enough to not know what the shiny metal things are play outside without supervision. 

Those seem like obvious rules to some, but lately it appears that the general population needs a refresher. 

For adults, what a stupid way to end your time on earth. 

For children, it’s downright sad because they were never taught better.  If I see another redneck woman on the news crying while re-living the moment that she watched her baby get struck by a train, I am going to go apeshit. 

Or the 5 year old that shot himself in the head because daddy left the loaded gun under a pillow in the bedroom. 

Or the Yankee fan that plows into Redsox fans and kills someone because they mocked their baseball team. 

It’s a sad time.  I need to stop watching and reading the news.   

In another strange series of events, this morning I was awoken by a pack of coyote or wolves or some very loud howling animals.  This may not seem strange to some, but I live in the suburbs of Chicago.  Although they just shot a cougar in the heart of the city.  It was around 4:00am when my wife and I heard howling and barking.  It was straight out of a horror film.  Or if you remember the scene in the movie Stand By Me where the kids are sitting around the fire scared shitless about the howling going on around them.  It was a bit like that except I was safe in the comfort of my own home.    I opened the window and realized that the howling and barking was coming from the woods immediately across the field from our house.  I can add ‘walking through the neighboring woods at 4am’ to my ever growing list of Things I would prefer not to do if a gun is not pointed at me. 

Filed under: Babies, confused, grouchy, pain, train wreck

Too many children

My wife and I each went through phases.  The first phase that I was lucky enough to miss was when all of my wife’s girlfriends from childhood and college got married.  I was fortunate enough to not meet her until after all 40 of them got married.  I missed her wedding season. 

Unfortunately for her she didn’t miss mine.  Over the past two years we have attended no less than 25 weddings that I can remember.  My childhood friends, college friends, fraternity brothers, church friends, you name them, and they were getting married.  I still have a few straggler friends left that haven’t tied the knot, but it should happen in the next year or so.  My poor wife and poor us.  Weddings aren’t cheap!  

So, the wedding phase has come and gone, but now we have moved on to the next phase…baby phase.  Or Act 2 as I like to call it. (Act 3 is Funeral phase, and I hope to not talk about that for some time.) 

All of my wife’s friends are or have had babies.  There have been at last 20 children born in the past three years, some much more recently, to the friends of my wife.  People that I know, and I enjoy spending time with, but not enough to memorize or track each and every baby that they have.  This past weekend I attended a party for teachers where many of my wife’s friends were in attendance.  I was made to feel like an ass because I wasn’t able to rattle off baby names or even know who had what babies and when.  By the middle of the night I am sure I had pissed some of my wife’s friends off by having no clue about their children.  While making small talk with one of the husbands that had been dragged there as I had, I asked “Who’s staying home with the children.”  To which he responded, “We only have one, and his Grandmother is watching him.”  (His wife is pregnant with number 2) Wow, did I feel like an ass for all of 30 seconds until I realized that I didn’t give a shit.  It’s not my job to keep track of all of these baby names.  I am lucky enough to keep track of the adult names of the friends of my wife, much less of their children.  This particular comment struck a nerve because this father is someone I really like and wish we could hang out more than what we have in the past.  There is a really stupid reason why we don’t hang together in the first place, and my non thoughtful comment pretty much sealed the deal. 

If you see me at a party in the near future, looking down at my hand in mid conversation, then you will know that I have a cheat sheet (I know you wanted me to use the word crib sheet here, but I didn’t) with all of your children’s names on it, because I am too lazy to sit down and memorize each and every one of your children’s names. 

I have pulled a bunch of new photos off my camera from the past few months and I am ready to start uploading.  Look for some new stuff in the coming days, including my first attempt at uploading a new balloon creation every few days to this site. 

Filed under: Babies, balloon, bitchy, confused, stupid, weekend, wife