Christmas vacation: Should we stay or should we go?

Noting that I am the boss of my very small company, I can choose my own vacation -- within reason.  And my kids ended up getting two weeks vacation  at Christmas time, so it was a question of whether to stay at home or take a semi long holiday SOMEWHERE.

In fact we made up our minds this year long in advance to stay home.  That being because for the last two years we have spent half or all of Christmas away on "vacation".  While it wasn't a fiasco, it was far from being happy memories to recall.  Well, come to think of it, in my book they were a fiasco.

Two years ago, my youngest daughter and I both got food poisoning from a bad hot dog.  Yes we know this.  This left my wife to eat most of the food we had brought along for Christmas dinner and after, gain probably ten pounds (4 kilo), become angry, etc etc.  My daughter and I had bread and water.  Meanwhile my other daughter ran up a high temperature which was quite scary also because we were pretty far away from any hospital or doctors.  It came down after we had towel soaked her in cold water 5 times during the night.  That wasn't fun for anybody.  And of course last year I got a cold from December 29 two days into the vacation and ended up playing memory card game non stop with my youngest daughter in a very small room and being miserably sick.  It all would have been much "nicer" at home.

Needless to say, and because there is no snow this year, we have stayed home this vacation.  I will work during the week anyway.  But I would like to write a couple reasons why in the end staying home is the safe, nice bet to make.

1.  As mentioned, flu season, stuffed nose season, high temperature season, sick season in general.  Although, wouldn't you know it, though there is still a week left to get sick, no one has gotten sick this Christmas.  Whoopee.  But when and if you do, and it is very likely, it is much more comfortable to be sick at home than in a small apartment or penzion room, with the whole family cramped in there, just waiting to be attacked by the germs.

2.  Put the money to something else.  An outing of the whole family costs a lot to book a room or small apartment, why don't you just put the money into reconstruction that I am sure most of you still have to do on your home or apartment.  You know you still haven't even finished the kids room even though they have been there two to five years.  In that time the bathroom is already on the downswing and unless you patch it up it will be leaking on your neighbors below.  Or even a new mattress so you can get better sleep. I have some friends who make extraordinary mattresses if you want their connection.   

If you are all sorted in the reconstruction department, well then give the Ole Santa boy some money to bring your kids some real good presents.  Note that people are spending more and more on Christmas gifts in general anyway which is putting them under until March.  But, maybe some extra high cost items this year can be gotten out of the way.   Note that Jr is just about ready to ride a bike. That is a small investment to Santa, or Father Christmas or Jesus or whoever comes to visit your abode with the presents.  Or hey, a friend just sent me a picture of his 8 year old doing his best Eddie Van Halen imitation on his new electric guitar.  That must have been a pretty penny for that present.   

Two gifts my 7 year old got.  Santa is pretty cool. 

3.  The kids have a lot of free time and "known" space to test out their new gifts.  Go ahead play that new Ramones CD at 11 volume.  Or  that new flying Tinkerbell your daughter got can break something flying around the house. Its better if it breaks it in your own house rather than the rented room.  Murphy`s law number 23, something always breaks during Christmas.  You know in a rented apartment they are going to charge you 5 times the amount of the thing that got broken.  That is also a law.  I always recall that it was great spreading out all my new Christmas gifts around the family room and playing really loudly with all the new games and bothering my Father who was home writing and... those were the days.

4.  Even if you have only two kids, even one maybe, the whole family can not agree on the place to go for this semi long, but not long enough holiday.  Its not like summer when you have time to satisfy everyone and do more than one thing.  I have two girls, but they are totally different when it comes to winter season.  One learned how to ski when she was 3 and wants to do it every chance she gets.  The other who is 4 now, still doesn't know how and during the winter, her time limit for being outside in the snow is about 20 minutes.   This is about as long as it takes to get on all the snow gear in the first place.  Last year we would take twenty minutes to get on her winter clothes and we would sled in the yard and get snowy for twenty minutes then she was finished, wanted to go back inside.  Since I was sick, I didn't argue.  There was really no point to it, although for some reason she said she had a great time playing memory game with me non stop in our cramped little room.   Oh well, I guess in the end she was satisfied.  She will never remember it anyway.

This snowman arts and crafts piece no longer exists, I ate it.

5.  Time to explore your own neighborhood and vicinity.  We live in a semi big city, so there is always something going on.  But I am sure, unless you are out in rural, and even there, there are new exhibitions, yes even things the kids would like. Check out a theatre for kids with hand crafts to  do afterwards, or new paths to explore right around your house.  I have had 4 days off so far and we have done something nice (well, excluding the bad relatives visit day) every day.

As I recall when I was young, we spent 9 out of 10 Christmas` at home and besides for one bad one, I have no regrets and feel quite happy and satisfied with good memories.   Save your money, save the gas, stay at home.

On the downside:  There is that visit to the relatives day and that can be a nightmare as a fellow Dad blogger has written about eloquently HERE.  Why all the dirty laundry comes out when relatives get together for the holidays, I don't know.  Its like the movie "Ordinary People" ten fold.  Not as bad as the Star Wars saga, you know Darth Vader, oh, I better not ruin it for you if you haven`t seen the older movies.

More downside.  As a parent you are going to have time at home to get really frustrated with the gifts that Santa or Father Christmas, or whomever, left your kids.  For me this year, my kids are good at doing puzzles, but.... um, Santa, you really do NOT have a clue when you left them a 1000 piece puzzle for a 4 year old.  Here is the current state of that puzzle we got.  If I take another picture at the end of January, I hope it will have progressed at least a little. but I have my doubts.

current status of 1000 piece puzzle (sigh)

  Happy Holidays to everyone

    

Christmas Time Constructions

I don't understand why more Fathers don't take up Dadding and doing artistic activities with their children, especially around Christmas time.  I'm talking to you Dads, who like to putz around in the garage or the basement workshop putting things together or taking them apart.  It is such a thin barrier between the activities of kids and repairing your John Deere lawnmower.  Believe me it is.

Let me get straight to the point and the comparison.

The other day, my Mother was telling me about two couples she had over for dinner.  The men got along with each other, hit it off quite well because they are both handymen who like to fix things around the house and in the yard.  So for an hour they were talking about taking off certain doors and what number screw you need for that part and that part and how to put the door back on so it can`t be hijacked and is secure.  What fasteners are the best for securing it etc etc...

All they have to do is transfer that knowledge to making devils and angels and the Three Kings and Santy Clause.  Screwing in little toothpicks and securing noses, tongues and fake hair onto plastic bottles and containers.  I feel the two sets of knowledge are quite similar.    Why Fathers with the ability to build stuff do not volunteer more for running arts and crafts sessions in their children's` pre school is.... well apples and apples to me.  They should.

Here pictured are two little devils constructed in pre school.   Tell me those couldn't have been put together in Father`s workshop in the basement or out in the garage.  

Why those two men at my Mother`s dinner couldn't just as well have been talking together something like this:  "Well, the tongue is the tricky part, because its going to not stick.  Its going to come off.  You need the strong number 10 Elmer's to get that thing staying on there or else just forget it."   "Yeah, yeah, I hear what you are saying, but you are just going to have to use number 4 screws on the eyes.  Those are just the same Radio Shack made for putting together transistors when they were still around.  You can`t glue the eyes. "  "Right about that.  Oh, and save those pipe cleaner pieces, they do add a good effect in the hair."  etc etc.

I on the other hand,  don't have a garage or a basement and limited room in the house for bits and pieces and my Mother in law wouldn't allow any junk of mine at her place.  The truth of the matter is  that arts and crafts and I are NOT two great tastes that go great together.  In fact, arts and crafts and I are like a chainsaw getting together with the Texas Chainsaw Murderer.  If we come together it is not a pretty sight. It is downright dangerous.   Stuff flying around, body parts, blood and pieces of skin are all possible. (Note:  The Texas Chainsaw Murderer was actually based on the murders of Ed Gein who lived in the state of Wisconsin and didn't use a chainsaw)

So last Sunday from this writing when my wife said I had to help our youngest girl decorate their wall with Christmas tape I ran away and hid under the bed like a dog during a thunderstorm.  They had to use magnets and ropes and the works to pull me out from under the bed.  But I was given an ultimatum and said that my wife worked on it the day before and now it was my turn.  

Well, although I am a "wing it" type of guy, I thought it best to draw a plan of the picture we would make, first.  We were going to tape up, wait, ... a snowflake.  Or three.   Here is the plan if you can see it.  

Next, I wasn`t doing it right according to my daughter and she yelled for Mom to come and tell me to do it correctly.  She was rather angry at how I was putting the tape down.  Don` t know what I was doing wrong, but I had to concede and change my evil ways, baby.

Then the careful measurement, not, and the precise placement, I rather doubt it, of each section of the snowflake.  My daughter had to cut each piece of tape off while I held it in place.  Sometimes she had to stand on some books to reach the tape and cut the exacting piece, which wasn`t exact.

Well, it took an hour or so, but we ended up with not one but three snowflakes on the wall.  And here is the outcome:

Hahaha, I know what you are saying, what`s the big deal?  It`s tape, you pull it off and cut it.  It is tape, not a drawing.   But let me tell you, THIS IS A BIG DEAL.  To construct it in this shape took the utmost concentration, patience (one of the three "p"s) and a couple hail Marys and prayers.   My wife was quite happy with it, my daughter was pleased and not crying about it (which signals success).  I can safely graduate from level 1 arts and crafts and move onto level two.  That comes in fact tomorrow when I have to decorate the Christmas tree.  Yes I know I know, we did it last year, but that was a year ago and if I only do it once a year, I have to learn the whole process over again.  I can`t remember how to do something that I do once a year.  It`s like my Mother recently said, "I have been making stuffing for the Thanksgiving turkeys for 60 years, but I still have to look at the recipe because I only do it once a year.  I cant remember the recipe from the last time I did it."     So.... wish me luck.  I am going to need it.

Taped Christmas tree done by older daughter

Texas Chainsaw Murderer from the movie

    

 

How I nearly lost my kids because of the Ramones.

I was sitting in the principals office of my oldest daughter just recently.  He was NOT my pal.   He was pacing the floor a bit in front of his desk. Two hefty men stood on each side of the desk.  Or perhaps I should classify them as "rugged".  He paced a bit more, then sat down.

"We aren't as stupid these days, Mr. --------- .  We know what Chinese rock is.  This isn't the 60s when officials didn't know what rock n roll was about.  Don't you think your daughter is just a bit too young, at 7 years old to go around singing `I'm living on a Chinese Rock.  Everything is in the pawn shop`?  Or, `this aint Havanna.  Do you like a banana?`   Mr. _____  you know these men are from the office of Children`s Rights and they can go to your home and even take your children away from you if they deem you are bringing up your children.... BADLY. "

As serious as the situation was,  an episode of the Simpsons was playing in my memory.   In it the Simpsons kids WERE taken away from Marge and Homer and given to the Ned Flanders to bring up.  I recalled a friend of mine who took in kids and I winced when I realized he was very Flanderesque and my two girls could wind up in his household.  Oh the pain of it all.

But I guess I should back track in time for you and tell you how this very serious situation came about.

Music is one of the most important aspects in my life.  The night before I was born my parents were playing quartets. The cello my Mother was playing, holding against me, must have vibrated me lovingly toward the beginning of life.  My job in my adult life has been in the music business, selling, distributing, marketing music.  Thus music and what is played and listened to at home is very important.  That said, I realize that not everything I play will be liked by others.  So I would rather play something that the whole family can enjoy.

Now when you have two young girls, they like repetitive music, something which is easily remembered with very catchy and happy melodies and lyrics.  Easy lyrics to hear and sing. (Nirvana would never please an under ten kid, not even adults understand Kurt Cobain`s mumbling lyrics. )   And of course kids will listen to that ten(s) times in the day, especially if it is a winter weekend day.

Then you have your wife who likes a melody and a "song".  Then you got your Dad who can take just about anything, but would rather listen to something faster with a good strong beat to keep his energy up and not fall asleep when he is playing the tenth game, this morning, of the memory game.  I just wanted everyone to be happy,  said my inner Salesman Being.  

My older girl`s English lesson CD songs were driving my wife crazy and starting to eat on me too.  "It¨s a house.  It`s a happy house. It`s a happy house for you and me", is the kind of thing when listened to ten times makes you want to do your Pete Townshend imitation and start smashing the Television and throwing things out the window. 


My wife`s Depeche Mode CDs, while I have nothing against them,  um..... shhhhh, shhhh, really I don`t, were too sad and sour for the kids.  They automatically yanked those.   I tried putting on Ben E King, you know, "when the lights de de dah,..  stand by me"  I could see was too slow for both the kids and me.  I thought it might be good, good repetitive lines, but too slow.  Too slow.  Reggae is not for kids either.  You ever see a small kid walking around scraping their feet looking zonked?  No, of course not.

Brazilian Beats 4 has been a seminal hit in our house for several years off and on.  I reintroduced it recently, to my wife`s frown.  The drum and bass tunes were starting to wear on Mommy after it had been playing every day a couple times for over a week.  The drum and bass DJ Marky and Infrared tunes, though several years old, kept me going.  Kids liked it too.  It remains a hit, but is back in the archives again (IE hidden by my wife).

Then on Sunday, I pulled out our two Ramones CDs.  "End of the Century" pictured above was an immediate hit with the kids.  There are so many classics there, great songs that you can sing along with on the refrains, you know,  "Rock rock rock rock rock n roll high school".  From the first drum beats of "Do you remember Rock n Roll Radio" to the last "High Risk Insurance", its a 38

 Music Producer Phil Spector

minute cup of coffee.  And it doesn't wear on you.  You can listen to it 5 times a day every day and it stays fresh. It doesn't get you antsy and make you want to throw it out the window.  It was produced by Phil Spector so it has that 50s rock and roll, pop sound, but speeded up by the Ramones so that Daddy AND Mommy stay awake and even dance. It is  fast and  poppy and catchy for the kids.  It covers all the bases for the whole family.  You wouldn't know how difficult that is unless you are or were a parent.  Really.  I`m not joking.  It`s an accomplishment.  

The only problem is the Ramones, being the punk product that they are of New York City 1970, write about everyday things and school and well, Dee Dee was a heroin addict for a great amount of his life, so there is that.   As a result you have the song "Chinese Rock"  which is a type of heroin and being addicted and selling all your valuable stuff so that you can "cop some rock".  Although let it be known that Dee Dee wrote it in 1975 but it got rejected by the Ramones as being TOO OBVIOUS.  It was only when it became a hit with the Heartbreakers that the Ramones took it back and put it on their 1980 album.

Thus the refrain, "I`m living on Chinese Rock.  All my best things are in hock.  I`m living on Chinese Rock.  Everything is in the pawn shop" has got to be the most catchy part of the whole album.  (Note, I gather if my blog were read by a serious amount of people I would have to ask permission to reprint these lyrics, but it isn't, so I haven't, but it was written by Dee Dee Ramone with some help from Richard Hell).  Rather a witty refrain about having to sell everything because you have a bad monkey on your back.  Also a warning to all.

And we played it over and over, and over once again. And then again.   So that by the middle of the school week  the principal called me up and into his office and these sharp dressed men were there too.  I was not crazy about them.  They definitely were not punk.

"Your daughter is singing this refrain over and over AND teaching it to all the students"

 "Mr. ------ , teaching seven year olds songs about drugs is not the reputation we want to have.  Has your daughter asked you what Chinese rock is and if so what did you say?"

"I told her it was a bad sort of food that some people eat and when they eat it, they want more and more and it drives them crazy so that they sell all their things in order to get this food and eat it."

I lied big time.  I said nothing of the sort to her.  I told her that it was a small rock or island near China in the ocean with very few people or no people living on it.  I did tell her what a pawn shop was truthfully.  But I had to tell the Child Care people the "correct" answer.

Needless to say they were impressed with my answer.   I knew they would be.  In fact if I could have read their minds I am pretty sure they were contemplating having me teach sex education to the under ten year olds.  They were having trouble finding a teacher to do that.

"Well, Mr. -----, couldn't`t we ask you to change slightly your music content at home so it is more "child friendly".

"You don¨t like our music, eh Mr. Principal?"

This comment made me feel like Sideshow Bob in the Simpsons again when he shudders at the thought of Bart and plans Bart`s death.  They had no idea how many hours I had spent searching for the right music for everyone, big deal about the lyrics.  And how finding just the right music was an epiphany worthy of gold, or at least corn on the cob.

"I will try my best gentlemen."

I lied again, but everyone in the room gave a collective sigh.  Sometimes censorship and lying has its place.  I really wanted to tell the principal that he better not be playing probably more than half of his music collection then to his kids, including the Beatles, not even the early Beatles.  But, I thought there was no point to it.  He might come to the same conclusion.  I am just glad he didn't tell me to play some "good" music for my children like Justin Bieber or Nickelback.  Then I would have been sent to jail for aggravated assault.    

"I am sorry sir,  I have an awfully important meeting at my other daughter`s pre school, have we come to a satisfactory conclusion?"

The principal gave me a concerned look, but said, "yes,... we have"

I really had to run to get to that appointment.  I was told the police were waiting for me along with the teachers. It seems my younger daughter was pogoing all over classroom and teaching others how to do it and singing Chinese Rock over and over.  And if I didn't give a good explanation to the teachers, the police might put me in jail for teaching my daughter reckless, bad behavior and spreading it to the rest of the classroom.

I ran out of the school humming the music and lyrics that had been going through my head because we had been listening to the other CD over and over, "The KKK took my baby away, they took her away, away from me"...         

 

Halloween and Life: The angels are in the details.

I was going to say "sometimes", but scratch that right away and I will say "quite often" the details in life are what make life good and even great.  Thinking about it, the big problems can really weigh you down day after day.  But they are always there.  We work on them slowly and they get better very gradually over time.  Problems with our personality such as learning to be patient.  Problems at home between parents that we have to work on all the time.  Addictions.  Sugar addiction (he says with a bar of chocolate next to him).  Alcohol addiction.  You can be clean for several years and then one day you have a drink and you get drunk and you have to start all over again.  Big problems are always with us and evolve and hopefully get better in the long run.

But it is the small NICE things which can make us happy and pick our mood up for the rest of the day.  And perhaps they are even more important for carrying us through day to day and making it worthwhile to get up in the morning.

I had not seen, let alone carved a jack o lantern for well, um, lets just say,  a couple decades.  My girls are kids now, not toddlers and for some reason we never carved a pumpkin before.  I don't know why not, go ask your Pop.  But this year my older girl got it in her head from some class at school that we should buy a pumpkin and carve it into a jack o lantern.  Novel idea indeed.

Pumpkin Soup

I have actually gotten used to the idea of pumpkin as a food.  My wife insisted that her Mother grow some pumpkins in her garden and my wife makes several types of pumpkin meals for the main dish, as well as two types of pumpkin soup.  So carving a pumpkin up for decorative and traditional purposes was in effect, new to me.  But I charged into the job with gusto.

Although I know now its not such "a biggie" the fact that we carved one tooth into the mouth was quite an accomplishment for which I gave myself a pat on the back.  My daughter was so excited by the process and the coming shape of the jack face.  We nearly messed up the teeth but rescued the plan and as I said got a tooth into it.   There was a lilt to his face, but that was due to the overall structure of the pumpkin and not due to our carving.

The end result was very fair to very nice but what was more important was it made my daughter so happy, she even congratulated me on a job well done and was quite enthralled to have a jack o lantern in our window.  Her reaction and joy was the most important to me.  I am not usually good at arts and crafts type activities so again I had to pat myself on the back on an all around success.

End Result

It wasn't such a big deal really, but in fact it made both of us really proud and happy.  Next year we will have to go for two or even three teeth as I hear that is the standard number of teeth in the Jack o Lantern.  Next year.   

General melee at the arts and crafts booth at the Mexican Halloween festival

Isolation 1: Location. 4 pictures

This is too big a theme for just one blog.  I am sure I will write more on it in the future, but it has been on my mind all week.   I have to get it out there. 

I was going to start out with a quote from a Beatles song, but I thought that is too easy and populist, just tag it on at the end.  So the obvious second runner up is to have a picture of Joy Division who wrote the song "Isolation".  It has been going through my head also.

I have been coming across the topic a lot in readings of Stay at Home Fathers, and to tell you the truth I couldn't really get my mind around it.  Why isolation?  Why should you feel isolated bringing up your bubbling, full of life kids and all the life around you?  It just didn't cross MY mind.  By far that doesn't mean it doesn't exist.  It just doesn't exist for me right now.  It does exist in a big way.  I looked out my window where I live now  and think back to where I used to live and realize back then I HAD been living in isolation TOO.  No such sights would have lighted my eyes in my last abode.  And I thought, that's it!  That is the isolation.  Isolation Is location, physical location.  Let me demonstrate with some quick drawings.

We used to live on a quiet street remarkably even closer to the middle of our bustling city and remarkably even more quiet than any rural dirt road.  It was canyoned in by 5 story apartment buildings. Other car ways connected points A to B in a much better, efficient manner than our street.  There was no reason to travel on our concrete.  It was one of those types of street where you could lie down in the middle and take a nap and not be bothered.  There were no trees on it nor any kids on the street either.

My Daughter did have a good friend who lived a couple houses down, but they would get together by going to the playground and being with a lot of kids.

When I took care of my first daughter from 0 to 2 years old at that location, I would look out the window and see nothing but the cars parked on each side.  There was not anything to look at, and it made me sad. It was quite a bit boring too.  In fact it was better NOT to look out the window and stay centered on being with my daughter.   A good thing.

I don't think we saw anybody the whole day through in winter.  When my daughter was learning to walk, I would bundle her up and take her downstairs and walk down the street where there was a little tiny park a the end.  The trudge back went very slowly as she couldn't go on two legs well and I would have to carry her.  The whole process took an hour. We never saw anybody else.  I was always so happy when my wife called around 7pm that she would be home soon, and a new body, another soul to see when she came through the door, not because I was tired from being with my daughter, but because I was eager to see somebody else.     

When I visited my childhood neighborhood back in 2005, I walked all around the streets by myself one sunny, summer weekday around lunchtime and I was terribly saddened by the whole experience.  Because I was remembering the happy years of my early childhood and it made me sad (and they were very happy pre teen years)?  No.  But because there was absolutely nobody on the streets in all my walking.  Nobody.  Really.  I walked along one busy street with a continual stream of cars and that was even worse.  I couldn't see any people in the cars.  They could have been robotic vehicles which were just driving themselves around doing all the errands their masters had commanded them to do with nobody inside them.  Besides the fact that there was no damage anywhere, I could have sworn a nuclear bomb had exploded in my neighborhood and all the people lay dead INSIDE and could not come out.   Where was all the life of people that had been here when I was a child?  Is this the current state of American suburbs?  (Yes, it was an American suburb I had grown up in).  If I had lived there when I was taking care of my daughter when she was 0 to 2 years old, I would have been VERY depressed.  I surely would have experienced the full pressure of ISOLATION.  I have to ask my Mother if it had been like this when she had been raising us.

The wheeling, whirring, circular bass of the opening of song Isolation spins incessantly in my head.

I love our cottage.  The summers there are unforgettable and like the weather in July, are a bright sunny spot in my memory and even my whole personality.  The lake sparkles and there is continual traffic of boats and boaters on the water and people everywhere having fun and living.    

But when the weather turns cold and the leaves start to fall I think the summer life is sucked out.  There are fewer people there and it becomes more desolate.  I don't think I could bring up kids there.  A car driving through the dirt road because he is lost, the post man, the garbage man, the gravel grader are a cause celebre that someone has deemed it necessary to come to this little out in the woods.  It`s possible that the deer outnumber the people.  In fact the thought of bringing up kids there during the rest of the year after August scares me.  I think alone with my child I would have the TV on all day or be calling people continually, just to reassure myself that there was life beyond.  Not a type who organizes trips so well or willingly, I would quickly change that habit and organize lots of day trips and activities.

I imagine there are millions, countless places like this in the whole world.  In many parts of America where your nearest neighbors are not within seeing or shouting distance.  In Russia, the "rurality" (this is not a word, I know, but I like it) of Gogol's "Dead Souls" still exists and I wonder how they manage it.  In Scandinavia even below the Arctic circle where seeing a reindeer or caribou is more probable than seeing a person.  Throughout the world in communities where the people empty the village, town or suburb during the day to go work someplace else and only come back in the evening even after the dark so they still won`t be seen.  The isolation bordering on desolation would certainly dampen my ability to be a stay at home dad and contribute to my possible depression.

Isolation occurs through Location.  What are you going to do about that cat?  Turn the TV on?

Back in my new apartment, it`s a Sunday afternoon in October.  Kind of grey and cold outside.  There is no one home today while I have been writing.  I look out the window to the cross streets below.  Oh there is a homeless man looking through the recycle containers while another person throws the remains of Saturday evening bottles in the glass bin.  Crash.  There is a slacker teenager with a ponytail and black tights on under shorts jay walking.  There are two Japanese tourists wheeling their suitcases up the street looking for their rental apartment. There is a 20 ish couple walking on the street under the trees which still have yellow and even green leaves on them, heading in the direction of the park which overlooks the big monument.  Oh, there is a mother with two very small kids both under five and one of them... oh that looks like the mother of a girl who is a good friend of my younger daughter in pre school.  Should I call out to her?  In the next apartment to mine the young couple`s washing machine is whirring away through the not very thick walls between us and.. yes, it sounds like they are going to have some afternoon sex after their lunch meal.  That`s OK, I don't mind. It`s the sound of life being created.  It reminds me that where I live I DON'T live in a bubble, I don't live in isolation.

Strawberry Fields where living is easy with eyes closed turns into Penny Lane where the barber shaves another customer.  They are on the flipsides.  As a stay at home father I would choose Penny Lane to bring my kids up, rather than Strawberry Field, and definitely not Blue Jay Way.  Maybe that is why they tore Strawberry Field down in 2005.

Part 2 coming sometime. 

Listening material that went in my ears and churned in my brain why concocting this blog:

Joy Division - Isolation   

Alek S - It's All Good | made of CONCRETE

  

 

  collectorsmusicreviews.com

THE BEATLES - Strawberry Fields Forever -

  

Patience Training

Since my yearly bronchitis came four months early this year (no I don't smoke and I never have) and I hinted at this joke in another post, I wanted to get the correct joke off my chest:

Some archaeologists were

poking around a well known graveyard when they found a secret door that got them into a hidden cavern.  There to their surprise they saw one of the greatest music writers of all history sitting at a makeshift desk.  They knew who it was.  `Beethoven`, they exclaimed,  `what are you doing?`  `Huh`, answered Beethoven, and then, `Leave me alone.  Cant you see I`m decomposing?`

OK, I got that off my chest.   I wonder how the installed translator is going to write that joke?
Now back to our program.

I have advocated prospective Stay at home Dads and all Dads to work on their patience.  Patience patience and more patience is pivotal and often a problem for Dads with their children.  Lack of patience is one problem I read over and over that Dads wish they had more of.  This last week I have discovered a method to test your patience and strengthen it.

Find someone who you have problems with on occasion and even might get into an argument with, someone who you would rather not take orders from.  Have them assign you some work that they know better than you and that they have to guide you through.  For the plan to work, they have to be a bit nasty to you, you know, call you a dummy when you don't get things right and make fun of you on your lack of skills.  You, my friend, for your part, can not yell back at them, call them names and have to be subservient and accepting of any abuse that comes your way and get the project done.  The most you are allowed is a bit of sarcasm or purposely trying to exasperate them with your incompetence.  But you have to smile through the whole ordeal.  Give yourself points plus or minus when you either hold your patience or lose it and lose your temper. 

Here is the concrete blueprint for the test I am talking about.

Last weekend from this writing our family went to my Mother in laws cottage.  My wife has been going there pretty much every weekend since spring to work in the extensive garden my Mother in law has in the back of the house.  My wife has done all the work from seeding the garden to harvesting and winterizing it.  I put in one weekend a month, if that, of work on the garden and fruit trees.

The garden, the house

Understandably, my Mother in law often is in bad spirits as she has a bad back and more than often has trouble walking and doing work.  Sometimes when she is in a lot of pain it gets her angry.

Also, as I have mentioned in a past post, I think she doesn't like me so much these days as I probably haven't lived up to her picture of a successful caretaker son in law for her daughter.  In other words, her only daughter could have done better.

So needless to say, when I make it to these weekend workouts and she is in pain, the full wrath of her frustrations is directed at me.  As it was this last Sunday.

I thought I was safe on Sunday from her wrath as I had done an extensive, good job on Saturday and gotten all the trees cleaned of fruit and basically done a lot.  So I thought I could sleep in a bit on Sunday and have a nice breakfast whereas usually I just get up and get to work right away.  Bad move space cadet.

It was getting on toward 10.30am and she yelled at me hard that I was a worthless lounge about and I should expect to work hard both days when I come out to help in the garden like a student worker.  She complained that I wouldn't get all the work done that I still had to do.  I was walking behind her and it was all  I could do not to make some expletive deletive sign language with my arm and hand or just my fingers.  Or even just to mouth some curse word.  I did neither.  Perhaps because I didn't have my balance walking on a small path near a wall in the back of the house.  Or perhaps just because I didn't think of it in time.  Still, a point in my favor for holding my temper.

I had to transfer all the rotted compost from the heap to boxes and bags for the professional gardener to put in the garden in two weeks.  In the process of doing this she yelled at me for stepping into the compost and then trying to mix the wet compost with the dry compost.  "Just take it in layers whether it is wet or dry.  It doesn't matter.  What sort of idiot gardener are you?", she exclaimed.  I think that statement was made two or three more times.  And then she noticed that in fact I hadn't cleaned off all the apples from one of the trees.  That brought on a spasm of bile.  "Why did you leave those apples?", she fermented.  I said they were bad and would just rot on the tree trying to defend myself.  "Uch, you idiot gardener, all the apples have to be taken off otherwise they will just drop on the ground and we will have to pick them up anyway.  That is one more thing you will have to do.  You are really an amateur gardener."  Nobody likes to be called an amateur, even when they really are an amateur, or worse.  It is just an all around negative connotation which makes you bristle.  

I smiled and went to pick the apples off the tree. " Finish the compost first!", she screamed.  "Oh yes yes of course", I said getting into the big box to try to get better leverage on the dirt left there on the bottom.  "Stupid, you will really get your shoes dirty.  You don't have to do that.  You

look like a cat about to do its duty in its litter box."   I just ignored this, kept smiling and kept shovelling the compost into the bag she was holding open.  A bit of the compost missed the bag and got onto her garden dress.  Whoops, now how did that happen?  (Half point against me on my patience test.)

I finished the compost transferal and getting all the rest of the apples from the tree by 1.30pm and I was awarded a rest for lunch.  But I asked my Mother in law, what work left was there to do, so I could plan my lunch time and still get it all done before we had to leave on Sunday evening.  "Never you mind, enough of it that it will take quite a while, now go eat your lunch".  I stepped back inside with no comment whatsoever and a poker face.  (Extra point for me.)

After the break, I had to climb into the raspberry patch which went along the back of the yard with the neighbors and cut the branches of the NEIGHBOR`S evergreen trees because "they were blocking sunlight from the raspberry patch".  I was a bit hesitant to cut the neighbors trees as I was worried someone would see me and come out and say, "Hey WTF?  What do you think you are doing to our trees?"  From there I could either take the consequences myself, or I could say, "hey, it was her.  My mother in law, she told me I had to do it, it wasn't my idea."   Self preservation

As it was, no neighbors came out and I proceeded to bare the trees pretty much of all branches on this side, just to make sure.  The trees looked like a girl I used to know in college who shaved her head completely on one side but kept long hair on the other side.

Although I wasn't accosted by the neighbors, I was certainly accosted by the raspberry brambles.  They scratched me up and down my arms and it felt like I was in a patch of poison ivy it burnt so.  My Mother in law condescended and gave me, "that's enough", a positive comment for her.

Hindsight on that job.  My wife chopped down the raspberry bushes the next weekend, one week later, so that was kind of busy work torture work my Mother in law had put me through.  I let out a little growl when my wife told me this, but only enough to lose half a point on the patience test.

But sadly, I lost all my points in the last minute of the scrimmage.

I had brought up a box of jars of jelly preserves and pickled beets which we were going to take back with us to the city.  She yelled at me, "Why did you take the box upstairs?  We are going to put it in the car anyway which is right next to where you got the box from.  What a waste. now you have to take the box back downstairs again and put it to the car. You should have asked me first."  I broke.  "Yes, but I wanted you to see the box and make sure it was the correct box and that I should take all the jars to the car."  "Of course it was the right box and of course we are going to take all the jars. What were you thinking?  Idiot."  "I just wanted to make sure it was the correct box and wanted to bring it up to show you.   I really don't care if I have to take the box back down, its really no big deal. Don`t yell at me, stop yelling at me."  I yelled at her.

This is the same point when you are taking care of your kid(s) where you lose it with a child and something bad happens.  The temper explodes, the patience is gone and you commit a felony of bad dadism of which you are very sorry about afterwards.  The point is to never come to this point in your fathering duties.

But...

Patience all gone.  Lost all my points.  Failed my test.  Bzzzzzzzz.  Next player.  Come back in two weeks and take the test again.

Crap.

Still need to work on my patience so I can be an A class Dad.

Listened to https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=OVeoynvRJ3c over and over while writing this post.