Tuesday, March 22, 2016

Upstairs Downstairs

My wife started a new job two weeks ago from this writing.  I have to say I think it is working out comparatively well for us on task distribution.  I had a lot of troubles with my business in the last year, but my wife had more time to take care of the kids and be the main parent.  I didn't like this situation, of course not, but things kept happening beyond my control, and the general condition of the business, which WAS within my control to change,  was and still is, not up to speed.  At least one problem of getting a good worker seems to have been taken care of.  This enables me to stay at home more and take over parenting duties, or at least increase my percentage from its very low amount in the past year.

So now I am more able to stay at home or be the main parent during the day and be "Daddy 40% or More" again.  (Granted my wife still does the cooking as my skills in that department are far below hers and definitely lacking. )  And this is exactly what has happened.

Just in time. In the last two weeks, I have taken one child to the skin doctor (I always panic a little when I have to take them to a doctor), come home early on a Friday at 1pm, gone to a kids exercise carnival day, and for the past couple work days continuing the week of March 21st,  I have to be at home all the time for a sick child.  Its like a return to when she was two years old.  It is a lot more stay at home work.

I am not complaining,  I am just worrying, as I tend to do.  Before I was worrying about not being a good Father.  Now, I worry about my business.  It still needs a strong hand to get it up to full power.  Maybe it needs a stronger hand than I have.  At any rate, I feel like the Owl in Arnold Loebs` children's`story in the Owl series called "Upstairs Downstairs".   Owl wanted to know what was going on downstairs when he was upstairs, so he would go back downstairs.  But then he wanted to know how it was upstairs and he would run back upstairs.  He wanted to be in both places at once.  Thus he began running back and forth, trying to run ever faster to be in both places at the same time.  If you are an adult you naturally laugh at Owl for being ridiculous and trying to accomplish the impossible, but one fails to look at his own life and see that he/she actually does the same as owl does, knowingly or not.  I guess that is what I am doing.  Trying to be both upstairs and downstairs at the same time.


"Owl ran upstairs and downstairs all evening."  
           

In the last troublesome year, I felt bad for working sometimes even six days a week because it meant coming home late in the evening and not contributing much to my kids well being or parenting.  Now, I am home three work days a week in the last two weeks and I worry how I can afford it with my business. I am doing the same thing as Owl: running upstairs and worrying about what is happening downstairs and running back downstairs.   Maybe that is the natural dilemma of being  a "Daddy 40% or more stay at home father".  You are either upstairs or downstairs but you want to be in both places at once.

Accomplishing the impossible, well, is impossible.  Not going to happen.   Silly Owl.  Silly Daddy.  

In the end Owl is tired out from his running upstairs and downstairs and sits down on the tenth step of the stairs exactly in the middle.  I only hope that is what will happen to me too.  But I am not there yet.  I am still running upstairs and downstairs.       

*Disclosure.  I received no compensation from anybody in writing this post.  I merely like the story and the book and thought it was a good example of my situation.  I have no connections with the author or anyone connected to the printing or distributing or selling of this book.  


Tuesday, March 8, 2016

Fear of Travel, and Sledding (again)

I was very hurt by the comment of a close relation this last week.  The person said the reason I couldn't remember many of the towns I had spent Christmas or Spring break holidays in was because I didn't care and I would rather have sat on my butt then get out of town.  The person said my biggest movement as far as taking the kids somewhere was going down the street with them to the playground.  

While any defense I  put up will sound like me deflecting my problems on someone or something else and not taking responsibility for my shortcomings,  I guess I have to say SOMETHING on my behalf.  So here goes: 

 1) I do organize and take my kids on a summer vacation every year which involves travelling half way around the world, three airplane landings, three or four customs crossings and 15 to 18 hours in travel,  WITH ONLY ME handling both kids and me.  This should erase any comment of the sort that I sit on my butt.  But in fact it doesn't.  So here goes reason number two.  

2) I am really scared bejeebers shi.. less of organizing and carrying out any trips longer than the walk down the street to the playground.  And my usual method of explanation for this is that I have some disease, some phobia which is triggered by the thought of moving farther than three blocks down the street.  Yes, it is not my fault because I have some deficiency in my DNA as I also said in this post.   I have not found the exact weak link at this time, but sometime in the next months or in the summer I will be doing the research.   I will find a plausible culprit for my fear of movement.   I am sure it is due to faulty DNA.  

That is a rather lengthy introduction, explanation for the purpose of this post.  Namely, in the last week once again my wife and kids were at an easily forgotten by me town of spring break snow sports pleasure type.  They went the Saturday before and I was to come on Wednesday because of work.  By Sunday I was going to the bathroom every hour in shaky anticipation of having to take a bus to their location.  A two hour bus ride.  My wife wrote down all the details of which bus and platform and exact times, everything.  But by Monday I couldn't sleep, and by Tuesday I was considering a supply of methadone which might either get me to the location in a total "I don't care, where am I?, whats happening?" manner or would have put me to sleep for two days and I could have feigned sickness and forgotten the whole trip.  But I am not a drugs type of guy and.... the day, the bus ride, the travel time came.  

Lord have mercy, hallelujah, I made it.  Exactly the way it was supposed to take place down to the transfer on the bus and the exact exit from the bus at 14:53 to standing location 10 feet (3.3 meters) from where my wife was parked.  A...effing...mazing.   

Well fine, yes, but that wasn't even half the real Cape Fear, Friday the 13th, that I would still have to face.  (cue to theme music from TV serial "The Twilight Zone")    

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The Scream (in public domain)
Remember just a few weeks ago in fact I wrote this post?  I wrote about the sledding path that I went down with my daughter and it was like a sledding path to hell and I worried that either myself or my little daughter of 1.5 years wouldn't survive the end of this "excursion"?  Well.... I was going to have to sled THIS SAME PATH.   AHHHHHHHHHHHHH, let me out of here, please please, Lord, don't make me do it again.  But I was going to have to do that same path.  

I told you in that post, I still hadn't gotten over that trip three years after it had happened.  For sure this time it would be the death of me and the path would finish in the bowels of hell on a path of gravel and fire.  

Friday the fateful day came, and, well, many people wonder what their last day on earth will be like.  I knew.  This was it.  The hours, the minutes, the rays of last sunshine were ticking by and mile by mile, kilometer by kilometer the journey, nay, the road itself of my life was coming up to its, pardon the pun, dead end.  

We took a snow bus up to what seemed like the top of the tower of Babel.  Or up to the top of a mountain which had its peak in Heaven by gum.  A direct path from Heaven down to Hell.  The snow was whipping.  And even though the sky was a low hanging thick grey and the trees were standing like huge Druid Priests, for me it was as bright as the white light in Lou Reeds song of the same name.  I looked up to the heavens and thought I saw angels, heard the horn of Jericho blowing, if I have the correct metaphor.  OK,  here goes, I will lay it all down for my family, great Father that I am.  Someone put in a good word for me after I have left the building.     

Then what happened?  Well, it was a small Deus ex Machina. My littlest daughter refused to go down with me on the sled.  She wanted to go with Mommy.  And she wouldn't stop crying until she did.  Luckily my older daughter being the good sport she is, acquiesced to go down with Daddy.   This was all fine with me because I really did not want to repeat the earlier incident and sled with my youngest daughter.  Although I feigned hurt that she didnt want to be with me.  At this moment I actually did not care if it would save my life.   Would this change of passengers perhaps save my life?

We started down the hill from the top of the Tower of Babel, or maybe what I said in the other post was southern Poland, with me sitting behind.  It started getting steep and we picked up speed.  I put my boots down and the snow sprayed into our faces and I couldn`t see.  My daughter screamed and yelled, "Daddy stop".  And I got us stopped over at the side of the path.  I said I knew how to slow us down better and she wasn't afraid to start up again.  We started picking up speed and I sat up straight, put my boots down at the side of me in the back and leaned forward.  That slowed us down without the snow in our faces.  But it started getting steeper.... and... but then we had to stop to cross the street.  Three times we had to cross the street.  My daughter always raising her voice, "OK, Daddy, slowly, we have to slow down."  There were signs saying to slow down in three different languages which meant we must be going through the Czech Republic to Slovakia, exiting Poland.  Then our descent began with a sharp turn and then a steep steep decline.  We must be getting into the outer shell of Hell now.  Down faster,  "Daddy, slow us down," and I leaned forward more and actually slowed us down to a comfortable pace.  "That is a good speed isn't it?" I asked my daughter and she was comfortable with it.  Then more speed but on a straightaway so I let ourselves pick up speed by leaning back.  Past the farmhouse where the two devils lived with the invisible cloak. And then more straightaway. Faster, faster, faster pussycat.  I heard a scream.   Was that on of the devils herding me into Hell or was it in fact, MY own voice? Whooooooooo hooooooooooooo. 

And then we started to slow down.  The path leveled off and, wonder of wonders we had to get off and pull the sled a ways.   We got back on, but it turned out to be only for another 100 meters of hill.  Then, well, there was no more hill.  We walked a final 100 meters to the finish line where the bus would pick us up.  "Is that the finish?" I asked.  Yes, said my wife who had gone down ahead of us and had gotten there first.  That`s it.   What was all the fuss about then?  What was I thinking?  What was I worried about?      

Who wants to go again?   "I do I do I do."   That was also my voice.  


The second trip down was a piece of cake and great fun.  My older daughter wanted to go with me again and I knew how to slow us down with no problems.  In fact I let us go faster because I knew how to control it better and I knew the track.  At one point however, we came very close to flying off the track into the woods, very close, but we didn't.  And on the straightaway at the end, I lay down flat to pick up the most velocity.  Speed demons we were.     


 

  The only thing is, if you/I think this will correct my faulty DNA which causes me to have panic routines if I have to go on a trip farther than down the street to the playground..................  probably not.  But we can always hope and dream.  And maybe little by little, we get better.  Maybe.  


 Was listening to this while writing.  Well I neednt indeed. 

Image result for Thelonius Monk greatest hits