The Mommy Daddy

I WANT MY GARAGE BACK!

Recently I undertook my annual obsession and goal of being able to park my car in our garage. Every year, for the past six, maybe seven  years, I rent a large dumpster and have it delivered outside our house. Then I attack the unbelievable mountain of stuff that annually collects in the garage. Everything from kids toys that are broken or no longer being used, to my wife’s teaching materials that have accumulated since I’ve known her. Every year I look at her and ask the same question.

“Honey, is there anything in here that you absolutely, positively need?…Can’t live without?…Would cause you to die if it was thrown away?”

“Well, …Now that I think about it there is the…”

“NO!”, I scream, “THE ANSWER IS NO! YOU HAVEN’T TOUCHED THAT STUFF IN TEN YEARS!”

Then what follows is a heated discussion on why things have to be kept, or how throwing things out is a sin when they can be donated to about ten different charities (which NEVER happens) or how, if they are thrown away, ten seconds later we’ll need it, be sorry we got rid of it, and have to go out and buy a new one.

And I blame all of this on living in California.

When the house was being built for us ten years ago, the builder kept pushing us to get a three car garage setup instead of the two car garage setup we asked for. We kept insisting that three cars was way more than we needed, we didn’t want the extra expense and we just weren’t the type that would have a boat or ATV that needed the space. So we didn’t get it.

Then, shortly after moving in, we realized what the third space was really used for. It’s used for storage. You see, in California, houses don’t have basements and the newer homes that are built don’t have functional attic space either. In fact, our paperwork specifically says not to use the attic space for storage. This is all because we live in earthquake central.  So, we don’t have the storage space that the rest of the country takes for granted in their homes. Storage rentals are a booming business in the state.

We had rented storage for years and that was an extra $150 dollars a month just to store things like Christmas and Halloween decorations. It pissed me off because, even though we had the storage space, we kept accumulating more STUFF and I STILL didn’t have a garage.

So once a year I hit my saturation point and freak out about the amount of stuff we have. I know it’s a losing battle I’m fighting. With kids in the house the amount of junk accumulates even faster than before.

Even after cleaning the garage this year, I still don’t have the space to park even one of our cars in the garage.

First Tooth

My son came up to me  yesterday and was very excited. He smiled and with his finger began to wiggle one of his lower teeth. It was his first loose tooth.

“Well,” I said, “You’re becoming a big boy!”

He asked if it was going to hurt when the tooth falls out. I told him that I didn’t remember, but I didn’t think it would. Then he said something that really shocked me.

“Eli at our school had a tooth fall out and he got five dollars from the tooth fairy.”

I was shocked at the amount and wasn’t sure if he was just saying stuff or if he even knew how much five dollars was? I told him that our tooth fairy was on a budget and it all depended on whether he was a good boy or not.  He gave me a disappointed look. I guess I use that line a lot about buying things and don’t realize it. Anyway, it got me thinking what the proper amount for a first tooth was.  

I was watching the “Tonight Show” a while back and Heidi Klum was on. She said that she gave her little girl twenty dollars for her tooth and mentioned that she knew other celebrities that gave $100. Toothfairy.org says two dollars is the proper amount. A couple of other sites ranged from 1 to 5 dollars. I think the going price when I was a kid was a quarter.

I went to the Bureau of Labor and Statistics website and used their inflation calculator based on the going rate of a quarter in 1966. That was when I was five years old.

So, the going rate, according to the government, adjusted for inflation, is $1.68 and I think I can live with that. Being the big spender I am, I might even bump it up to a buck seventy five!

How To Become A Super Hero

My son Michael came up to me today and asked, “Dad, how do you become a Super Hero?”

I thought about it for a moment and said, “Well, you have to go to Super Hero school, study real hard. Then you go to Super Hero high school and then Super Hero college.”

My son, who really likes school smiled. My wife, who didn’t like the idea that I was filling his head with crap, chimed in.

“Michael, you need a super power. To be a Super Hero you have to have a super power.”

My son went from happy to disappointed. I sneered at her.

“No you don’t,” I said. “Iron Man doesn’t have a super power, he’s just really smart. He built a super suit. So if you study real hard, you can build a super suit too.”

He was happy again.

And then I thought to myself, Batman doesn’t have super powers, and I went through all the Super Heroes in my head and compared which ones did and which ones didn’t. Then I realized that I wasted a lot of time growing up reading a lot of comic books.

God I’m Soooo Tired

God I’m soooo tired. But it’s a good tired. I haven’t been in the blogosphere for, what is it now, 14 days? My programming / consulting business has done a complete 180. I’m back in business and I didn’t realize how much I missed it. That’s why I haven’t been blogging. I’ve been working regular hours and into the night when I’m not helping my wife with the kids. People have actually been wondering what the hell happened to me. I fell off the face of the Earth and am just now coming up for air.

I don’t know how long this is going to last, being a freelancer is so sporadic, but I’m riding this horse until it dies. So, I’m not leaving the blogosphere, I’ll just try and scrape up some time to post.

Another reason I’ll have to check in on my blog is that the spam is getting really incredibly outrageous. I swear, I must’ve had over 100 that still got through my filters! The topics are really annoying too.

I’m perfectly happy with the size of my member. No, I don’t want or need viagra, cialis, or levitra, at least not yet anyway. No, I’m not interested in meeting any new “friends” of the opposite sex in my area. No, I’m not interested in investing in gold, oil futures, alternative energy, or small cap stocks. I don’t want to go to casino sites, I’m not interested in timeshares or real estate…the list keeps getting bigger and bigger.

And the methods these guys think are soooo cool and slick, using vague supposed comments about my blog postings like,” I really enjoyed your post. You’ve made some really good points, I’ll be book marking you for the future.” And the link back address is something like “porno4u.com”.

The ones I find the most annoying use comments someone already posted from way back in my archives. I read everyone and I have a really good memory. I recognize them all.

Have you ever wondered what it would be like if positive websites spammed as much as the scummy ones did?

No, I guess that wouldn’t be good either but at least I might feel a little guilty about deleting them.

One Year Anniversary

I past the one year mark for my blog. I just realized it the other day when I thought that I should really post something because it had been a while. God!, a whole year.

I don’t even remember why I originally started to blog, it just sort of happened. My first few months were a lot like everyone else. You post like crazy for a period of time, use up all your “Grade A” stuff then abruptly stop for a while because, well, you used up all your “Grade A” stuff. Then you reflect and wonder if you have what it takes to keep going.

At that point I got scared because I really questioned whether or not I could keep going. I started looking at my kids and thinking to myself, “What’s the matter with you guys? Why aren’t you doing anything cute so that I can write.”

A lot of other blogs I frequent started going commercial and posting reviews about products and doing other things to spread out their content. I realized I didn’t want to do that. It just wasn’t what I wanted my blog to be. That, and nobody ever asked me to review anything.  So I can be high and mighty about it. Let’s just see what happens if I ever get approached to review something.

I don’t really care if people review stuff on their blogs. You gotta do what you gotta do. It’s just that so many bloggers are really good writers and I like reading their stuff.

Then there is also the reality that continuous blogging can be a really huge time sucker. Add to that, Twitter, and all of those stupid Facebook apps and games and you really eat up the time.  (What the hell is it about Farmville anyway?)

So, I’m still blogging. My numbers are a lot higher than I ever thought they would be. People keep coming back to read so I guess I don’t stink at it. I guess I’ll keep going.

I just wish my kids were doing more cute stuff.

Her Name Was Tawny

My home office window is on the second floor.  It looks out on the street below. I often watch the world go by when I’m bored or frustrated with working.  Today I saw a man walking his dog. It was a beautiful Golden Retriever mix. This dog was obviously in love with its owner. It was well trained, never pulled on the leash.  It had that happy look, tongue flapping to one side and a bounce in its step that signified a pure K-9 joy for life. The dog would take several steps and then look back at its owner with a gaze that had “I love you” written all over it. This made me think back to one of our dogs. She’s no longer with us. Her name was Tawny.

Tawny was everything to me and my wife. We got her early in our relationship and she quickly became a member of our family. She was our surrogate child when we had no children and after nine years, when we finally had the triplets, she was their guardian. She too was a Golden Retriever mix, the other part was Chow, which gave her the most luxurious coat of blonde hair you ever saw.

My wife wanted a pound dog and when we went Tawny was the only one in the place that wasn’t jumping about , bouncing off the walls, like an over wound, wind-up toy.  There she sat, regally posing, as we walked by her kennel.

We both did a double take and said at the same time, “What about that one?”

Over the years we took her everywhere. One of our favorite places to go was the local coffee shop. My wife would order her Latte with extra foamed milk and she would give it to Tawny.  Tawny always sat patiently waiting for it, never whimpered, and lapped it up.

The dog was also my running partner. In those days I would jog five miles a day and she was right there beside me. I would end my jog at a local park. There I would let her go and run free. She got all excited when we approached because there were always dozens of birds pecking at the grass on the far side of an open field.  I’d take off her lease, she’d sit patiently waiting, and then I’d say, “GO!”

Off she’d tear like a bat out of hell! God!, you never saw a dog run so fast. Just before she’d get to the birds they would all take to the sky with Tawny leaping high into the air just inches away from the tail feathers of one of the birds.

She never got one. I don’t think she really wanted one. It was all in the chase.  She loved chasing animals.

When she got old, after 12 wonderful years, she got cancer and instead of letting her waste away in horrible agony, we had her put down when she was still able to move around on her own. We were right there beside her the whole time.

The Vet staff made her comfortable on a bed and my wife and I sat next to her stroking her head and side, softly talking to her, as she received the shots. Tawny looked at us knowingly and didn’t protest at all. She knew, she wasn’t afraid. We stayed with her, weeping, until she drifted off and finally died.  The Vet left us alone for a while so that we could sit with her and grieve.

I cried for several days afterward.

I had a dream. Tawny was running, as fast as she ever did, through a field of tall grass. It was a warm day, the sun was shining, everything was golden. She was in her prime, joyfully bounding through the field with that signature, huge, smile on her face. Right behind her I was running too. I was running as fast as she was. We were both so happy. Everything was beautiful as we ran through the field in slow motion. Ahead of us were dozens of rabbits bouncing, trying to get away as we chased after them.  As I ran I would literally just reach down and pluck up a rabbit by its ears and then just toss it aside. It was a wonderful game we played. It was so beautiful and so surreal.

I would like to believe that dogs do go to heaven. I like to believe that when I die, I’ll be walking down  a beautiful country road, on a beautiful  spring day, and up ahead I’ll catch a glimpse of Tawny sitting patiently by the roadside waiting for me. When I reach her I’ll bend down and scratch her vigorously behind the ears. She’ll have that same smile that stretched from ear to ear with her tongue hanging out to one side. Then, we’ll both walk together to wherever I’m supposed to go.

Now that to me would be heaven.