Alcohol Filled Grenades

Remember those days when you used to be able to pour a beer or glass of wine or both, and leave them sitting on the counter or coffee table and they would be there when you got back?

Since the infestation of children in our lives, alcoholic beverages have been like grenades throughout the house.

You place them down and walking away is like pulling the pin. You have just seconds before it’s knocked over, shattered, kicked, or used because, “my horsey wanted some water.”

And literally making matters worse…my damn cat is obsessed with knocking over full glasses of liquid.

I have a mental list of areas throughout the house that are not only out of the reach of the kids, but tight enough that my fat-ass cat has no chance in cat-hell to get anywhere near it.

Those spots are almost as precious as those along the wooden steps in our house that don’t creak in the early morning when the children are on the brink of cock-blocking a solid hour of silence, coffee, and the newspaper.

The trouble is always remembering if I’d finished that beer or placed it in one of my sacred kid-free places.

If it’s a particular late night with friends I’ll spend a good half-hour on a scavenger hunt searching for half-full beers or overflowing glasses of wine. Somewhere in the middle I’d ultimately get completely turned around checking and re-checking spots.

Eventually, our guests will find me in the fetal position, sucking my thumb, crying and carving messages into the wall with my jagged thumbnail.

But I guess everything in the house suffers the same possible destruction.

When I was dating the wifey in high school I was notorious for breaking lamps, vases and chairs in her mom’s house. Clumsy, no self control and stupidity were the main culprits.

So who am I to judge the nippers for being who they are and just flat out flailing around the house in the midst of a giggle-filled tickle rages and taking down beers, wine and lamps in their wake?

Maybe I should just attach flashing beacons to my beers. That way I’d always know where I left them.

Either that or I’d spend way too much time having seizures.

It's What's For Dinner

Son: “Dad, what’s for dinner?”

Me: “Pork chops in a pineapple-glazed honey sauce with jasmine rice and edamame .”

Son: “AWWWWWW!!! NOOOO Dad!!! Aw come-on!! Can’t we have pizza?”

And that’s how our nights begin these days.

The kids love rice. They love honey. They love pineapple. And if you put a bowl of edamame in the middle of a room and unleash the little bastards they’ll literally fight to the death until it’s all gone.

Feeding edamame to them is like tying down a small child and throwing it into a room full of zombies. Yeah…like that.

But when you lovingly toss it all together on a plate, gleefully place it in front of the troops, stand back and wait for the overwhelming cheers…all we get is the kid’s version of Chef Ramsay.

“Dad! What the fuck is this you donkey? Come here…taste this! It’s crap dad! Crap!”

I absolutely love cooking. There’s nothing better than cranking the radio, pouring a full glass of red wine and knocking out a killer meal. But with the birth of two little rug-rats we’ve fallen victim to the lure of eating out.

Sitting at a table, having beer brought to you on demand without having to lift a finger while plates of goodness are brought is such a wonderful thing. But damn that’s expensive.

And sushi is…make that “was”…our weakness. We LOVE sushi!!! But damn it’s expensive.

The boy has to learn to eat food that costs less than $50 to create. The girl…well, she would eat chicken nuggets and chicken noodle soup until the world ended.

So, we’ve taken the old school “we used to walk to school uphill both ways” philosophy of parenting.

Last night we fed them pork chops. They tried it. They hated it. They went to bed with empty stomachs. And, yes…I showed them the trash can with their food in it and said, “daddy listened to a story on the radio today where a lady who struggles for food said a good day for her is when she gets half a glass of goat milk and cornmeal soup for the day.”

To help the message sink in further, maybe weekend we’ll take the boy to a soup kitchen.

I won’t categorize the experience as learning through guilt. Instead, I chalk it up as teaching through reality.

I’ll know I’m successful when he cleans his plate and then says, “dad, can we volunteer at the soup kitchen again this weekend?”

OK, now I’m dreaming. So I’ll lower my goals and just shoot for the clean plate.

Daddy!!! I Really Gotta Go!

My time on the big white throne is exactly how you’ve seen it portrayed in movies about families.

Man grabs newspaper, closes door, finds comfort on the throne, and just as his business is about to begin a knock comes at the door followed by thumping from a little kid jumping up and down and saying, “daddy, I REALLY gotta go!”

There’s four of us in this happy little perfect family and only one toilet in our delightful estate.

The boy never lifts the seat.

The daughter never, NEVER flushes. Even when it’s brown she doesn’t flush it down.

The wifey…well, she’s the smart one in the family. She’s managed to get herself on a cycle that fits perfectly into the times of the day when the kids’ bowels and bladders are empty.

The rest of us are like teenage girls in a dorm suite – we’re all on the exact same cycle.

And me, well…I’ve learned to poop at mach speed.

I can pee, brush my teeth and put deodorant on at the same time.

Nine out of ten times that I leave the bathroom the first thing my kids say before running in is “did you spray daddy?!?”

“My shit doesn’t stink!!!” is what I want to yell, but instead I chalk up another interrupted bathroom moment and just mutter, “yes child-of-mine, I did,” as I hang my head low and stumble away.

Then I think to the future, when the boy becomes…well, not a boy. I think of how the bathroom was my safe-haven, as a teenager, for taking care of “personal deeds.”

There’s something to be said for going into the bathroom in your own home and knowing if there’s anything that shows-up on a blacklight it’s because you put it there, not someone else.

But we’ll cross that bridge when we get to it.

In the meantime, all I ask for is:

• Enough time to poop and play a game of Sudoku (easy mode) without being interrupted.
• To pull the curtain back on the shower and actually have my towel be there instead of wrapped around my wife’s head in the other room.
• To not view my daughter’s “boom boom” floating happily in my toilet.
• And to brush my teeth early in the morning without having to see my son come racing into the bathroom with his miniature morning wood and witness him hose down every square inch of my toilet while screaming, “don’t look daddy I need privacy!!!!”

That’s it…nothing more.