How I Spent $10.99 on Mother's Day

My first thought was minivan. Stevie and I made the mistake of going in to test-drive a Honda Odyssey "for fun" a few weeks ago, and ever since, every time we see one driving down the road, she gives me this adorable "I want a Slurpee" flirty-faux-frown. The problem is, she doesn't want a Slurpee. She wants a twenty-thousand dollar minivan. So for about ten minutes on Friday, when it dawned on me that I had yet to get my wife a Mother's Day present, I tried to do mental math gymnastics until the numbers added up to "minivan".  Unfortunately, the numbers kept coming up foreclosure. So I moved on. 

Digital SLR Camera!! Stevie has been coveting this camera ever since we couldn't afford it at Christmas. I would get her the camera! Camera payments would be much less, and for a much shorter period of time than minivan payments. Surely I could devise a way to surprise my wife on Sunday morning with her dream camera. I closed my eyes, air typed some numbers with my fingers waggling in front of me as if I were counting invisible floating numbers, and… nope. Nothing. Not if we wanted to be able to afford daycare next month.  No big spending. No payments. 

I guess I should explain something. Stevie does not need, want, or expect big gifts. For her birthday she asked for a pedicure. So I knew that no matter what I did, she was going to be happy. Also, I should explain, we make financial decisions together. I'm not the boss. I'm the co-boss. Both of us have veto power.   

But here's the thing. She is a fan-f*cking-tastic mom. And I don't come to that word lightly. She is the bees-f*cking-knees. She is every complimentary adjective you can possibly hyphenate with the f word in the middle, and more. She deserves all the minivans. She deserves a minivan filled with digital SLR cameras.  Hell, she deserves a minivan built out of disassembled digital SLR cameras with digital SLR cameras installed inside the dashboard, trunk, door handles, and inside other digital SLR cameras. Where's Xhibit when you need him! Pimp my wife's ride!

So no mini-van, no digital SLR, no mini-van-digital-SLR hybrid that talks and fights crime (I just added that last part.) But I still wanted a huge gesture to show her how much I loved her, and how much I love how much she loves our kids. I knew she loved crafts, so I decided to go to the craft store and buy a whole bunch of craft stuff. I would buy 4-5 different projects and we could spend the whole day cutting out paper and gluing it on other things, and there would be paint and markers and taffeta and gingham and hodgepodge and cross-stitching and it took me about 45 minutes of pathetically wandering around Hobby Lobby to realize that I don't know what any of those words mean, let alone what aisle they're on. And then I looked down and saw this. 

Not even the kid on the box can hide his disdain for this gift.
He may be smiling, but his eyes say "WTF did you buy me this rock for?"

Fine. Whatever. I didn't even look at the price. I just grabbed it, walked defeated to the front of the store, and let the check out girl with the neck tattoo and what appeared to be an infected lip piercing ring it up. 

"Mother's day?" she said. 

"Yep," I replied.

"She'll love this." She said in a voice that may or may not have been intentionally sarcastic. I'm pretty sure that when you have a lip piercing, everything comes out sarcastic. 

"Yeah, I was going to get her a lip piercing, but I was afraid it would get infected." I wish I would have said as I grabbed my bag and walked for the door. 

That night I felt bummed. I kept thinking that I should have gotten the damn minivan! Now all I had to give her was what turned out to be a $10.99 bag of concrete in a colorful box. At least I could make her bacon and eggs for breakfast in bed. I went and opened the refrigerator door. Shit. Out of bacon. Out of eggs. My wife was getting a ten dollar bag of concrete and fruit loops for Mother's Day. My wife is not a bag of concrete and fruit loops mom. SHE IS A CRIME FIGHTING CAMERA MINIVAN HYBRID MOM!!!!

But here's the thing. Not having a grand monetary gesture to show my love and appreciation for Stevie's ninja mom skills led to this: I woke up early with Duchess, made breakfast, cleaned the kitchen, living room, basement, toy room, kids' room, vacuumed, dusted, and packed a picnic lunch. When Stevie and Captain woke up I got the kids dressed, loaded the car and took everyone to the park. Stevie and I spent the whole afternoon walking and talking and chasing Duchess around the playground. And we did it all for free. When I gave Stevie her ten dollar bag of concrete she smiled ear to ear and told me she loved it. 

That night, after the kids were in bed, Stevie was laying with her head in my lap and looked up and told me that she had had the her best Mother's Day since becoming a mom, and I had to agree. So had I. 

I guess the lesson I take from this is a pretty common, if not cliché, one. It's not about the money. But that's the strange part; it has never been about the money with Stevie and I, and yet I have to constantly relearn this lesson. It's not so much the needing to buy and have nice things that makes me want to buy a minivan we can't afford. It is that I want the size and grandeur of my gift to reflect the magnificence of what she has given me. And that is silly. Instead of emptying our bank account to show my love, we spent the entire day awash in the life Stevie's love has built for us. I don't know why I didn't think of that first, but I'm glad things worked out the way they did – because now, hopefully, I won't forget. 

Anyway, thanks, Stevie, for being such a great mother to our children, and an equally wonderful wife to me. We make a damn good team. With you I know that all things are possible. We move mountains - with or without a minivan.

Love, Dad (John)

How to Put Your Kid to Bed Without Any Fighting

…is the name of the blog post I've been looking for forever. It doesn't exist. Don't bother Googling it. If you try now, all you'll find is this post, and you'll probably be mad when you start reading the post and realize that I have no idea how to do what the title suggests. I do know the method we use, and it tends to work more than it doesn't. All you need is eternal patience, the willingness to let go of all control, 30-90 minutes, and these 7 steps.

na na na NA NA NA NA NA IRON MAN!

All night Duchess has been running around yelling "NA NA NA NA NA NA NA NA NA NA NA IRON MAN!!!" It's the Batman theme song from the sixties. I taught it to her awhile ago, and now she thinks that any superhero's name that ends with "man" belongs in the song.

Hasbro contacted me a little while ago to see if I wanted to try out their new line of Iron Man toys that are coming out at the same time as Iron Man 3 this weekend. I'm not going to lie. I wanted the toys for myself more than I wanted them for Duchess. I love Iron Man. So I said sure! Send me some toys for my "daughter". Then, for the next couple weeks, I hurried home from work every day to see if the UPS guy had delivered my "daughter's" Iron man toys. Guess what came yesterday!!!

na na na NA NA NA NA NA IRON MAN!

Duchess got the Arc Strike Iron Man Figure and has been flying him around the living room all evening. She even makes adorable flying noises. He's actually really cool. His head is weighted so it changes directions depending on whether he is flying or standing. When he lands he makes a metal clanking sound. It is a little delayed, but Duchess didn't seem to notice. Oh and he talks. Sometimes it is hard to hear what he is saying, but sometimes it is hard to tell what Duchess is saying too - so they get along swimmingly. After pealing Iron Man out of the box Duchess insisted on giving him a check up with her doctors kit. Once Tony Stark was cleared for flight Duchess began a run around the living room and singing the Batman theme song over and over and over and over and over. Thanks Hasbro. She tired eventually and now she, Iron Man, and Muno from Yo Gabba Gabba are sleeping soundly.

We also received the Iron Man Helmet (Marvel Iron Man 3 ARC FX Mission Mask). Like the action figure, the mask's eyes glow blue and it talks. It also shoots little plastic darts out the sides at an unexpectedly high speed. Stevie was not entertained when one bounced off of her forehead. She was also not entertained when I wore the mask and jumped out of a closet and yelling IRON MAN!!!  On a side note, the mask does not actually provide any protection from wife punches. In fact, it makes them hurt more. 

So anyway. Good times were had by all, and you can't beat free toys. Well, I agreed to write a blog post about them, so I guess I am paying them with my words. Honestly, I would have paid them with dollars too. Seeing Duchess sleep cuddle with Iron Man, and getting my wife to agree to a picture of her with the helmet while nursing Captain would of been worth the cost alone, but being able to wear an Iron Man mask to work on Monday? Priceless.

Love, Dad (John)

P.S. This is part one of a two part product review. I also got some Angry Birds Star Wars toys. They were a little out of Duchess's age range, so I am taking them to my nephew's house to play with them and will be posting soon. If you don't remember my nephew, he's the one with the sweet dance moves.

Dear Sad Daughter in the Future

I was going to title this one A Letter to My Daughter Within a Letter to my Daughter Apologizing for My Not Understanding Her in the Future, but that was way too long and reminded me of the movie Inception, which, as good of a movie as that was, wasn't how I wanted to start this post off. So instead, I'm wasting time with a paragraph about it, because I have a hard time throwing things away. I'm a word hoarder. I have a problem. Anyway, on with the show...

Dear Duchess,

I had a ridiculous moment in the car on the way home from work on Friday. The Freshmen by The Verve Pipe was on the radio.

If you're not familiar with the song The Freshmen, and since you weren't a teenager in the 90's there's a good chance you're not, it is an overwrought ballady barf of a song about some teenagers who didn't take some advice and then one of them dies, or something, and at some point in a made up future the singer is wailing about how innocent they were, and how it wasn't their fault because they were MERELY FRESHMEN!!! HEYEEEEEAAAHEEEAAEEEAAAEAAEAAEAOOOOOHHHEEEAAEAAEAHH!!!

We all had this haircut in the 90's, and none of us smiled.

Anyway, I love that song. I love it because it takes me back to a very specific point in my life, where I too was innocent and nothing was my fault and things happened that seemed much more important than anyone besides myself thought they were, and I couldn't control them, and that really upset me because we WERE MERELY FRESHMEN!!! HEEEYYAHEAAEAEAAEAAEAOOHHEEAAEAEAAEAAEAAAH!!!

So there I am, singing along to this wonderfully awful song, and the strangest thing happened. I thought of you and started tearing up a little in the car. Not two-year-old you, fifteen year old you.

Why? Well, I started crying because I realized at some point during the second chorus that I had completely forgotten how incredibly hard it was to be a teenager.

The stress and anxiety of those years hadn't even touched my thoughts years. I am forgetting. And while some magical combination of perspective and senility has probably afforded me this wonderful gift, which I can only describe as content happiness, it is tinged with sadness by the fact that by the time you reach your teenage years, I will have probably completely forgotten what those teenage years felt like.

So before this part of me fades away completely, I join the Republican party and spend the rest of my days talking about how good, kind, and respectful everyone was when I was younger, please allow me a few minutes to let you know that I, too, was once where you are, and I ,too, was lonely. Then I'll tuck this letter away in the blog and someday you can pull it up on your iPillow and read it just before you cry yourself to sleep because you're sad about some incredibly important thing that future me will not think is important in the slightest. So here you go – a letter from your dad while he still barely remembered what it was like to be a teenager.

-

Dear Duchess, (I call you Duchess on the blog because in 2013 we have this illusion we call privacy),

You know that thing that is going on that you think is the most important thing to happen in the history of you… or even of the world? You know, the one that has your stomach all balled up and tears leaking out from your eyes every time you tilt your head the wrong way? It's that problem that has everyone telling you that they know how you feel because they've experienced some bastardized form of said problem, and if you just give it some time everything will feel better and you'll look back on it and laugh. I need you to know something. It is the most important thing in the world, and knowing that someday you may or may not care about it isn't going to make you feel any better. Perspective is only valuable once you have it, and right about now your perspective is telling you "f*ck perspective". I'm on board with that. Because whether something is the end of the world, or it just feels like the end of the world, it still FEELS LIKE THE END OF THE WORLD!

Here's the hard part for me, not only can I not fix that thing that is eating you up inside – I'm probably too old and detached from what you're going through to even understand it. Old me is going to look at you, and tell you I love you, and you're going to scream at me that your life is over and that I will never understand, and you're right about at least half of that. I probably won't ever understand you. But I did once. I promise.

I parked my car in an alley once and screamed at the top of my lungs while repeatedly slamming my fists into the steering wheel. I sat, balled up, on the floor of my shower one time and cried until the water was ice cold. I wrote poems for girls. I dreamt of being liked and being popular and getting the part in the musical or the position on the football team. I longed for those I couldn't have and lost those who I did. I went through long patches of my life where I felt immensely lonely. And every time, I didn't know if it was the end of the world or if it just felt like it – and I didn't care. And it was only made worse by the fact that my awesome and loving parents just didn't get it. And now I'm the parent who doesn't get it. So I'm sorry.

I'm sorry that future me doesn't understand. 2013 me does. Maybe in the future you'll be able to upload a hologram of 2013 me and tell me about how much of a douche bag I've become. I'll compliment you on your laser hair and you'll complain about how future me hates that it cost $4,500 dollars.  Then I'll go to give you a hug, and you'll go to hug me back and you'll fall on the floor because I'm a hologram. We'll laugh a little and that will make hologram-me happy, or at least appear happy since I most likely won't have emotions - because I'm a hologram. Then you'll say good night, turn hologram me off, and switch your iPillow to the classic rock station where, I hope to god, The Freshman by The Verve Pipe is playing. Because, while future me may not understand what you're going through, The Verve Pipe always will.

I love you honey,

Still Kind-of Cool Dad from 2013

P.S. HEYEEEEAAAHEEEAAEEEAAAEAAEAAEAOOOOOHHHEEAAEAAEAAEAAA!!!

10 Steps for Getting What You Want From Customer Service

This is completely unrelated to parenting, but I wrote it this weekend and thought it might be helpful to share. Then,  I was going to make this one of those list articles where you have to click "next" at the bottom of every number, but I remembered that I hate those things and I'm not an a-hole. So instead, you get a super long scrolling article full of tips and tricks for getting what you want from customer service agents. And... uhm... less time on the phone arguing with customer service means more quality time you can spend with the kiddos. So there, it is about parenting. Huzzah!

By Trying to Get It Half Right, the BSA Gets It All Wrong

"Well, at least they're trying right?" That's what my wife said to me as I fumed back and forth in the kitchen after reading the BSA's proposal to allow LGBT youth in their organization, but to continue the ban on LGBT people in their leadership.

No. It's not enough. It is a half measure that is cruel and offensive to LGBT adults who would like to be an active part of their kids' lives. It is an open acknowledgement that the BSA thinks there is something inherently dangerous about LGBT adults. And if it isn't their sexual orientation, which would no longer be banned under the proposal–what else could it be but the long disproved and debunked assumption that homosexuals are predispositioned to molest children.

McDonald's Post Update!

I felt super bad about running out of McDonald's the other night after "the incident" (see McDonald's blog from earlier). On top of that, a few people wrote to me and rightfully pointed out that leaving the McDonald's was not cool. Not only was it rude to make the McDonald's person clean it up, but it was a health hazard. I agree. I was not my best self. I panicked. I should have gone to the counter, asked for a rag and gone pee hunting. 

Why We Can Never Go Back to McDonald's

Sometimes I worry about putting embarrassing stories about my kids on the internet. That's part of the reason I use pseudonyms. I don't want Captain's High School buddies to Google his name some day and find out that I surveyed the internet on whether or not to circumcise him. With that reasoning in mind, I am going to come right out and say that the story I am about to tell you definitely, absolutely, did not happen. I am making it all up. This definitely did not happen last night at the McDonald's by our house. 

After 5 Hours At the Zoo

After five hours at the zoo, Duchess was ready to leave. So I took another picture. 

Adventures With Cloth Diapers

Hi readers! Here's a post from Stevie. We got a present in the mail a few weeks ago from our friends at gDiapers. This is not a paid promotion and the opinions are ours. There was no pressure to even write the review. We could have just kept them. Heck, I probably could have written 1000 words about how much we hated cloth diapers, then posted a video of us burning them while dancing around the gDiaper fire in a circle, chanting something about how much we dislike their diapers- and the marketing people at gDiapers would probably be super nice. Good thing we FREAKING LOVE THEM. Anyway... on with the Stevie!

Dad (John)