Hooray for being back to my semi-regular schedule! This past week has let me sleep in entirely too much (something I don’t think I’ve ever worried about saying), and by the time I woke up at the crack of noon, I just didn’t have the will to fend off my precious boy and get down to business. Part of that, I think, is that because I knew I wouldn’t be able to start any job while I had to spend the whole week with my son (and the fact that he was too sick for us to really go out anywhere), something in my brain decided that the week was already shot, so why bother? The best I managed to accomplish was hastily thrown on pajama pants and the same T-shirt I’d been wearing the day before. It has been said that one should dress for the job he wants, not the one he has, but I wasn’t dressing for either. I know that my life’s ambition is to live out an existence free from the tyranny of pants, but there are children living in the apartment with me, and as the year is steadily spinning by, I am reminded of a quote most frequently attributed to Mark Twain in regard to the area in which I live, “The coldest winter I ever spent was a summer in San Francisco.” This quote may have been debunked, but the sentiment holds true nonetheless.

Last week I read a wonderful article by Kate Bracy about the necessity of actually dressing like you want to get anything but lounging done throughout the day. I’d never really thought about it before, but it has hung around enough in my mind that I was inspired to put on my pants and sit down at my laptop to write this. Since coming back to California, I have been taking my son to school almost every day, and that involves dressing in such a manner as to avoid the judgment of others, calls to the authorities, and frostbitten portions of my anatomy. By the time I got back home, I would usually be caffeinated enough to pound out my thoughts in an occasionally humorous format, and toy with the notion of trying to get a nap in before I had to go back to the school to pick the Minkey up. This past week, with nothing urgent to occur before three o’clock in the afternoon, all sense of urgency was gone, and with it, decorum and my annoyingly consistent work ethic. I fell into the trap that I frequently complain to my wife about: no one was taking this writing thing seriously, and this time, I couldn’t even claim the moral high ground.

To be fair, last night I was battered by a brutal case of insomnia, and only managed to steal about seven and a half winks (based on a standard conversion rate of forty winks to a full night’s sleep, or five winks an hour) before I snapped wide awake again with heartburn and leg pain. I’ve tried reading (the problem with that is that I actually like to read, and will casually neglect sleep just to finish the next chapter (or ten, if I’m rereading Jim Butcher), listening to music (and say, this album that I haven’t listened to in ages is really good!), listening to audiobooks (since no one here will read me a bedtime story), and finally succumbing to the demon of conflagratory addictions, with a cigarette or three. Amazingly, nothing has done the trick, and it’s my sincere hope that I can keep it together until my wife gets back this afternoon. I know that she’ll be tired, but there were plenty of times when I had to jump into Dad Mode after a long day at work (with a 3 hour commute) because she was exhausted on her day off. But honestly, it’s not really the same thing, as my wife takes care of so many things with just a quiet determination, never seeking out the praise which she so richly deserves, whereas I am fairly pleased with myself if I manage to get out of bed.

The main difference between us on housework, however, is in the nature of how we react to the multiplication of filth due mostly to those also living with us. The apartment could be cleaned from top to bottom, floors swept and mopped, dishes done and put away, garbage and recycling dumped outside into their proper bins, and within a couple of hours, the whole place looks trashed again, with our kitchen sink overflowing with more dishes than it seems reasonable for so few people to have used, and the floors appear worse than before they were cleaned, as the spots of white linoleum stand out in greater contrast to the spilled drinks and tracked in fruit snacks. I am the sort of person who will do the cleaning, and wash the dishes… within reason. If the sink is empty when I go to bed, and I wake up to find a pot, two pans, five plates, a small (complete) set of flatware, and six cups in there in the morning, my first reaction is that the people who made such a production the evening before (cooking a meal for only themselves), are capable of taking care of their mess. I enter the living room in the morning to find barely touched cups of juice on the table, and an array of plates with half-eaten food, offered up like some sort of invocation to the Gods of the Cucarachas.

And so I believe that the only way to teach our adult children that they need to take care of this themselves is to refuse to do anything until either of them lifts a finger. I am a guy, and Chaos is my element of choice. I could wait out just about anybody while the world around me fell to pieces. I’m sure I could outlast the grownup kids. But this will never happen, because my wife doesn’t have the will to let everything go all to hell. “Think of the children,” she’ll plead to me in Spanish, referring to our son and grandson. And she’s right, of course, but I still think we’re doing our daughter and her boyfriend a disservice by bailing them out of the sty which they’ve created, instead of allowing them to develop that instinct for preservation for themselves. That being said, I know myself, and I must be careful not to throw too many stones. I don’t know. I think the reason I’d like to win the lottery (more than fancy houses and never having to work again) is to be able to ensure that my wife will never again be forced to worry about the cleanliness of where she’s living.

Somehow I got from the necessity of pants to singing the praises of my wife. I’m not surprised, for there are many praises I have yet to sing, but I do find it fascinating just how much better of a person my wife is in comparison with me. Hers is the irresistible force, mine, the immovable object. O.C.D. versus Apathy. All bets are off on this one.

-Tex

This week has kind of turned into a bust, as far as interesting happenings. It’s already Thursday, and we’ll be lucky to have done anything fun or worth writing about by bedtime tomorrow. This is what happens when I try to plan for things, and the reason why I tend to prefer to play things by ear. It’s hard for all your plans to come unraveled if they never existed in the first place. For those of you who were waiting for news of what David and I have been up to, I’ll just say that we’ve been playing video games and trying to relearn how to cover our mouths when we cough. One of those was easier than the other. Soon enough, the Minkey will be back in school, and I will have to drop off more resumes throughout my community in the hopes that I will have somewhere that I can spend my days. For a quick minute, it looked like I might have been able to get into business with my wife and a friend of ours, but it looks like no one wants my management expertise. But have no fear, gentle readers, Tex Batmart will rise once more to while away the waking hours making money for someone else.

I can feel the proximity of my dream, but I have felt that way before. Every time I try to make things happen sooner than they should, I wind up frustrated at the wait. In a non-religious way, I’ve come to find that everything happens for a reason, and if I’d made things happen according to my schedule, as opposed to being forced to bide my time, I would never have come to know many people who helped add meaning to my life, including the wonderful woman who became my wife. I am not a patient man, nor am I easygoing. I am easily irritated by stupidity, and I tend to ask much from those foolish enough to call themselves my friends. And my worst sin of all is that I am prone to digressive ramblings so convoluted that I frequently forget the point of my diatribe long before I have finished it. I don’t know, maybe I need another whirl working for someone else so that I can try to nail down patience in the face of unrelenting idiocy. It’s time like this when I miss the couple of good people who were kindly enough to employ me.

It’s been a longstanding dream of mine to go out in a blaze of glory on my last day of work; to just completely go off on the worst type of customer and let the remaining management pick up the P.R. pieces. But no matter how many times that I have wished it, I’ve never made it happen. There are times when I wish that I wasn’t such a professional. Even at my last job (the one I left almost three months ago, my wife would like to point out), where I was upset, and feeling undervalued, and a freakout on a rude and deserving customer wouldn’t be entirely out of line, I still held it all together, and continued doing the job I was paid for, up until the moment I clocked out. Heck, I’ve even had people from that company call to ask me a question or two (wrapped deep, of course, in small talk and checking up on how I’m doing), and while I could have easily told them what to do and with which tuberous vegetable, I still made it a point to help them as best I could. I’m not out to get a good reference from them, I simply want to leave the company in better shape than when I got there. And considering what was dragging it down, I don’t know how realistic a goal that has been.

I apologize for such a late column, but I was taking care of some family business, and the day sort of got away from me. I was tempted to put this column off, and just work on my Throwback Thursday post for Batmart After Dark this evening, but I need to keep on at this or I will never polish off all the rust which has ground me to a halt. Despite having gone off at some length about the insidious nature of planning out my future, I’m hoping to get fully back into the swing of things tomorrow with a rant about some minor injustice or another. I think I’ve been pretty good about trying to keep it light over the past week and a half or so, and that I’ve earned myself some grumbling. Don’t worry, though: I will attempt to call out the nouns which have done me wrong in some form or another in an irreverent sort of manner.

On a small side note, I plucked a hair from my upper lip, and as I glanced downward in the direction I had tossed it, I saw a tiny moth hovering just below my face. It may be that the time has come for me to divest myself of facial hair and stare down the world with the face of a tween again. And without the beard and moustache, I will be forced to let my wife trim what little hair remains on the backside of my head, so as to avoid appearing to be a particularly unattractive lady. Not that there is anything wrong with being a lady, unattractive or not. I simply find myself self-conscious of the man-boobs which I have grown through decades of neglect. My eyes are up here, thank you very much!

So, sit back, relax, eat some dinner, or whatever it is that you, my dear compatriot, are wont to do in the early evening. I’ll be starting to go through my old MySpace blogs again just as soon as we say goodbye, and I’ll see you all a little later this evening with some of the best of Tex Batmart in the year 2006!

-Tex

When I planned out this Presidents’ Week Extravaganza, I had thought that my son and I would be engaging all manner of crazy shenanigans, things too awesome to have been done in time to write my post for that very day (and I didn’t want to get into the habit of posting well past bedtime), so we were going to go and suck the marrow from life, and then I would tell you all about our exploits the next morning. It turns out, however, that David is very similar to me in that when faced when any free time, his body decides to succumb to some pernicious bug and sideline him for at least a couple of days. Maybe it’s because he knows we’re broke, and anywhere truly awesome we might go will cost money we don’t have. Nah, that doesn’t really sound like him. He probably just inherited my luck and sense of timing. Looks like I won’t have to worry about being a grandpa (well, from him) until he’s in his late twenties. Small miracles, I suppose.

Yesterday, it seemed that he was on the mend, but this morning he is all smoky voice and stuffed and runny nose. Luckily he has doctor’s appointment this afternoon for another prescription of his chill pills. I’m hoping that his doctor just says it’s some tiny virus that is going to clear up on its own, but if it’s something we can drown in antibiotics, I’ll be happy enough to oblige. I don’t like it when David isn’t feeling well, I mean, aside from the pleasant decrease in energy and volume. He just looks so pathetic, and I really just cannot bear to see my little man in pain. Not since the day he was born, and spend his first night (well, first week, actually) outside the womb in the NICU, connected by the belly button stump to an array of machines which helped him to not die. Most dads have said that they first felt like a father when their child grabbed on to a finger, but when David grabbed me, he was still kind of gooey, and I was in shock from having seen a twelve pound baby born in the natural fashion. But when I followed the team of nurses racing him down to the Neonatal Intensive Care Unit, and saw him laying there looking like Progeny of Borg, helpless and suffering, I knew that I would have given almost anything to free him from his pain and make him whole again. Of course, then I got to know him…

No, I’m just playing around. He and I butt heads over just about everything, but I catch rare moments of brilliance where it looks like he finally gets it, and I know that spending my time teaching him how to argue his case before me is paying off. He’s a wonderful boy frustrated by the apparent iniquities of youth, and if he had even an ounce of common sense, he would probably have better luck in trying to convince me. I know that he’s just a few months away from turning eight (and where have all those years gone?), and that I’m holding him to an impossibly high standard, but I’ve seen that he’s got the skills he needs to rule the world with an iron fist, so I’m trying to encourage that. Well, not despotism, but I’d like him to do well in life, at any rate.

I’m hoping that tomorrow we can go and do something somewhere outside of the apartment. We’re both feeling a little cooped up, and the fresh air and exercise will do us both some good. And I think my wife is off tomorrow, so maybe we can make a family outing out of it. It’s a shame that we don’t own a picnic basket, or we could make a day of it: pack up a lunch and head somewhere where there are no video games and spend some quality time with one another. Of course, all of this could be academic, as it’s been overcast for the past couple of days, and a chill has infused the air. Maybe we can just head on over to Berkeley, and grab lunch at Jupiter. I haven’t been there for quite some time, and I think by noon tomorrow that I will be in sore need of a quality beer and artisan pizza.

Actually, that sounds wonderful. If Flor wasn’t working today, and if David didn’t have his appointment, I’d suggest that we just go this afternoon. We need to get out and do more as a family (and my wife and I also need to get into a routine of having a date night once a week), and we all love pizza (and I love beer), so I think that this plan of mine has a shot of happening. My wife also wants to check out that 50 Shades of Grey movie, but I think we’ll save that for another day, one spent without our impressionable son. I don’t think that I want to expose him to that kind of garbage. I mean, from what I’ve read, the writing is abominable, and that’s not something you force upon someone that you love (I’m less concerned about my wife, as English isn’t her primary language, and writing so clunky that one could trip over it might actually make it easier for her to understand); also, I don’t think graphic presentations of that nature are something he is ready for. I mean, even the French think that children should be twelve years of age before being allowed in to watch it.

You may have noticed that I seem a little off. I apologize. My son is playing LEGO The Hobbit right next to me, and it’s just the slightest bit distracting. It does look pretty cool, though. I may have to kick him off at some point so that I can play. It’s nice that he’s getting finally getting into Tolkien, and he’s expressed some interest in checking out the book!

Anyway, so goes my life. I’ll see you all again tomorrow!

-Tex

I remember years ago that any time that I didn’t have to be at school was the best time of the year. I could set my own agenda and lounge about or play as I desired, free from the stress that a structured environment would provide. Of course, it always seemed that my mom got a little out of sorts during these vacations, which I never understood until a couple of years ago. Don’t get me wrong: I love my son, and we have had a lot of fun together over the years, but I’ve come to appreciate the time we spend apart, and I’m not sure if we’ll still be on speaking terms when the week is through. We are able to stand one another in small doses separated by his mandated attendance in a place of learning. Any more than that, and we find reasons to start arguing, and within moments, one of us is crying. And there is nothing more saddening than a fat, bald man brought to tears by a little boy.

As fortune would have it, we were granted a brief reprieve from having to find some sort of entertainment. Sunday night, the Minkey came down with a cough, a fever, and a case of good behavior; in other words, he got sick, and hard. Poor little guy looked absolutely pathetic, and just completely drained of the overpowering spirit which is normally a trial to man and beast alike. I picked him up off the couch and carried him into bed, tucking him in beneath the covers and pouring a dose of cough medicine down his gullet. It was only five o’clock in the evening, but when I suggested that he might want to try and get some sleep, he didn’t scream, he didn’t argue, he just rolled over onto his side and closed his eyes. Of course, it was evening on a Sunday, so a quick run to the clinic was out of the question (not that a cough and slight fever is reason to go running right away), and we would have to make it through the night.

David may have closed his eyes for a bit, but he didn’t actually sleep, and shortly after I’d settled in beside him, he said that he’d like to watch something on the television. I scrolled through several choices on my Netlfix account until he found something that he was interested in watching. So we wound up checking out the Green Lantern animated series which I had noticed before, but never really given a second thought. I have to say, I’m kind of glad that my son is a DC fan, because no matter how hard I try, I just can’t seem to give a crap about the Marvel Universe. Don’t get me wrong: I’ve enjoyed the movies that they’ve put out, but I never got into the comics (even during the ubiquity of X-Men in the 90’s), and the animated series that I’ve seen haven’t really won me over. Even the LEGO Marvel video game, while interesting, to be sure, didn’t capture me in a nerdy state of rapture in the way that the LEGO Batman games are able.

My grandson, on the other hand, is Marvel fanboy to the core. He’s always glued to the screen while Avengers Assemble and Superhero Squad are cycling through on a seemingly endless loop of half-rate superheroism. This is a kid who will run around the apartment with a hanger held out like a bow, shouting “Hot Guy”. He will also grab one of his many toy shields and randomly bang into things, grunting “‘Merica!” The best he can do for my guys is lower his voice, get a constipated look on his face, and say “I’m Bat.” I’ve tried several times to correct him, and coax him into adding “man” but he doesn’t seem to find it all that important, and I don’t get much help from his parents, as my daughter couldn’t give less than a crap about spandex-laden tomfoolery, and my son-in-law is Captain Marvel through and through (and yes, I know what I just did there, my nerd brethren).

But despite the blood feud about imaginary role models between the older generations, my son and his nephew don’t seem have it in for one another. Actually, they are almost inseparable, and will roughhouse for hours, with only a few breaks in between to break down in booger-streaming tears and run to their respective corners. I think that my son’s illness has been harder on my grandson than it has been on my son. We’ve had to keep them separated, with my son under quarantine to protect our toddler grandson and pregnant daughter.

Yesterday, it seemed, David started to make a small recovery, as he had just the right amount of gumption to demand to be allowed to play on the Xbox, and it was everything that his mother and I could do get him to stay on the bed, and try and get some rest. There’s always that moment of shameful joy that a parent experiences when their child is sick. On the one hand, every strand of DNA is crying out for you to fix your child so that his genes may be passed along at some point down the line. On the other, for the first time in what feels like forever, your bouncing baby boy is finally refraining from the bouncing, and the house is at least twenty decibels quieter.

So we’ll get through today, as my son is on the mend, and try to think of something that we can do tomorrow. I guess that means that I’ll have to think of something fun to do tomorrow. Of course, it could rain, and we’d have no other alternative but to bundle up in front of the T.V. and play the Xbox until the batteries run out (which, judging by what the controller is flashing on the screen, could be sooner than tomorrow).

-Tex

My wife gave me the greatest gift of all this morning: she let me sleep in. I was supposed to walk her to work because there aren’t any buses running at 4:30 in the morning, but as I collapsed last night around 6 o’clock with a brutal stabbing pain throughout my head, Flor decided that I probably needed to get all the rest I could, and called a taxi instead of trying to wake me up. Well, I guess she made a tiny effort to rouse me, whispering in general vicinity like a UPS delivery person with a package I’m expecting, but only so that she could say she tried to wake me up. It’s times like this that I know I really won the spousal lottery, and all I got her was some handmade jewelry from a vendor outside the Powell Street BART station. To be fair, she really likes her earrings, and we’re supporting small businesses with our hard-earned dollars.

I’ve been writing a lot about my wife these past few days, so please bear with me as I write about her just this once more before I start in tomorrow on the things which make me grumpy and my other regularly-scheduled ramblings. I know many of you are married, or in a loving (one hopes) relationship of one kind or another, so you may feel honor-bound to raise your voice when I say that my wife is just the best significant other ever. It’s okay. I don’t blame you. If someone I was reading claimed that their relationship was somehow better than my own (especially if my wife was reading it as well), I would call them any number of unflattering exaggerations just so that my wife could comfortably remain the queen of my own world. Not that that is what is going on with this, mind you. Despite the many links which I have sent her, and adding in a translation functionality, she never reads my blog.

She grew in place where reading was a luxury- something that only the rich people had time to waste upon. Combine that with her eyesight, and it’s easy to explain her friend-zoning of the written word. So I’ve decided to write her a love poem (which I can totally get away with because she won’t be reading this) to tell her just how much she means to me. If you’re daring, and have an understanding better half, feel free to read this to them (and say that it’s from you).

Quantifying Butterflies

I love you like the smoke

which follows beauty

round the bonfire which

burns in the summer evenings

I cherish you like

the final sip of Mountain Dew

that swirls around the bottom of

the nearly empty bottle

I need you like a animal

with cries out for freedom in

the night

And I cannot imagine

life without you

because true nothingness

is incomprehensible.

There, I got my chuckle for the day, and hopefully made all of you feel better about your own romantic gestures. Actually, that poem is fairly representative of my displays of love: It starts out sweet, but a little off-putting, gets fairly strange very shortly thereafter, seems almost a little insulting, and then gets all nerdy romantic. I don’t suppose I have to try real hard to figure out why I’ve been dumped more than once on my own birthday. I guess this kind of love takes a certain kind of woman to appreciate. I frequently go on at some length about the type of luck I’ve had in dealing with the ladies, but I have to come clean: I hit the jackpot when my wife agreed to date me, and for some (inscrutable) reason, she has never run away. In the spirit of true love, and to show that I am not a completely bitter old curmudgeon, I’m going to share with you a poem which I wrote for a friend of mine when she was getting married (one of the benefits of being a writer is that wedding gifts are fairly inexpensive, and yet treasured more than His and Her electric razors.

Crucible Of Love

Sing a sigh of sweet surrender

as you fall into his arms,

held by love and understanding

kept safe from doubt and harm.

 

Treasure daily the simple things

and love her more and more each day,

run wild through fields of butterflies

and leave the chance of happenstance

to take you where it may.

 

Two become one in the

crucible of love as

the daily trials will burn away

all that is impure.

 

And what remains is

love itself:

eternal, passionate, mundane.

 

This is the love

we dream about:

 

                Not fireworks,

                but fireplaces.

                Not grand displays,

                but consideration.

                Not co-dependence,

                but appreciation.

 

                This is the love

                that takes a lifetime

                to enjoy.

 

If you are looking to actually impress someone with romantic wordery, you may want to choose this last one, as it’s less an attempt to show off the twisted humor of Tex Batmart, and more a genuine outpouring of affection. For nearly a decade after the Great Purge of ’00, I was stuck in a sort of poetic hell, where the only way that I could get anything written was to break it up in bite-sized stanzas and make it look all fancy. I think that poetry appealed slightly more to me because there was less of an entire tale and more of a single emotion blown up so large that the beating of my heart could be seen from outer space. Well, that and Dead Poets Society, where I first discovered that language was developed for one endeavor: to woo women.

I was just scanning through my poetry to try and find the perfect piece to play us out tonight, and as it turns out, I don’t have a whole lot of happy love poetry. Some day there may be a market for angry protestations of romance, but today is not that day (maybe tomorrow). Anyway, I hope you enjoy this final poem, and have a wonderful Valentine’s Day:

Do Not Write Between The Lines

Meet my eyes for coffee

in the java-joint within your heart

and sit awhile over steaming

double grande mochas and

perhaps we’ll order belgian waffles.

 

Whipped cream, strawberries, and

a side of bacon – these are things

I love. Well, and maybe moonlight,

but I’m pretty sure that

that’s a given.

 

-Tex

(All poetry courtesy of Tex Batmart)

It’s a little sad that the trip to the doctor was about the most romantic outing that my wife and I have had in years. Well, not the ride out- that was the sort of pressured drudgery that no one can enjoy. But on the way back, we had the chance to take our time, as we weren’t going make it back in time to pick our son up from his school. It helped that our driver decided to unload everybody halfway through the bus ride back, and I convinced my wife that we could walk the little over half-mile distance to the Powell Street BART station. The deciding factor was the unknown wait on another bus, and not knowing if that bus would be held up by the same accident that our previous driver had described. So, of course, as we crossed the street and had passed the point of no return (to the stop), two buses pulled up, filled up, and continued down the route. “The exercise is good for us!” I said as my wife smacked my arm.

We passed a number of seemingly interesting eateries, but I was curious to see how my old place of employment was holding up. Flor wasn’t completely sold on the idea, but I told her that if we passed anywhere that she really wanted to check out instead, that we could eat wherever she felt like patronizing, and I’d just pop my head in to Blondie’s Pizza on our way down to the BART. Mollified, she took my proffered arm, and we walked down the streets of San Francisco, pointing out how much better Seattle had been. I suppose that she might not have truly felt that way, and was only offering support for my hometown as a gesture of goodwill, but I still prefer to believe that Seattle is superior in almost every way.

As we began approaching an area which I could vaguely recall, I pointed out the Regency Ballroom, where we had gone and seen Apocalyptica four and half years ago. Now that was a date night to remember. It was one of the few times where we felt like kids again. I don’t remember who the opener was, but they weren’t really all that good. I’d been excited to check out the co-headliner, Dir En Grey, as the reviews I’d read seemed pretty great, but when their set started, I vowed to find their sound guy and forcibly remove his testicles so I could plug my ears somehow. The levels were horrible, like running your entire sound system through a T.V. from the 1970’s, and then feeding that in to receiver and cranking it all the way up until your speakers had blown out. As some point, I noticed blood trickling down from my ears, and was begrudgingly impressed until I realized that I’d simply scratched myself while trying to plug my ears. My wife had been balled up and sobbing with a headache growing larger with every hateful note. It got so bad that one of the Event Staff came over to see if she was overdosing on something.

Somehow we made it through, and I prayed that the band which we were there to see could redeem the evening. Flor looked like the Oxford English Dictionary’s entry for despair. In those moments of sonic aftershock, I could almost hear her questioning her love for me. I assume those were her thoughts, because I couldn’t really hear a thing. And then Apocalyptica took the stage, and from the first hint of bowed sting, I could tell that they were actually professionals. I saw the difference on my wife’s face as well. Maybe it’s because we were getting older, but the first two bands had just been repetitive noise. But the soothing sounds of Finnish Cello Metal reached out to us, and inspired us to dance a headbanging Charleston. I don’t know, maybe it was a Mosh Merengue, but whatever type of moving to the pounding beat you’d like to call it, the both of us were swept away. And I don’t mind mentioning that I felt a little moist as I watched them bowing cellos which they held one-handed in the air.

We had a lot of fun that evening, and decided that we should do something like that again. We never did of course, until our third anniversary, when we went to the Whiskeys of The World Expo and drank our body weights in Scotch. But that is a topic for another column (probably the one I write a month from today). As we walked by the Regency, I asked Flor if she remembered the place, and saw the twinkle in her eyes as she responded that she did, and snuggled in a little closer to me.

The rest of the way home was fairly uneventful, and I still haven’t told you all what happened in the doctor’s office. So I’ll take you back a couple of hours and fill you in the state of healthcare in America:

Her doctor had referred us to this place in to get her checked out for a tonsillectomy. We’d thought that it would be fairly straightforward, but it wound up just another volley in the quest for medicine while being poor. This specialist decided that first we needed to do a sleep study, and try out a CPAP machine, and then, if that didn’t work, he’d be more open to taking out her tonsils. He made some valid points, and based upon the surgical risks which he described, I don’t necessarily disagree with his inclination to play it safe. I just wish it didn’t take a trip out to the boonies of SF to find out that we need to finish up more things at the clinic in Not Quite Richmond. As you can see, there still is nothing to report, so I apologize for making anybody worry.

I myself am going to take a nap, as I am exhausted, and my head feels like I’ve been listening to someone once described as a Japanese nine inch nails.

-Tex

And join us tomorrow,

Same Batmart Time, Same Batmart Channel!

Pardon the title, it’s a play on words in Spanish. My wife and I have been able to have a wonderful morning with our son as we’re getting him ready for school, and then heading off to the city to go to her doctor’s appointment. For the first time since our vacation, we’ve both been awake and in the apartment when my son has woken up (normally my wife is at work), and it was almost magical how we were able to share a happy moment with one another. Our son in law is going to drop him off at school, and we’ll be starting our commute shortly.

There won’t be a regular column today, as I’ll be gone for most of the morning and afternoon, but last night I posted The Best of MySpace, and this evening, I’ll have an update on how everything has gone. And don’t worry: from what I understand this is just a preliminary checkup, so no one is going under the knife today.

Have a great Friday, and I’ll see you again this evening (except for our readers in the U,K,, whom I will not see until tomorrow)!

-Tex

UPDATE: I’ve gone through and fixed a couple things now that my computer isn’t screaming at me about needing to restart.

It’s that time of year when the cloying aroma of love permeates the air, and otherwise happy enough people become obsessed with trying to plan the perfect romantic encounter. Ultimately, everything goes sideways, as someone takes too long getting ready, thereby causing the couple to miss their dinner reservation, or someone else just can’t hide the look of disappointment at the news he’s going dancing. We’re all so worried about getting everything right, that we usually never do. I’ve never been so let down as when I’ve tried to set up the perfect evening, and usually my wife and I need at least a week or two get back on speaking terms. It’s not that we don’t like romance, or going out for a fancy evening on the town, but after a week of all the downsides of the adult world of which no one warned us, the last thing we want to do is take another shower, get all pretty, put on our Sunday best, and spend at least an hour just getting to where we’re going. Speaking for myself, at least, the most romantic thing that my wife could do for me is set our son up on the couch, slip into something more comfortable (like sweatpants and one of my Doctor Who T-Shirts), and snuggle up against as we settle down for a full night of uninterrupted sleep. I’m getting seriously excited just thinking about it.

For most occasions, my wife has let me know that she doesn’t want us wasting money on things for each other that we don’t need. This gift prohibition applies to Christmas, Birthdays and our Anniversary. But the most forbidden holiday of all is Valentine’s. True to her word, I’ve yet to get a present from her on any of these occasions, but I myself am unwilling to take the chance that it’s still just some sort of clever ploy, and spend at least tens of dollars on her. She protests that I shouldn’t have, and that I am wasting what little money that we don’t have, but I always notice when she wears her jewelry, or sprays on her perfume, and on those very special days, when puts on those really sexy boots with the buckles and the zipper. What can I say? I’m still a hopeless romantic poet in the body of a curmudgeon, and despite her protestations, I know that she likes the little quantitative displays of affection. I don’t know that I need a certain moment to tell her that I love her, as that’s not something that I ever feel peer-pressured into telling her. As a matter of fact, I imagine that she’s grown a little tired of me telling her so many times, but I can’t bring myself to tell her any less. Love is what love is and anything that I can do to bring a smile back to her face is more than enough for me.

When we first got together, it seemed like something to help us pass the time. I was somewhat prettier back then (with a tiny bit more hair upon my noggin), and coming out of an unsuccessful attempt at a relationship with someone else, and she was working two jobs and living with her brother and for some reason, interested in me. On our first date, I told her everything that’s wrong with me, trying to take heed of lessons I’d spent a decade trying to ignore, and in return (I found out later), she thought that I was trying out some hitherto unknown form of gringo flirting. We usually got together a couple times a week and drank horchatas and washed my laundry (what can I say? I know how to show the ladies the best of times), while I attempted to show off my burgeoning bilingualism and mad poetry skills. I was aiming for Pablo Neruda, but probably ended up closer to a Spanish Edgar Guest. But something in my mangled words or bitter humor won her over (or at least convinced her that I was the lesser of two evils), and she agreed to split expenses and find a place where we could shack up with one another. It wasn’t the grand romance that either of us sought, but it was better than just looking for a roommate, and it was only supposed to be a temporary thing, as what we had wasn’t really love, just similar enough interests for the time being.

And then someone came into our lives, and we had to take a long, hard look at one another. She told me I could leave, no strings attached, and I countered with how I grew up without a dad. We argued back and forth for three quarters of year, and then time was up, and our decision had been made for us. I’m not saying that our baby boy fixed everything between us, but with the option of a quick escape retired, we came to look for better reasons to stay with one another beyond the obligations of shared parenthood. It was a year after the birth of our son that I came to realize that I might love her. On her birthday that year, she gave me the ultimatum. It wasn’t how I’d imagined that some liberated lady might propose to me, but she made me realize that I’d been dodging the question like there was a war on. And yet once more, she gave me a way out, told me that we’d still be friends, and that I’d have as much time as I’d like to spend with only son. So, in a moment of either pure bravery, or terror in the face of change, I told her yes, and we set a date for sometime around St. Patrick’s Day.

We were married on the thirteenth day of March (a Friday, as I recall) in a civil ceremony at the Oakland courthouse. My best friend and his brother came, as well as my mother and grandmother. Even my step daughter was in attendance, although she had no interest in participating. I was nervous and excited and coming to understand that the butterflies saved themselves for this day and this moment with her. It took until my wedding day to realize that I was head over heels in love with my wife. Every day I find I love her more and more, and am less able to imagine a world in which we are not together. We argue, we push each other’s buttons, and we say things we find quite difficult to walk back. And yet I still melt every time I make her smile, and she hasn’t killed me yet. I  wish that I had several million dollars so that I give her everything that riches can provide, but the only things that I have to offer are my unfaltering love and a rambling way of writing.

-Tex

(Gosh this room sure got dusty all of a sudden)

I have nothing but good things to say about LEGO, as long as we don’t discuss the price. They have been the toy of choice in my life since I myself was but an inebriated dwarf, and I love the fact that both my son and grandson are equally enamored of them. If they could remember to pick them up off the ground, I would be happier, but I suppose that I will just have to settle for an increase in their hand-eye coordination. As for the price, which I was previously hesitant to mention: the fact is that LEGO logo is a seal of quality, and Mega Bloks, much like the GoBots of the 1980’s, are a pale imitation of a superior product, and not worth the money you’ve saved in failing your children. But even Mega Bloks are within a certain range of quality; they don’t look as polished as LEGO, but at least the blocks will consistently lock together. Living in a poorer area, I’ve had the opportunity to see some of the dollar store competitors (not actually sold at dollar stores), and have been forced to lay down a rule with my wife and her friends that, though I appreciate the sentiment in their gifts to my son, I would prefer that the refrain from any plastic building set purchase that isn’t made by LEGO, as the inferior bricks always wind up getting mixed in with the LEGO, and contaminate the workmanship and destabilize my son’s creations.

It’s not my intention to run an infomercial for the best known toy in the world (although I would gladly sell out for some sweet, sweet LEGO Doctor Who (coming soon) compensation in a heartbeat), just a rebuttal to the argument my mother used to make when explaining why I wouldn’t be getting a pair of Nikes when we did our back-to-school shopping. She used to say that the only thing that you were paying for was the Name on the box that your product came in, and, to be fair, in most cases this has proven true. I personally prefer Android devices because a gnawed on Apple isn’t worth the ridiculous mark-up that comes with worshiping at the altar of Steve Jobs. That, and I’m a Seattle boy, so my evil empires of choice are Microsoft, Amazon, and Starbucks (still willing to sell out for gift cards and/or shopping spree allowances). But with LEGO, you know what you’re getting before you even open up the box, and with their licensing deals, it is a fun way to share in the same interests with your children. It sure beats having them try to explain the game of make-believe that they are currently immersed in, and the various arbitrary rules which seem to ensure that they will always win.

As for the dreaded LEGO foot puncture attack, I think the reason why the kids don’t care is fairly obvious: though they generally tend toward a more natural mode of footwear, somehow managing to lose their shoes and socks like miniature Houdinis, their mass is so much less than even the smallest of adults that it probably feels no different than stepping on the Cheerios and bits of apple that they’ve strewn about the living room as they graze throughout the day. Gravity is the toddler’s bane, and if he can barely keep himself upright, I don’t hold out much hope that he’ll manage to maintain control over the tiny bits of whatever he has shoved into his mouth and then spit into his tiny fists. Children have no concept of germ theory, and to them a floor is simply a larger and far more accessible table. Of course, tables don’t frequently continue under couches, but that’s what moms and dads are for.

I’ve said on many occasions that a toddler (and even larger children, to a slightly lesser extent) is in many ways just a drunken midget that will (hopefully) grow out of it. Their size is their fist obstacle, as they are learning to navigate a world that was built for people three to four times their size. I mean, until they build up the necessary musculature to begin to face down gravity, it’s probably for the best that they have a shorter distance to the ground. But it must be frustrating to wander through a landscape where giants can pick you up on a whim, or put the things you want far out of reach just because you threw them at someone. It was hilarious on that cartoon your mom put on, why doesn’t she think so when you try to get a laugh?

Toddlers also lack impulse control, as they bounce from couch to couch, always in search of the next ten second distraction. I think I mentioned in a previous column that the reason why time seems to pass so quickly the older that you get is merely a matter of temporal proportion and perception. When you are two years old, a minute is a much larger percentage of the life which you have lived, so when your dad asks you to play “The Quiet Game”, the best score that you can hope to get is something like thirty seconds. And when mommy says she’s going out for a smoke, and that she’ll be back in just a minute, doesn’t she know that it takes forever? So even though adults may see them as having attention spans which would be ridiculed by fruit flies, they are probably engrossed for hours at a time.

In addition to their comparably short windows of attention, their movements are often reminiscent of that guy who’s had just a couple too many drinks and then insists that he’s cool to walk the couple blocks back to the bus stop. Toddlers are in process of programming their motor skills by trial and error, and it usually means that they rarely manage to look cool. By the time that they’ve started to walk, they’ve arranged a tentative ceasefire with the earth’s ever-present downward pull, and have begun to move about by gliding forward on their trajectory toward the ground. But every now and then, some drunken private on either side will take a potshot across no man’s land, and the child will suddenly collapse as if he’s forgotten how to move. This isn’t too bad, unless he’s managed to perch himself up on the bed or next to a coffee table.

And then there is the final piece of their drunken state of being: The Curse of the Terrible Twos. A baby is immersed in language from the day that it is born (and as I’ve seen plenty of people speaking to large women’s bellies, possibly before- although I suppose that someone might just really want to know how that burrito has been holding up), and by the time they are ambulatory, they have picked up at least a couple words, if only to more effectively demand something from a specific person. But this is now the time of “no.” They have arrived at a moment of belligerence that they will never match again in life until they start doing tequila shooters. By now they know how to turn off the television when we’re watching something other than the same cartoon (literally, the same episode over and over) that they’ve decided that they want to watch today. And if we try and reason with them, they are more likely than not to huff off and make a face usually reserved for Uncle Bob about a third of the way through Christmas dinner when he realizes that no one wants to hear about Obama’s birth certificate, and how he’s actually a Secret Muslim Socialist.

Eventually, most children begin to shed this this overly passionate and unreasonable behavior in favor of new strategies which will more likely succeed in their acquisition of new toys. They begin to learn to use blackmail and rudimentary debating skills, though the premises upon which their arguments are built are often rather shaky. I don’t really have any advice to impart to parents going through this. I somehow made it through mostly intact with my son, but I’ve managed to block most of it out, and interacting with my grandson is not at all the same. I guess the best advice that I can offer is to go through this stage of a child’s life as their grandparent: you get all the I love you, man’s without having to change a single diaper.

-Tex