There’s no other way to describe it.
We live in a war-torn state here on Beach Street.

Lego shrapnel abounds. Lego bombs lurk around every corner. Tiny pieces lie in wait, sometimes for months, eager to inflict some damage on some poor, unsuspecting innocent.

It amazes me that neither Hilary nor I have ripped the plantar fascia on our feet bottoms via inadvertently stepping on those sharp suckers.

I live in fear of that scenario.

Creeping across the bedroom floor in total darkness for a bathroom run, delicately placing my feet on the floor with a dainty touch as though checking for land mines or a glacial fissure. Eyes wide trying to use my rods or cones to catch a glimpse of a luminescent piece of plastic before I wreck my foot on it and go hurtling headlong into the dog’s crate. Likely impaling myself on the metal frame, bleeding out right there on the carpet whilst my family sleeps peacefully.

The Legos also serve as evidence; an indication that Everett was recently there. He carries little figurines and space ship contraptions in his pockets at all times. Then deftly deposits one on the corner of a couch, next to an abandoned dinner plate, on the floor of the guest bathroom. Maybe like a serial killer who leaves tiny little origami swans at crime scenes. A calling card.

They are literally everywhere.

We bought the two large Lego bags pictured above a couple years ago. Hoping that the Legos could be gathered and stored neatly within them. Instead, the bags spend more time split open, spilling their blocky contents out like bloated piñatas.

The sheer number of Lego pieces they contain boggles the mind. Just the thought of having to someday count them for some unfathomable reason makes my temples throb.

I have no idea how we accumulated so many Legos. None showed up in-bulk. None en masse. Rather, one packet at a time. Like an unattended faucet drip drip dripping for a month that silently floods an entire home.

On occasion, I smile giddily at the prospect of offloading the Lego cache. Everett’s — they’re mostly within Everett’s exclusive dominion at this point — interest in them hits a lull. The satchels stay stuffed but sinched in a closet for a month. The boys have younger cousins on the east coast that would love to get their hands on these bad boys. My older nephew would likely rip into the USPS box like a wild animal. Drooling a bit. So exciting. He would remember always the day “the 10,000 Legos showed up.”

El Dia de Los Legos Diez Mil –maybe my sister and her husband will celebrate this day annually as such!

More likely, she won’t speak to me for a time. Happy that her kids are happy. Secretly fuming that her plantar fascia are now in jeopardy. That she or her husband may impale themselves. I hope her rods or cones are superior to mine, night vision-wise. That is her only hope. Good luck, l’il sis….

Thanks for reading.

Much is made in the news media about the importance of moderation and variety as key components of a healthy lifestyle. Supposedly, this is particularly true with respect to one’s diet. We all know by rote by now all the reasons for living this way.

But I think I have stumbled on another, less traditional rationale for this age-old admonition. And stumbled on it in a non-traditional way, no less.

You see, our Lab-Shepherd mix (this is our latest guess) “puppy” has evidently taken this moderation and variety advice to heart. Following it quite literally. Adopting a very precise approach.

Preparing to leave Wailea home alone for a couple hours has forced us to develop an entirely different perspective on what does, and what does not, constitute “food.” I survey our bedroom before leaving, scanning the tops of bedside tables, the reachable areas under our bed, the backyard with its endless jetsam and floatsam of dog toys and kids’ toys. Once convinced that Wailea’s area is “food-free” after making a few minor modifications here and there, I shut the door and leave the house with confidence.

When I return, I see my arm and hand reaching unsteadily for the bedroom door knob. It’s like an out-of-body experience. My pulse quickens. I catch myself mumbling or maybe chanting or half-praying that nothing irreplaceable has been ripped to shreads. Some combination of “Give my peanuts to Uncle Jake” and “Hava Nagila.” (This is one of those rare occasions when my Atheism causes me problems.) I hold my breath, pinch my eyes shut, turn the knob, push open the door. And then, typically with a dropped jaw and wide eyes, I survey the damage. Calculate the associated expense — economic and psychological. Sometimes it’s both.

Allow me to elaborate. She has devoured an English-to-Chinese dictionary. “Obliterated” may be more apt. It looked like a debris field in the aftermath of a satellite crashed to Earth. (I would like to be able to describe this scene in Mandarin, but alas, I can’t, since the Mandarin dictionary did not survive the crash).

More recently, Wailea has eaten: (a) a deck of playing cards, (b) a walkathon pledge form, (c) a blue felt tip marker, (d) a photo of Hilary when Hilary was 10 years-old, (e) a bushel of apples and pears set out as a lovely dining table centerpiece, (f) my iPhone earbuds, (g) one fairly expensive (I think) shoe belonging to my wife, (h) a One Dollar bill, (i) a checkbook, and (j) a bright orange, papier machet work of school art the size of a cantaloupe that might have been a piñata but looked like a gargoyle head.

If I’m being totally honest, this last meal I was sort of happy about. The luminescent gargoyle head had been making me uncomfortable for the past several weeks. It just showed up one day on a table in our bedroom, out of nowhere. Strange tribal markings spiraled around its bald head. Protruding eyeballs. A porcine sneer. Huge fangs. (OK, I’m not positive about the fangs, but that’s how I remember it).

I don’t know which of my sons made it. Or if either of them made it. It scared me, I think it gave me bad juju, and I am frankly glad that it is gone. And I know it is truly gone because I saw pieces of it that Wailea had later, ehm, “recycled.”

So long, Orange Devil Head! See yah! That’s what you get–all chewed up, torn to pieces, and passed through my Lab-Shepherd’s innards! Go tell all your bad juju friends: The Beadling Homestead is closed for business to all manner of malevolent, otherworldly forces — demons, devils, gargoyles, poltergeists, the whole lot of you. Don’t come ’round here no more, ya hear?!!

I don’t know what terrible misfortune Wailea has spared us by eating our money, checks and Chinese dictionaries. But surely, there again, she is keeping us safe.

So like I said, maybe there is something to what the news media says about moderation and variety. And perhaps variety is the spice of life. At least when it comes to the various, seemingly-random items Wailea works into her otherwise pedestrian dog food diet.

This is the only logical explanation for what Wailea has done. Otherwise, I’d just be another pissed off dog owner, cursing and helpless upon discovering another semi-important household item destroyed by a low-IQ pound-bought rescue mutt. And that’s just not me.

Now if you’ll excuse me, I need to walk back home to discover how our dog has protected our family’s well-being today with her varied diet. For example, there are a couple of tiny, ET-meets-Ninja Turtles-meets-tropical drink decorations figurines striking threatening poses from Everett’s bed post. I am tired of being threatened. I want them gone. I want them made an example of.

Thanks for reading.

I bolt awake at 4 am.

Max has a baseball tournament in Sunnyvale, the first game of which begins at 8 am. Show up time is 7 am. The drive will take an hour. We’ll need to be on the road by 6 am. Raising Max from his slumber will take 5 minutes. Tyga’s “Rack City” is my go-to with Max. Guaranteed to jumpstart his sleepy head and elicit some odd hip-hop moves that I should probably forbid.

Scrambling around the house collecting all the pieces of Max’s uniform will take 15 minutes. (This despite my orders last night to have everything packed, zipped, and ready to go.) Net, net, this all means a 5:30 am wake-up call. It’s only 4 am, but I slip out from under the covers, taking inventory on various aches and pains, exacerbated by a night’s sleep short by a couple hours.

This is how I begin the morning of Hilary and my 17th wedding anniversary. This is what my life has come to.

And I wouldn’t have it any other way.

We’ve had a rough year, of sorts. Family and friends have passed away. I’ve endured several months of being considerably less than 100%. We have weathered a handful of bitter disappointments. Slights real and slights imagined.

All of which has served to give me perhaps the deepest and broadest perspective on my marriage, and on my life, that I’ve managed to conjure up in my 45 years.

The Lemonade–Grandma’s Lemonade–is tasting pretty good. Even with the wooden spoon picked up off the floor, particles of dirt stirred in there. Maybe a long black hair entwined around one of the ice cubes. A few too many lemon seeds in there, one of which tries to ruin my sip by jumping into my thirsty mouth along with a big gulp. Gonna need to try harder than that, seed.

So yeah, I’m feeling thankful this morning, 17 years to the day from when Hilary first showed me how much stronger and tougher she is than I —

She strode purposefully down the red-carpeted aisle, standing tall, clear-eyed, solid.

I, on the other hand, was a puddle. Tears welled up in my eyes rendering me nearly blind, squinting to keep my eyes trained on my approaching bride-to-be. My throat so tight. Had I spoken during her proud walk, Kermit the Frog’s voice would have come out. At best. My head swam. It was all I could do to keep my feet and not topple over.

It got worse during the actual ceremony. My Best Man had the foresight to bring along something should I need to wipe my brow or cough. Unfortunately, that something was a wad of toilet paper. So there I stood, my face dripping sweat into my burning eyes. My eyes overflowing with tears. My cheeks blushing red. Little pieces of toilet paper clinging to my face as I swabbed myself repeatedly, in a desperate attempt to keep my shit together.

In my wretched state, I glance at her. Her eyes hold mine. Her smile so calm and confident. Her right hand squeezing my left just a bit harder now. Pushing her strength into me. I pull through. Depleted, drained, spent, tapped out. I pulled through. But only because of her.

I mentioned it’s been a rough year. But this is when Hilary is at her best, you see. Our wedding day was just my first glimpse of that truth. So during this tough patch, she remains: Unwavering. Loyal. Her hand literally or figuratively squeezing mine. Squeezing allof our hands — my hands as well as those of our sons.

So these are the warm thoughts in my head as I return to Earth and have to sprint across the chewing tobacco-stained and sunflower seed-littered parking lot to catch the start of Max’s 8 am game.

Maybe not exactly the sort of anniversary Hilary had in mind.

Then again, maybe exactly the kind of anniversary she had in mind, because I’m spending the morning with our first-born. His birth was the second time Hilary showed me how much stronger and tougher she is than I. So it seems fitting that today I get to sit and just watch him zip around the field for the next few hours; one of several amazing things, the product of 17 years ago today.

Happy Anniversary, my love. And please keep squeezing my hand. 🙂

Thanks for reading.

Unless you have been living under a rock, you know something is amiss at this year’s World Cup. I just read an interesting re/code article giving us lay folk a glimpse inside Google’s World Cup War Room. They’re in that room crunching scads of real-time search data from real-time Google searches originating from Google searchers all over the planet. One of my main take-aways from said article?

People are fascinated by vampires. “Suarez bite” was evidently disproportionately queried when compared to, say, “flea bite,” “dog bite,” and other more innocuous Google searches about someone or something biting someone or something else.

It got me thinking: Might there be a competitive advantage, in certain settings, to having a reputation as “a biter?” As someone who, under the right circumstances, just might set his or her teeth to work on an unsuspecting–or better yet, suspecting–victim?

My mind goes first to other sports. I could stay with soccer (OK, futbol), but judging by all the sudden, spastic falls to the pitch, there is probably a lot more biting going on there than can be perceived my the human eye. No other way to explain all that writhing in pain, eyes bugging out, he’s-clearly-about-to-expire-out-there that seems to transpire during every match. Someone has to be biting someone, there’s no other explanation. But I will leave that examination to those more qualified and with access to higher-definition slo-mo footage than I can get my hands on.

So, other sports? Hmmm.

If the San Francisco Giants’ MVP catcher bit, say, the Dodgers’ Yasiel Puig, just once, I believe this would tilt the competitive balance in the Giants’ favor, in a statistically significant way, over the course of a long season.

Now, to be clear, I’m not suggesting some big, theatrical, open-mouthed clamp onto Puig’s jugular. The opposite. Just a little nibble. Buster’s head is perhaps a foot or two from the batter’s legs. The batter is not focused on Buster. Buster is the last thing on the batter’s mind. And given that many players are now sporting the pants up/full socks, old school look, those lower legs are prime for the taking.

All Buster would need to do is lean forward for a moment, reach for a pinch of dirt near his feet, then extend his neck for a quick nip of calf between upper and lower canines. Or, a less vampiresque, but perhaps more manageable quick bite between matching incisors.

Quite frankly, Buster wouldn’t actually need to bite Puig at all in order to secure this psychic advantage. He could simply reach out with two fingers, pinch Puig’s calf with cat-like reflexes. Then when Puig flinches and snaps his head down to Buster in the crouch, Buster could look up expectedly. Lip curled up a bit to reveal a tooth or two with (fake) blood smeared there. And Buster’s wild eyes.

What’s Puig gonna do? The rest of the world saw, at most, a friendly pinch from a universally-respected ambassador of the game to the leg of an adversary. Then a friendly smile from under Buster’s mask. No one else save Puig saw the crazy eyes, los ojos, the twitching lip, and the (fake) smear of blood, the taste of which Buster seemed to actually enjoy. No one will give creedence to Puig’s shouts, “El Vampiro! El Vampiro!” as he jabs his gloved forefinger at the still-squatting Buster. The Ump will tell Puig to get back in the box. If asked to investigate, MLB officials will treat Puig as all early-in-the-film characters, first-bitten but never believed until it is too late.

But Puig’s rants, upon returning to his murmuring bench, will unsettle his teammates. Plant the seed. Each will hold in the back of their own minds, when setting their feet in the box during their at-bat, the possibility that a vampire lies in wait just inches away.

Good luck staying focused on Bumgarner’s arm slot with this on your head. “Any moment, Buster could rip the flesh of my calf clear off the bone. C’mon, that’s crazy talk, man. Jesus, keep it together, pick up the ball pick up the ball….Wait, did I just hear Buster shuffle his feet? Is he about to make his move?!?” This is not the stuff of positive self-talk espoused by the sports psychiatrists.

And suddenly, the Dodgers’ bench sees other behaviors and rituals of Giants players for what they maybe, really, are: Pablo’s habitual bat-scratching in the dirt, tapping a certain number of times on his cleated toes, then on his head, a cross carved carefully near his side of home plate. Blanco’s sudden, Gargoyle-like spring into the air from his crouch in on-deck circle. Pence’s refusal to blink during his entire tenure with the Giants. Morse’s always glistening left forearm, his uniform sleeves barely covering what look like warnings or prophecies written in an ancient language.

All this stuff starts to snap into focus. The opposing team’s collective heads begin to swoon a bit. A little light-headed, as all of these observations, foolishly ignored over the years or even–gasp–mocked, come home to roost. Scared eyes catch other scared eyes, shards of sunflower seeds hanging from open mouths and dropping lips, and share a terrifying realization:

The Giants are vampires. And zombies. And Gargoyles.

So yeah, it’s a small sample size, a limited study. But I do think Suarez is onto something. The Giants could use a little of El Vampiro right about now.

Thanks for reading. (Buster, are you reading?)

It’s officially Summer Vacation around here, as of about a week ago.  Seems like every year about this time we go through a transitional period.  Moving from the predictable structure and rhythms of school, to, well, the opposite:  Chaos.  

It takes us — and by “us,” I mean my wife Hilary and I — approximately one week to gather data sufficient to inform the process of planning the remainder of our boys’ summers.  During this week of data-gathering, of limbo, all hell can break loose.  End of the Festival of Samhain-type break loose.  

From the comfort of our bedroom downstairs, we have heard the telltale sounds of Tivo upstairs before the sun has risen.  Someone is clicking willy-nilly from one station to another.  It’s early enough that much of the programming, I imagine, is sweaty people on elliptical trainers.  But also shows about one or another group of nightmare-inspiring vampire people, or maybe a random showing of “Jackass,” sure to incite future hijinks with speeding shopping carts and the like.  I’m much too tired to actually get out of bed and investigate, like a proper parent might do.  

Instead, I weigh the risks.  Run the numbers. Assume the worst:  Our 8 year-old has hacked the Playboy Channel and is watching “Journey to the Nether Regions.”  Or perhaps even at this ungodly hour, some mischievous HBO scheduler is burning “The Shining” into our 2nd grader’s impressionable brain.  If the latter, Everett will never ride a Big Wheel, never agree to stay at a big old hotel again, and probably stop bouncing a tennis ball off the stairs over and over again.  I can live with these possibilities.  In fact the tennis ball thing holds quite a bit of appeal.  So I allow myself to drift back to sleep, even as the Tivo “bloop,” bloop,” “bib-bloop” beckons off in the distance.  

I haven’t exchange a word with my wife lying next to me.  But I am 65% certain she has just done the same calculus in her own head. Maybe even running different worst case scenarios, than I could groggily call up.  Obviously her scenarios, too, weren’t overpowering enough to warrant a trip upstairs to investigate.  Bloop.  Bloop.  Bib-Bloop. 

Another example.  Max and Everett have been using the World Cup as an excuse to wear pajamas all day.  And by “all day,” I mean, every day since school has ended.  If I think about it, I don’t believe I’ve seen Everett wearing anything other than a pair of pajama shorts bearing a pattern of a tropical jungle and the number 29 (or 62, the pattern is a little confusing).  Nevermind why there are bright yellow numbers pasted on top of dark jungle scenes.  That’s probably some subversive shit, too, but I will have to try to wrap my head around that another day. 

And Everett is unapologetic about this.  Completely un-self-conscious.  Belligerent, even.  

We have pointed out that he has worn the same pajamas for, like, a week.  Expecting him to show surprise, an age-appropriate recognition of the prospect of scabies, or embarrassment.  Nope.  Instead, his voice is insistent, the pitch rises.  The vein in his neck pops to the surface and he juts his chin out and upwards.  “Dad, this is Summer!  I’m wearing exactly what I’m supposed to be wearing!”  

He’s so passionate and self-righteous about these crispy pajama bottoms.  He is very likely to send the whole inmate population into a frenzied coup if I were to provoke him any further.  The balance is that delicate.  Razor’s edge.  So I back down.  Practically handing him the Tivo clicker, with lowered eyes and bowed head, right after I navigate down the Tivo on-screen guide to highlight the Playboy Channel’s “Foursome: Walk of Shame.”  Ultimate show of submissiveness on my part.  Had I taken a different tact, reasserting my authority, this whole place would erupt into something of Attica-like proportions.  By this point, Everett has almost certainly seen that movie during one of his 6 am Tivo sessions. So this is no exaggeration.  

Then came the Popsicles.  

Over the course of the last week, we have entrusted the boys at home on their own for a few hours here and there.  Hilary is at work.  I’m working with some new consulting clients or running errands.  Max knows where the fire extinguishers are.  He is adept at texting, even if the texting more involves his mother or I trying to interpret what a red-faced, tribal-looking emoji totem pole icon is supposed to mean.  And Max probably does not really want to kill his brother.  At least not intentionally.  The same could not be said of Everett, but our 8 year-old is probably not quite up to the challenge of physically overpowering our 12 year-old.  At least I think I could make such a statement in a police report with a straight face.  

I returned home one afternoon this past week to find both of my sons wearing their could-stand-up-on-their-own pajama bottoms. Ensconced in one of the World Cup games played by teams whose official initials I could not decipher.  A quick scan of the room did not reveal any evidence of wrongdoing.  The dog’s eyes did not betray abuse.  If anything, in retrospect I saw enthusiastic conspiracy in those brown-red eyes.  I think the dog may be the happiest life form in our house when she and the boys are alone. But that is a blog post for another day.

I only began to get suspicious when the boys started whispering to each other in the midst of fake-looking wrestling.  The kind of wrestling you do to get close enough to your partner-in-crime’s ear, such that a whispered phrase sounds only like labored breathing and grunting to the casual, unsuspecting observer.  

But I am neither casual, nor unsuspecting. 

After an hour or so, both boys happened to wander outside of the living room, leaving me alone.  I used my brief seconds of solitude to investigate. Scanning the room in earnest for anything even remotely incriminating.  Without their guilty eyes watching mine, poised to destroy evidence via some distracting ruse or another.  I’ve fallen victim to several such ruses, and those are only the ones I know about.  

I turned my gaze behind my back on the couch, where no fewer than 5 pillows were piled.  Seemingly a perfectly legitimate stack of pillows to angle one’s head perfectly towards the TV.  The better to comfortably take in hour after hour of World Cup play.  In fact, I had been happily, comfortably leaning my own head against this pile for the past hour or so.  

I pulled one pillow off another.  My pace quickened as I began to feel I was on to something.  I felt keenly aware that the inmates would be returning to their cell within moments.  At the bottom of this innocuous-looking pile, I found the contraband.  

A box of Popsicles.  Completely empty.  Eviscerated.  Flattened.  Several plastic wrappers ripped open and empty.  Sitting under my head for the last hour.  Basically hidden in plain sight.  Brilliant. 

I felt certain that neither Hilary nor I had purchased this box of Popsicles.  Quite certain.  So I placed the box on the living room table in full view. Smack in the middle, on display.  It could not be missed.  

Everett returned to the living room first, immediately saw the box, and turned his body away from mine, fake-watching the World Cup game.  No doubt his mind spinning, panicked.  Waiting for his older brother to come in and save the two of them somehow.  His face flushed red, praying that I didn’t say anything, start shouting about trust, responsibility, and teeth falling out.  I’m sure his little brain ran his own little set of numbers: Maybe the box was there all along, and Dad still hadn’t seen it?  Maybe Dad saw it, but mistakenly thought Mom bought the Popsicles, or that the Popsicles were somehow Mom-approved.  Maybe Dad just didn’t assign a high-level of importance to this particular transgression?  

Then, Max shuffled back into the room, and the jig was up.  

Both boys fessed up to their roles in this particular fiasco.  Max copped to sneaking down the street to Safeway to make the illicit purchase. I nearly choked on my own spit when I learned that the box didn’t hold, say, 6 or 8 Popsicles.  It held 12!  And these sneaky little bastards had eaten all 12 in one sitting!  The two of my boys had sat happily, stickily on the couch devouring these Yellow Number 5 bombs.  As to the brilliant hiding spot, Everett confessed that he had hastily hidden the evidence under the pillows when he heard my car pull into the driveway.  Guilty, guilty, guilty. 

The punishment?  Absolutely nothing.  At least none handed down by Hilary or me.  We figured those 12 little sticks of colorful nastiness would take care of that for us.  While there is no dosage warning on the side of a box of Popsicles, there probably should be. Twelve Popsicles are their own punishment. 

Thanks for reading.