“Dad, do you know the one thing I want before I die?”

This from the mouth of my 9-year old in the backseat the other day.  No one else in the car.  My eyes begin darting around in rapid movements.  My mind startled as I grasp for something appropriate to offer in the silent moments after Everett’s death wish.  Scanning my memory banks for the latest research on pre-teen suicidal tendencies.  I come up empty, for lack of time and due to the ambush-factor. 

“Um, what’s that, buddy?” is all I can manage to squeak from my own mouth.  A half-octave higher than my normal voice, and reed-thin.  Presumably I’ve blown my cover, revealing my panicky incompetence as a father.

“A Twinkie.”

My head swims from all the adrenaline flooding my bloodstream and electrical impulses firing madly in my brain.  The blood rushes downwards from my face and inwards from my extremities.  I look cross-eyed at my hands on the steering wheel, trying desperately to snap my vision back into focus.  Force myself to pull it together.  Regain my composure.  I didn’t go over the metaphorical cliff as I thought I surely would.  The roller coaster, thankfully, bottomed out.  I’m still here. Deep breath, then exhale.

“A Twinkie??” I inquire into the rearview mirror.

“Yeah,” he responds, matter-of-factly.  “‘Cuz they’re not around anymore.”

A Twinkie. A Twinkie?  It feels goofy even to type that word. Twinkie.

I probably should have anticipated that something like this was coming.  A few minutes earlier, Everett reported unprompted that he wanted to work in a fortune cookie factory.  Maybe it’s Fortune Cookie Factory.  He explained that he wanted to put “terrible messages” into the fortune cookies. 

“Like what?” I say, bracing myself for the worst.

“Like…’SUCKS TO BE YOU.'”

I contort my face, scrunching my nose and wincing my eyes, trying to figure out whether this is awful or actually funny. Intensive psychotherapy or a congratulatory slap on the back from his beaming teacher?  Budding psychopathic serial killer or comedian in a new medium? Incarceration or hoisting a golden trophy by the legs?  Now that I think about it, a Funny Fortune Cookie Factory that produces fortune cookies containing truly funny fortunes is not a bad idea for a business.  But, someone else has got to be already doing this….

Ev then snaps me out of my mental gymnastics funk, reducing the topic to yet another data point supporting the absent work ethic of younger generations:  “That way, they would fire me after 2 days.”  My shoulders slump, utterly defeated.

Presumably, Ev figures, he could then get back to the truly important business of spreading his Lego pieces all along the ridges of our living room couch.  And precariously hanging a couple dozen Buckyballs like a magnetic icicle from his bedside lamp.  Anything other than some sort of real job.  And clearly, he is hell-bent on sabotaging himself right out of the gates with this new Funny Fortune Cookie Factory business of his.  It doesn’t matter how hard he worked to develop the idea, research the market, build a business plan, file this or that with the USPTO, take in some outside investment, hire a few dozen workers, enter into a long-term lease agreement for some old brick warehouse space, and find vendors wiling to supply a couple tons of raw fortune cookie dough and several reams of white paper cut and ready for his unique speciality:  Authoring “terrible” fortunes.  Everett can’t really type, so presumably he dictates the terrible fortunes or hand-writes them for someone else to type up. Probably that someone else has had to sign a solemn confidentiality agreement so that the company can keep the terrible fortunes proprietary, away from their competitors’ prying eyes.

Regardless, despite all of this work, in Ev’s perfect world, he’s already been fired and escorted from the building by security long before a diner discovers that it sucks to be him or her.  Appalled and deeply offended, the diner finds the “Funny Fortune Cookie Factory” on Yelp, dials up, and indignantly tells the customer service representative his or her story of the “terrible fortune,” demanding immediate satisfaction. Recompense! “Oh,” the monotone voice on the phone reports, “We let the terrible fortune cookie writer go last week. He doesn’t work here anymore. I think he’s over at the Twinkie Factory now.”  

Apoplectic, and attempting to slam the phone down in anger — an archaic therapeutic physical act that cannot be achieved by touching a fingertip to an iPhone screen — “Harummph!” goes the diner, whom it evidently does suck to be. 

Thanks for reading.

Patience has never been a virtue of mine.  If I could fairly be described as epitomizing any real virtues, “patience” would not be one of them.  My answer to most questions about when I would like for something to happen, a start-date, a beginning, whatever, is “yesterday.” Followed by a flat affect, a hard stare betraying not a hint of humor.  I could resist the urge to blink my eyelids for hours when in such a state.  Probably wouldn’t even realize that my eyes needed a blink. 

Don’t get me wrong, this is not about impulsiveness or self-control.  I’ve read the Stanford cupcake stories.  I don’t need cupcakes.  It’s about collapsing the time-space continuum with the snap of one’s fingers.  Making shit happen, you might say.  And the “happen” part ought to happen pronto.  Yesterday. 

I can’t recall the last time I didn’t have a goal in-mind, a place to be, a scheduled point in time, a clear intention, a purpose.  And I’m not necessarily talking about big stuff like running a marathon, graduating from some program or another, or landing a new professional gig.  I’m thinking of “walk the dog at 9am.” “Start the coffee machine on the kitchen counter, then fill up the dog’s bowl, then and only then pull up the KQED app on the cracked iPad propped up on the kitchen counter.”  In that order.  Not OCD.  Just the most efficient, time-maximizing processes of which I can conceive. No time for casual daydreaming.  We can schedule “casual daydreaming time” in my iPhone’s calendar for later this afternoon, if you like.  We could do that. There.  It’s done.

This is probably not an especially healthy approach to daily life.  I recognize that.  Or rather, I will recognize that, from 12:30pm to 12:45pm today — the window I’ve set aside to contemplate “a healthy approach to life.”  There’s just not a lot of unscheduled time going on in my head reserved for not being reserved.  That makes for an extremely productive human being, perhaps, but not one humming “ommm” cross-legged in a blissful state.

I see glimpses, for sure.  (Albeit scheduled glimpses.)  A moment during a frigid swim in San Francisco Bay just off the beach at Crissy Field.  The rising sun paints the Golden Gate Bridge a purple hue, just over my shoulder, the aching of my frozen teeth fading temporarily into the background.  Wailea playfully grabbing and throttling the nearest oversized stick lying on a trail in the Presidio, responding to the slight dog-like hunch of my back I show her from a distance.  Me communicating with my dog half a football field away, via this all-but-imperceptible nuanced posture.  Watching our 13 year-old grappling in the corner of the soccer pitch with an opponent whose uniform holds 40 more pounds than Max’s.  In these moments, Max is oblivious to the outside world, losing himself completely in his white-hot desire to win the battle of elbows and hips.  I mind-meld with him, silently experiencing and savoring his emotions and the jostling and the smell of the steamy turf as if I were the one wrestling near the flag.

I live for these moments.  I foolishly believe that I can calendar them.  Queue them up on my updated to-do list.  Impatient for their materialization at the appointed hour.  But that’s not the way it works, apparently.  That’s OK.  I’ll wait.  Ommmmmmm….

Thanks for reading. 

I never visited my undergraduate university before getting accepted.  Never even saw it before showing up on campus on the first day of my freshman year.  The main reason I applied, as I recall, is that I read somewhere that students had kidnapped their arch rival’s mascot and stowed him or her away for some time in a closet.  Of course this sounds absolutely awful now.  Shameful.  Illegal.  The kind of thing that blots one’s permanent record.  Not to mention that poor Carolina student stuck in a cramped closet flirting with suffocation under that hot ram’s head mask, drifting in and out of consciousness.  That kind of thing would scar someone for life, I suspect.  Creating life-long aversions to closed closets, animal masks and maybe even costumes of any kind and perhaps even Halloween in general and maybe Greek mythology too given the whole half-man-half-goat thing they had going on. 

And from there it’s not too much of a stretch to speculate that the mascot loses his or her mind if Zamfir seeps through the elevator speakers.  We’re talking full-on, pan flute-triggered PTSD.

Our family is just about squeezed through the microscopic knot hole known in these parts as “the high school admissions process.”  We peered into said knot hole in late summer, jammed our skulls in there a few months ago, and wriggled the rest of our bodies in, twisting and turning, until it felt more like that “naturalist” who recently entered the belly of an anaconda wearing a snake-proof suit.  Only we did not have the benefit of a snake-proof suit.

Reflecting back on these past few months, this process could not be further removed from my own high school “admissions process.”  In fact, those months have been far more challenging than my own college admissions process (see above re Carolina Ram, Pan the Greek God, and Zamfir).  And I think the same is true for my law school admissions process.  I never visited my law school of choice, either, before arriving on day one of first year.  But I did learn how to operate a stick-shift whilst driving solo the 6 hours to law school from my parents’ home.  Pulling a U-Haul trailer, no less, behind my “new” gold Chrysler station wagon.  That is perhaps a story for another day. 

So in light of all this, my wife and I have decided (read: she will learn of this decision for the first time when she reads this blog post, but of course she will whole-heartedly endorse it) to home-school.  Yep, despite the hundreds of hours sunk into this thing by this point, we’re gonna hit the “eject” button.  I refuse to subject the fruit of my loins to the traumatizing effects of goat-headed mascots, Greek Gods of Shepherds, Romanian pan flute musicians, or second longest snakes known to man. Nope.  We will spare our children these stressors that would otherwise undoubtedly lead to long-term neuroses.

So classes are forming now at our newly-established homeschool high school — Zamfir Academy.  Keep an eye out for our commercials on TV.

Thanks for reading.

This is the time of year folks are supposed to set new goals for themselves.  Resolutions.  Ambitions spoken aloud, made public.  Historically, I’ve always been pretty dependable when it came to creating my own annual list of New Year’s Resolutions.  Although I’m several smartphones along, a quick scan of my current iPhone’s “Notes” reveals lists going back several years.  But I haven’t made a list yet for 2015. 

I can’t seem to conjure up a clear and persuasive answer to the question, “What’s next?”

2014 began as a rough year, objectively speaking.  My maternal grandmother passed away in January, providing a sudden and unwelcome jolt to my entire extended family.  All of us would likely agree, however, that Grandma’s passing brought us all closer together.  Renewed and reaffirmed old but rock-solid bonds.  Her death was also the main inspiration for starting this “Lemonade Chronicles” blog of mine.  Finally putting pen to paper — fingertips to QWERTY keyboards — after years of mulling it over.  I’ve published 121 posts this year.  All, in one way or another, celebrating and perhaps attempting to emulate my grandmother’s uncanny ability to make lemonade out of lemons.  Her own life presented her with gargantuan lemons.  Zero advantage.  No money to speak of.  Plenty of adversity.  So I feel silly, in comparison, bemoaning anything about my own current existence. 

I frequently and proudly remind my kids of my (and thus their) modest beginnings.  The frequency of these reminders reached a fever pitch during the Christmas season.  For every new petition for a PS4 or Anki Drive, I countered with, “Do you know that Grandma Graham’s kids were happy to get only one gift under the tree?  Usually hand-made, and I think Daddy’s mommy was lucky if she got a raggedy doll.”  And if the kids ever complain about where we live, I remind them that when I was born, my parents (both scrapping towards master’s degrees) lived in a trailer.  The same deal when it comes to the boys’ expensive private school.  Both of my sons know that my high school now has metal detectors at the entrances.  And that I actually know what it sounds like when one boy steps down hard on another boy’s head on a lunch room floor.  The answer?  Like a milk carton popping. (Don’t worry, the junior high schooler somehow was pretty much totally fine despite the awful-looking stomping). 

I don’t mean to overdo this.  Other kids had it far worse than I.  Many people who knew me well then or know me well now would understandably laugh out loud at my suggesting that anything in my life has been rough.  And I think I had a really great childhood.  I have a head chocked full of fond memories.  Even the memories of which I am not fond, many of those I think helped me become a more resilient human being. 

I don’t know whether these sorts of “where you come from” lessons do any good when dispensed from the head of the dinner table or from the car’s driver seat.  The mini-sermons typically trigger eye rolls rather than thoughtful reflection.  I don’t think I even know what “thoughtful reflection” would look like on my children’s faces. 

All that I suppose is meant to convey the notion that I have a pretty good sense of my beginnings.  And I’m at the point in my life where I embrace and appreciate those beginnings.  But that doesn’t make it any easier to whip up my list of 2015 New Year’s Resolutions.  To identify what’s next.

Professionally, I’m enjoying consulting for a number of early-stage, consumer-facing businesses whose products fall somewhere in the outdoor lifestyle space.  Helping them get from where they are now to and through a key milestone.  Helping them figure out how to tell the world about their truly great products.  Consulting provides me with a fulfilling sense of autonomy — I help move my clients’ dials, for sure, and I also take my dog for long walks on the beach, shuttle my boys from one practice to another, spend countless hours coaching on Little League diamonds, cook pretty impressive dinners served on pretty impressive table settings, blog(!), run or swim or hike or bike every day, and generally decide on my own how best to spend every hour of every day.

I know that probably sounds great.  And it is, for the most part.  But I’m ready for a new challenge, professionally.  Something to put my back into whole-heartedly.  My current day-to-day, work-wise, is just too…comfortable. Too easy.  I’m just passing time, not leaving a distinct mark that truly matters.

I suppose I yearn for the days when I went to bed thinking about work and woke up thinking about work.  Not in a death-struggle-pit-in-your-stomach way, but in a “I can’t wait to whip my legs off the bed and slap my feet on the floor to get back into the office” way.  When the stuff I worked on, I honestly believed, could inspire other people.  Change their lives in a positive way.  Help them see they can do things — or at least attempt to do things — they’d previously thought impossible. 

It’s been a long time since I felt that.  I miss it.  I would like to find that feeling again in 2015.

So what else?

I suppose I would like to tackle something that is physically ridiculous in 2015.  I’m inspired by Caldwell and Jorgeson’s current attempt on Yosemite’s “Dawn Wall.”  But I don’t have time to pick up another hobby like rock-climbing.  And I probably don’t have the intestinal fortitude to hang a tent off a sheer cliff 1,000 feet up in the air.  I’ve already done a bunch of marathons and triathlons, though.  I was swimming in the first leg of the inaugural Ironman Utah when a fellow participant drowned in chaotic, whipped-up waves.  I’ve done the swim from Alcatraz a dozen or so times.  I got a black belt in karate many years ago, having to do some objectively impossible stuff along the way.  Holding my legs in a squat for 90 minutes while resisting the urge to vomit and pass out, for example.  Facing a long line of far more experienced black belts, one after another, who tried to punch my lights out.  Also while resisting the urge to vomit and pass out. 

So I think I have a handle on what it means to extend oneself.  Push the limits.  Learn who you really are.  What you’re really made of. But it’s been a long time since I explored those limits.  Really pushed myself. 

Instead, now at 46 years old, I realize that I’ve settled into a comfortable pattern of daily physical activity.  Too-comfortable.  The kind that can mostly be quantified by the plastic band I wear on my left wrist and monitor obsessively. I can’t remember the last truly difficult or nerve-wracking physical task I undertook.  I don’t think I can even remember the last time I caught a whiff or fleeting glimpse of my own limits.  Out there somewhere off in the distance.  Around the bend. I fear I may have lost touch with who I really am and what I’m really made of.  I miss that feeling, too. 

So I would like to take a gander at those limits in 2015.  I’m not sure how, but I would like to get back there.

Wish me luck.  

Thanks for reading.

Hurricane Wailea has expanded the scope of her diet once again.  In the past, I’ve chronicled her adventures devouring playing cards, US currency, leather boots, leather gloves, and the like.  But last week, our black Lab-ish pup outdid herself.

We brought her up to Lake Tahoe for her first encounter with the snow.  She jumped out of the hatchback into the white stuff with aplomb.  Dancing around as if she were playing in the sand by Crissy Field.  Several photos and videos were captured, Snapfished, and Instagrammed for posterity.  All was right in the world.

And then the bottom dropped out.  Not immediately, but definitely literally and figuratively — the bottom dropped out.  Of the trash bag.  In the garage downstairs.  While we were all, for the most part, gone for the day at Kirkwood cajoling and coddling our kids.  We entrusted the care of our dog to a normally very trustworthy family friend.  Let’s call him “Jack.”  (“Jack” may or may not be his real name.)  Others in our group who were headed to the mountain also so entrusted him with their own dogs. 

Now, though it may seem that I am about to throw Jack under the bus, let me be clear:  I am. 

You see, Jack neglected to quiz us about Wailea’s culinary predilections.  Rather than take pen, pad and clipboard in-hand, Jack merely kept his seat at the kitchen table, continued working on his sleek iPad, and generally gave us the reassuring sense of confidence in his being up to the task.  I have yet to encounter a task to which Jack has not been up, quite frankly.  But still, he really should have sat us down, insisted that we painstakingly fill out a lengthy questionnaire regarding fruits, veggies and such, in the interest of being thorough.  Any serious dog-watcher would do this. 

When we returned later in the afternoon, with sore quads, runny noses, and matted hair, the rising garage door revealed something awful.  Terrible.  Nauseating.  The garbage (we’d call it “compost” in San Francisco, but it’s “garbage” in Tahoe), stowed carefully in a large white plastic bag, had been ripped asunder.  As if a bomb had exploded its insides.  The horrific scene was exacerbated by the kids’ melodramatic dry heaves.  Another friend of mine (let’s call him “Raj”) and I went to work, barely suppressing our own dry heaves, literally shoveling the spewn contents back into the inadequate Hefty bag.  I would recount the various items I shoveled, but I would rather not.  Suffice to say, it was the detritus from the breakfasts, lunches and dinners our tribe of 13 humans had concocted and consumed (mostly) over the last several days. 

Yuck.

My wife and I immediately launched into a defensive posture, blaming the other dogs for ripping into the trash.  (Of course we blamed Jack, as well.  For not keeping the dogs in line during our absence.  He doesn’t blog, as far as I know, so the sound of his his skull rattling under that bus will continue on during this particular paragraph.)  Our dog would never eat trash.  Never.  It must have been the other furry beasts in our group.  Shame on them!  And shame on their careless owners!

Our nagging suspicion as to the true garbage-eating culprit was jarringly confirmed several hours later, at 3am.  That’s when Wailea seemingly turned her stomach inside out, revealing to us her illicit behavior with the Hefty bag. Among other tidbits within the squirrel-sized, um, bolus, were some coffee grounds, as I recall.  Hilary and I did our best rendition of Harvey Keitel’s “The Wolf” in Pulp Fiction, erased from our minds what we have done (for our own peace of mind and mental health), and then settled back into bed. Satisfied that this was but an isolated incident.

Two days later, we packed our little Prius up for the four-hour drive back home to San Francisco.  Of course we carved out a very humanely-sized area in the rear for Wailea. Complete with her little doggie pillow for her little doggie bed.  We had obviously long-since repressed the memory of the 3am vomit-fest.  Vomit-fest?  What vomit-fest?

An hour into the drive, 9 year-old Everett suddenly and violently objected to a noxious scent he detected, immediately and falsely accusing his father (that’s me) of some inappropriate flatulent behavior.  Moments later, the scent wafted towards the front of the car.  It was not of this earth.  Hilary and I began snapping our heads around in the vehicle, as if the offending thing would somehow become immediately visible.  Adrenaline-fueled, I fairly skidded to the side of the road, fishtailing into a local floral shop’s parking lot, so as to permit a full-vehicle inspection.  The inspection was short-lived.  We found another, um, bolus, on Wailea’s little doggie pillow.  I’ll spare you the gory details, except to say that I did spy in my brief glimpse a whole avocado pit.  How Wailea managed to keep that pit in her belly, polish it up, and produce it two days later I will never know. Regardless, Harvey Keitel makes another cameo, all scary things are repressed with forced smiles and some false bravado humming, and we are back on track.  Convinced that (a) this never happened, and (b) if it did happen, it surely would never happen again.

Yesterday, we fell easily back into our post-vacation work and school schedule.  Still basking in the Norman Rockwellian images from our time at Kirkwood. Trading effervescent texts and emails with the group of friends that had all thoroughly enjoyed one another’s company. 

But Wailea wasn’t yet ready to release her own grip on the Sierra Nevada, apparently.  In the afternoon, I found another, um, bolus, on her little doggie pillow (which had been returned to its rightful position in her little doggie crate).  Flabbergasted by our pup’s magical stomach, I studied the, um, bolus, with an archeologist’s intensity, and identified a baseball card-sized chunk of pineapple skin.  Harvey, repress the memory, back to happy happy.

A day later, and it now appears that Wailea’s gastrointestinal tour de force has at long last reached its conclusion. Which is a good thing, because I think another incident would likely trigger a full-blown eruption of Post Traumatic Stress Disorder across my entire family.  PTSD averted, thankfully, though we won’t be serving coffee, guacamole or pineapple upside down cake anytime soon. 

Thanks for reading.

Does a dead crow mean bad luck?  I have a vague recollection that some negative consequence will befall someone who comes upon a deceased crow.  Maybe I’m thinking of the “black cat crossing your path” thing, which undesirable circumstance is only undesirable on Halloween.  Or maybe it’s undesirable the whole year ’round.  I simply can’t recall.  But I can report that coming across a crow lying flat on its back, prostrate (except face up), whilst walking with one’s family to the morning bus stop is unpleasant.  I will admit to a bit of a jump-scare, in fact.  Perhaps “shuffle-scare” is the better phrase, given that I ran some stairs yesterday on the heels of a couple days of skiing with heavy borrowed skiis, and I am out of morning bus stop shape. In any event, that crow is dead. 

I say “that” crow because he or she and his buddy have been tormenting our own black animal for a year or so.  Screeching blood-curdling caws upon catching sight of her during one of her many neighborhood strolls.  Dive-bombing her and her adult companion.  Wailea barely seemed to mind.  I think she may have misinterpreted their loud reactions as a show of friendship.  She would perk her nose up in the air after a kamikaze swoop.  I would pick myself up off the ground from the push up position, and scavenge around my front pockets for a spare Doan’s back pill, cursing.  My body is not conditioned to twisting and contorting, Matrix-style, in the face of aggressive crow behavior. 

I had developed a real dislike, bordering on hatred, for these two birds.  I tried to find some sort of empathy for them.  Tried to rationalize what could possibly trigger this perpetual, crazed behavior.  Maybe they were protecting some new hatchlings nearby?  That could be true if they churned out baby birds year-round.  Because their reign of terror lasted year-round.  No seasonality.  Maybe we were somehow encroaching on their territory?  Forget it, birds.  We’ve lived on this block for 15 years.  And when we moved, we only moved across the street.  Same block.  I don’t think those birds were 15 years old.  I don’t think crows even live that long.  If they do, one of their clocks stopped counting as of this morning (or maybe last night).  Because he or she is officially dee ee aye dee. 

And so you know, we are a family that basically treasures all living things.  We have never let our boys swing plastic wiffle ball bats at bees buzzing in the grass.  We gave a humming bird a proper burial under our front bushes when we found him there writhing on the ground in his death throes.  The boys even painted a couple rocks with his likeness, marking his final resting place as headstones.  Now, I readily admit to no such mercy shown mosquitoes.  And that juvenile rat snuffed out years ago with a peanut butter-laden, bible-sized trap?  That death blow was delivered by a hired professional, and we maintain plausible deniability in that particular case.  Dead rat?  What dead rat?  The grotesque concoction my grade school buddies and I cooked up 40 years ago to pour on the heads of innocent ants queued up on our sidewalk?  I would thrash my kids if I caught them with that mix of Aim toothpaste and generic hydrogen peroxide.  I might even make them drink it.  In fact, I think you can probably buy this exact ant-killing mixture now as a means of achieving a blindingly bright smile.  So that means even at my most sadistic point, I was actually trying to help those ants.  Make them more attractive, more appealing to their human neighbors.  Not drown them in a blue and bubbly paste.  No sir.  Not this guy.

Well, I felt nothing close to sadness or empathy about the flat-on-his-back crow this morning.  That felt more like karma.  And there will be a cost-savings here, too, since I can cut way back on my Doan’s back pills purchases.  Yessir, I will kick the Doan’s habit completely.  Yahoo!  Though I will need to add in some extra push ups here and there in the course of the day, to make up for the lost, teeth-saving push ups I won’t be doing on my local sidewalks any longer.  That’s fine.  I can live with that.  Collateral damage.  Cost of doing business. 

What a fantastic way to start the new year.  Not so fantastic for the homeowner who stumbles on the crow carcass on his or her way out to work.  That poor bystander — presumably not locked in the same battle to the death as my dog and I have been with those crows — will likely have the bejesus scared out of him or her this morning.  If I weren’t so traumatized by the crow myself, I would be helpful.  Give some advance warning.  Maybe leave a note.  I certainly don’t have it in me to go retrieve the body and dispose of it properly.  But I could maybe ring the doorbell with a broomstick end — the longest broomstick I can find — and then stand there, mute, pointing to the carcass with my cheeks puffed out when the nice man or lady came to their door.  I could do that, maybe. 

No I couldn’t.  I’m just about broken from the crows’ reign of terror.  My nerves are shot.  My ability to think rationally is severely compromised when it comes to these birds.  In fact, I would peg the odds of that bird actually being dead at no greater than 23%.  Far more likely is the notion that he or she is merely taking a nap.  Might even be embarrassed, chagrined, when it wakes up and realizes he had likely been spotted by his arch nemeses in the vicinity of the morning school bus stop. So probably best if I steel myself and tip toe back out around the corner, just to see what’s what. 

But this will have to be a solo mission, no dog in-tow.  I’ve just flushed the last of my Doan’s.

Thanks for reading.  And Happy New Year.

And so it begins.  The boys’ Winter Break, 2014-style.  Only one of my sons is currently awake as my fingers pop the keys of this keyboard.  Hunched over a Santa-sized bag of Legos, clawing away at them, since I rebuffed his first attempt at turning on the television.  Coughing loudly every 3 or 4 minutes, wearing T-Rex and Skull and Crossbones-print pajama bottoms and a blue and grey “Duke” beanie.  No shirt, of course.  The shirtlessness likely explains the coughing, at least in part.  But I don’t demand a shirt.  I’ve long-since learned to pick my battles.  And I don’t pick this one.  Cough Cough.

This is a busy time of the year for my wife (and my sons’ mom) at work, as people suddenly realize they need her to do a bunch of important stuff for them.  Like now.  So that means that at least until Wednesday afternoon, I’m mostly solo.  I like solo.  I like my wife, too, of course.  But I also like solo. 

I’ve already got today and Tuesday accounted for:  I’ll finish this blog post in the next 30 minutes, accompanied by Everett raking through his thousands of Lego pieces and by our dog staring at me from her bed.  The dog won’t become a priority until her staring becomes so persistent that other recipients of said stare would anticipate an imminent attack on the jugular.  To me, that just translates into “take me outside or I will for sure poop and/or pee right here and right now.”  No such stare at the moment; I just checked.

I aspire to fire up some eggs (fried or scrambled depending upon which son’s preference is the morning’s squeakiest wheel), hash browns and bacon on the stove top grill.  The grill’s surface is scratched from heavy use, and I harbor some concern that I will be feeding my kids a dose of non-stick chemicals.  That’s an ongoing risk that will have to be addressed another day.  Because after breakfast, we are headed to the Academy.

The California Academy of Sciences, that is.  When the boys were younger, the Cal Academy was a go-to.  One of the few places where a parent could lower a toddler’s feet to the ground and, more or less, let the toddler explore on his or her own, while the parent trailed behind.  On a crowded day, this admittedly made for some nervous moments.  I have run-walked some shallow-breathed loops around the trippy blue underwater rooms downstairs, picking up my pace as my eyes scan the dark corners for my progeny, calculating the odds that he could drown in a starfish pool, crack his head on the stairs near the Gar tank, wind up in some stranger’s stroller, or topple into Claude’s den.  Did I mention that Claude is an albino alligator? None of those things have ever come to fruition, though in retrospect, I always sort of admire my creativity in terms of all the incredibly terrible things I conjure up before I find Max or Everett at a water fountain.

Fortunately (or maybe, unfortunately), those days are over now.  My kids only disappear if they choose to.  And they know my cell phone number, combined with absolutely zero fear of asking a surprised stranger to borrow the stranger’s cell phone.  “Just real quick, if you don’t mind, so I can call my dad.”  I’ve grown accustomed to seeing incoming calls bearing completely bizarre, I-don’t-know-anyone-in-Alaska area codes.  That just means Max or Ev is calling from some bemused person’s iPhone.  Fun for the kid.  Strange mixture of pride and mortification for me.  Pride for their resourcefulness.  Mortification if the owner of the cell phone is the type that will admonish me or give me that look when I show up to claim my offspring. A similar scene plays out if there is no stranger’s cell phone readily available.  Both of my kids are adept at commandeering the public address announcement system at grocery stores, museums, even airports.  In those situations, the mortification is magnified by the hundreds of disapproving eyeballs.

I so dread the mortification part, I sometimes catch myself considering ways to avoid or diminish the shunning.  Maybe I should wear a suit.  Or a tuxedo.  I have a tuxedo, it’s the one in which I was married.  Still fits, pretty much.  And I’m always looking for an excuse to wear it.  I imagine there are peer-reviewed, double-blind scientific studies supporting the notion that a man wearing a tuxedo is less likely to be admonished for delinquent parenting than a man wearing fleece sweats, a striped beanie, and goofy green running shoes.  If there is no such study, there ought to be.  Perhaps I’ll roll the study out this morning.  Given what I’m wearing at the moment, I’m thinking the beanie and green running shoes should probably be the control group.  The tux may have to wait until next time.  It’s been awhile since I’ve tied a bow-tie, and I don’t think I’ve allotted enough time for that this particular morning.  

On the other hand, a tux today might just be the perfect choice.  I imagine the scene:  Responding promptly to the fully-expected page using my first and last name (combined with the delinquent parenting part).  Mock surprise on my face, eye brows raised phonily, maybe even mouthing a “who, me?” I glide gracefully, with purpose, towards the Customer Service kiosk.  The spotlights normally trained on the enormous Blue Whale hanging from the ceiling — they snap onto my me, illuminating my path towards the kiosk, allowing me to cut through the admiring throngs.  (Slowly, the mortification begins to transfer from me over to my sons.  I can see it on their faces.)  Somewhere, a drum roll pounded out on a timpani reaches a crescendo.  I reach for (read: yank from the grip of the nervously-smiling Customer Service representative) the mic.  With the entire place holding it’s breath now, I scan the crowd.  Take it all in.  I smooth down a slight cowlick with one hand, pinch a corner of my black bow tie with the other.  Then maybe a quick flattening of the cummerbund.  I clear my throat, “First, I’d like to thank the Academy.”  I don’t get the rest of my speech out, though, due to the heavyset security guards clutching my elbows.

So on second thought, I think I’ll just go with the beanie and green sneakers. 

Thanks for reading.

One December night maybe six or seven years ago, we vaguely heard a thud in the front of our flat whilst we slept. I don’t remember it all that well, truth be told, so maybe my subconscious managed to weave the real-world sound into whatever I was dreaming about that night. Could’ve been the muffled slam of my high school locker door, for example. The one for which I can never remember the combination, as I struggle in a frenzied panic to loose a text book critical to the Calculus final exam I am missing while I fiddle with the numbered dial. That might have been the one.

The relief I would feel upon waking up and realizing I didn’t really need the locker combo after all? (And please, Late-for-Calculus-Final-Exam Dream, release me from your grip.) That morning, the relief was replaced with dread as we discovered our over-sized Christmas tree (do I have the capitalization scheme right on this?) had toppled over in the night. Smashing to smithereens a number of ornaments we had slowly gathered thusfar during our early years together, my wife and I.

The facade of the Heritage House, a great little bed and breakfast in Mendocino to which we’d escaped one weekend early in Hilary’s first pregnancy for our now-teenager. (Yes I know I am not using one of those little sickle marks on the c in “facade.” I took French. But I can’t find the mark as a choice on my iPhone keypad.). Broken into 3 pieces, the bright red front door split from the yellow trimmed windows.

A medicine man of some sort. Green face, black and white striped horns, yellow teeth, bulging eyes circled in black eye liner. Maybe wearing pants made of buffalo hide or something. A little terrifying, actually. Think we picked him up in Sedona or Sante Fe on our move out here from the east coast in 1999. I’d guess he is supposed to be some sort of ceremonial figure. Probably my favorite tree decoration. Well, he survived the trip west unscathed, but lost a horn on our carpet, thrown down unceremoniously by our own strange ceremony involving a chopped down pine tree propped up in our living room for a month.

Well, last week it happened again.

No more than 30 seconds after I snapped the above photo of the newly-clamped and ornament-strung tree next to our fireplace, that bad boy came down.

Moments earlier, the five of us (including our dog) were, for once, actually quiet. The boys were drawing up their (ridiculous) Christmas wish lists. I was engrossed in the final pages of a book about exploring the ocean’s depths. Hilary was maybe catching up on emails. The dog was lying at my side, tongue lolling out, probably fantasizing about licking our dinner plates clean once we’d all gone to bed. The fire crackled.

Suddenly, Hilary let out a primal scream. As I jolted my head up, the tree began to fall in slow motion, the dog bolted upright and got the hell out of Dodge, and our youngest was suddenly under the 8-foot tree.

Me: “Everett, are you OK in there?”

Everett (presumably still clutching his pen, scribbling madly to ensure every possible aspiration is included on his list, possibly not even noticing the tree covering his upper torso): “Yep.”

The only damage, really, was the thin (too-thin) glass ornament we’d picked up at Zion National Park last spring. That was a once-in-a-lifetime trip filled with memories we’ll be reliving for years, likely even years after the actual participants are long gone. That hand-painted orb was fairly shattered, its sharp pieces set delicately on our dining room table even now, nearly a week later. As if we’re mourning the ornament.

The Heritage House also broke again, along the same fractures as last time, apparently not glued together as well as we thought. I think I can fix this one, though. Hopefully without Crazy-Gluing my thumb and forefinger together.

And the Sante Fe Medicine Man?

Where is he? Where is he? I may even have said those words aloud as I combed through the debris. His medicine must be good. Somehow, he survived this calamity without a scratch. He still only has the one horn, but his medicine is good.

Until the next time.

Thanks for reading.

We need to hire a hit man. Or a hit woman. We need to get someone, er, something six feet under. Dead. Kilt. Gone.

We need a Fruit Fly Assassin.

I have had it with these sonsabitchin’ Drosophiladae. I’m cool with an occasional little fella carving his little squares in the air above out compost container. That’s actually helpful — a sign that it’s time to bring the compost tin’s fermented contents down to the big compost bin in the garage. Thanks, little fella. I would even give him a gentle pat on the head if I could.

But we are way past the cute, living in concert with nature, we are all God’s creatures phase. We are officially in the Rod Steiger in the Amityville Horror Attic Attack Besieged by Flies stage.

Yesterday I lifted the fancy cardboard box top containing a leftover fancy chocolate cake from dinner this weekend. I was salivating, even, at the prospect of topping off a bland lunch with a slice or 3 of said cake. Apparently, fruit flies are attracted to leftover chocolate cakes. And human saliva. When I cracked open the lid no more than half an inch, a couple flew straight into my mouth. Which was open, because I guess I was making the “oh man I can’t wait to eat this” face.

I staggered backwards, cursing, coughing, and causing my dog to run downstairs to hide in her crate. I was a little shell-shocked by the sudden ambush, and the part of my hypothalamus that controls hunger had yet to be overcome by the part of my brain that manifests a proper response to disgust. And so, still trying to call up the intruders clinging to my epiglottis, I lunged back at the fancy cake. I guess I was trying to evaluate, in my compromised state, whether the cake was still edible. I don’t really know, it was like an out-of-body experience for a few desperate moments.

I regained my senses, calculated the embarrassment factor if quizzed by the emergency room doctor as to whether I had “eaten anything unusual recently,” and slammed the lid shut. To the extent that you can “slam” a fancy cardboard cake box shut.

Then the part of my brain that conjures up bloodlust, vengeance, murderous inclinations, vaulted to the fore. Through the tunnel vision of my blind rage, I saw that the Mini Dyson was within arm’s reach. So I spent the next several minutes jumping around the kitchen, sucking the little bastards into the plastic nozzle. With the “MAXIMUM” button pushed in. I wasn’t messing around. Typically, under calmer circumstances, I cannot reach the flies clinging near the tops of the cupboards or hanging upside down from the ceiling. Like the old ladies who lift Volkswagens off pinned children, my adrenaline fueled superhuman leaps. I could have put my head through the ceiling if I wanted to. I mean, I got up.

My flyocide didn’t do squat. This morning they’re right back there. Laughing at me, most likely. Damned things reproduce at such a prolific rate, they probably multiplied even while I was foolishly trying to decimate their ranks with my plastic vacuum.

I’m man enough to admit when I am beyond my depth. I’m officially there. So we’re calling in the big guns. I’ll be publishing a Craigslist post, titled “Need Fruit Fly Assassin to Murder Chocolate Cake-Eating Flies Who Flew In My Mouth, Rod Steiger-Style,” forthwith. Wish me luck.

Thanks for reading.