Socks + Shoes

“I’m ready, all I have to do is put on my shoes and socks”. It’s a reasonable enough statement for people who already know where their shoes and socks are. For my wife and daughter, it’s more of an estimator of readiness than an actual declaration.

Based on this non-scientific observation, I would have thought that this was something gender specific; but one morning while my daughter and I were ignoring each other, thumbing through our respective Instagram feeds in the car, she noticed a kid get dropped off at the bus stop with a pair of shoes and socks in his hand.

“Is he holding his shoes and socks in his hand?” she says. In my head, I begin to tick off reasons why a goofy high school kid that looked like he slept in his t-shirt and jeans would be carrying a pair of shoes and socks as opposed to wearing them: 1) maybe those are his gym shoes 2) maybe he plays baseball and those are his baseball cleats 3) maybe he’s selling a pair to someone else at school.

Only two of those reasons could make sense, and the third one wouldn’t explain the pair of (hard to tell from our vantage point from across the street but based on the rest of his appearance we’ll go with..) dusty socks he was now snapping straight in order to slip his naked (pure speculation here, but most likely ashy) foot into his sock. The thought came out verbally, “This fool walked out the house with no shoes on.”, I said.

My daughter and I giggled at this kid putting on his shoes and socks while he waited on his school bus. It started to make sense to me, why this kid would get out of his car with no shoes and socks on. Again my mind pieced together a quick scenario of how it all went down.

- Mom yells from upstairs: Son, are you ready? It’s time to go!

- Son, in front of large bowl of half-eaten Frosted Flakes: Yeah Mom. *smack smack* I’m ready.

- Mother comes downstairs, with purse on shoulder, keys in hand and shoes on feet, spots barefooted son in front of a large bowl of half-eaten Frosted Flakes and goes: Let’s go!

- Son makes attempt to explain he needs to put on his shoes.

- Mom: Go get your shoes and socks and lets go!

- Boy runs upstairs and runs back down with his shoes and socks in his hand and then sits down on the bottom step to try and put them on.

- Mom: Boy get yo’ ass up and get in the car! Let’s go!

- Cut to some old dude and his daughter sitting in a beater spying on this kid who just stepped out of car barefoot, with his shoes and sock in his hand. Old dude screws face and thinks aloud, “This fool walked out the house with no shoes on.”

Why I Can Never Get Anything Done

I tried to write something today, and I was a good way into it before I became totally bored with it. I do a good amount of throwing crap against the wall to see what sticks already, but I didn’t feel the need to soldier on and provide half baked post for the entire internet to see. (again) Anyway, I needed an excuse to show pictures of my half furnished house, red eyes and our damaged blinds. Oh yeah, not to mention the many reasons I can never get anything done.

There Is No Spoon

There is no spoon. I meant, there are no spoons. I mean, there aren’t as many spoons. There used to be spoons. Spoons that sat in a drawer, in the kitchen, next to the forks and knives, that were given to us by one of my beautiful aunts, in order to make room for a newer, shinier and no doubt fancier set of spoons than the ones she just gave us. Spoons that were hastily washed by shiftless children shirking their chores in order to play games, or have telephone conversations, or watch an episode of Spongebob Squarepants. Spoons that were amassed, from nonexistent wedding registries, various sellers of dining wares, and possibly lifted by way of a take home plate from a relative’s holiday function.

Spoons that waited dutifully to be picked up, and used as they were intended to be used. Spoons that spilled a variety of hot or cold cereals into one of the many mouths that ate at our breakfast table. Spoons that soothed our bodies when we sipped soups, stirred teas, and spilled partial doses of medicine on the floor. Spoons that dug into numerous pints of ice cream and shoveled the contents into greedy faces. Spoons that spilled over the borders of the silverware tray, because there was once too many.

Those too many spoons no longer live here. Too many spoons that trusted their feeble minded handlers who serrated their edges in the garbage disposal, allowed them to be used as toys by three year olds, or abandoned on night stands.

They’ve gone somewhere else though, possibly escaped to a better place via that secret underground railroad for spoons. Or maybe they were sucked into some vortex that takes spoons just because. But I have six kids, and like most things that are going wrong in my house, I place the blame at their feet. Don’t judge me.

My Right Thumb

My right thumb smells like poop, which is odd because I took a shower less than 45 minutes earlier and I haven’t changed a diaper since the shower. I only noticed it while sitting at a red light, I bit my thumb (yes, the right one) out of the anxiety that comes with morning traffic and noticed a familiar scent of stale poop.

I was a confused a bit, because how does one complete a shower with their hands still smelling like poop? Don’t your hands automatically become clean through direct contact with the soap? If you use shower gel, (which I do btw, Dove for Men holla at me for some sponsorship) doesn’t the lather from the loofah clean your hands by proxy? Even still, I’m pretty certain I wash my hands in the shower. Matters not that I can’t recall specifically doing so this morning, I’d like to give myself the benefit of the doubt in this instance.

Personal hygiene aside, I recalled a possible source for the poop smell on my fingers. Before I walked out of the door this morning, I gathered up the latest batch of dirty diapers yet to be thrown out, and threw them in the garbage can outside. Questions possibly running through your mind right now: How old are the triplets right now? Shouldn’t they be potty trained by now? What is your current system of disposing of dirty diapers? All valid questions, and I’ll address only two of them just to spare you the dirty details of diaper disposal in my house.

Right now, the triplets are three years old, and yes they should be potty trained by now. I could say that we’ve actively begun potty training them, but that would only apply if we expanded the definition of potty training to mean putting them in diapers and changing them business as usual. As one half of the parenting unit, I will defer from blaming the other half (which is a useful and favorite tactic of mine) and shoulder the blame for their lack of development in this crucial milestone.

It’s a slight source of shame for me, as I can not tell anyone that my children were potty trained at a young age. Those of you who have kids, or are familiar with the milestone checklist game parents like to play, know that bragging on how early your kids can crawl, walk, talk, feed themselves, run a boston in spades is all a part of making the other parent and their poor child they’ve birthed, wear the proper amount of inferiority when addressing you. I have no status in this arena, my youngest set of children are not yet potty trained.

One of my lovely aunts recently visited our house to drop off some items for Easter. We chatted a bit, discussed several different things, and then she asked whether or not the triplets were potty trained yet. I said no, and made efforts to indicate that poor parenting prevented the kids from this milestone as opposed to the lack of understanding by the trips. This served both as an admission and a move to disarm the possible lecture on why I wasn’t doing more to make the triplets handle their business on the toilet. We laughed about it, and she offered some helpful suggestions: try one at a time, show them potty training videos, some other stuff that I’m sure was great advice but have since forgotten.

Still, spring is here, and the babies were born in August, this ‘just turned three’ business wasn’t a good excuse when it was true. Now, it’s just an unfortunate manifestation of the unique kind of laziness the wife and I have developed over the years, a sorry excuse for a sorry excuse if you can figure out what that means. If this post were a poorly executed metaphor, it would be an emo teenaged suicide attempt, complete with excessive eyeliner and The Cure playing in the background. A cry for help if you will; one of those if you know me (or my wife), and you see me in the streets, ask me how the potty training is going. They say it takes a village…plus, this shit, has got to stop.

Public Display

When I was younger, the pursuit of and the possibility of sex seemed a constant fixture in my underdeveloped brain. As a young man, getting close to, almost having, and actual sex with someone other than myself was high on a short list of needs. It was why, when I was at that age, I was willing to do almost anything, anywhere given the possibility of it. My willingness to commit private acts in public places was quite high back then; the back of movie theaters, parked cars on dark streets, well, those were the only places I’d be willing to try something. Now that I think about it, I wasn’t that big on all of that, I was just more willing to do something stupid back then, than I am now.

I’m not an exhibitionist, so the thrill of getting caught or putting on a show for the people was never a turn on. Couple that with the fading libido of a man my age, or as I call it, tired, and the thought of any sort of indecent act in public is for the most part off the table. Nevertheless, people who are attracted to each other and have low levels of inhibition, find ways to put their lack of self control and good taste in our faces on the daily basis.

I think about this now because as I made my way to work this morning, I was passed by a man in a lesser minivan (a late model Kia Sedona with a cracked windshield), who seemed to be getting violently fellated by his lady passenger. Initially, when they passed me, I wasn’t able to put together what was happening; from my vantage point, it just looked like a woman doing her best impression of a deranged chicken, pecking in some dude’s lap. It wasn’t until they were a good 50 yards ahead of me and she threw her head back, hard and quick, to get her hair out of her face that I finally figured it out. She then sat up and pulled her hair back into a ponytail. I figured she was readying herself for some serious work, and pressed the gas to get my peeping tom on. She didn’t continue, but the driver kept his foot on the gas and weaved further and further away into the traffic ahead of me.

I removed my foot from the accelerator, put aside my voyeuristic urge, and conceded myself to the doldrums of my soon to be started work day. Only meth heads would do such a thing so early in the morning I thought. Weaving in and out of traffic like some sex crazed lunatics, no regard for themselves or anyone else obviously. Oral sex on an interstate highway? During rush hour traffic? Did the driver not care about the woman’s safety? Was she not a human being? Did he not consider that there were other people in the world, who were possibly not high and not horny, and not satisfying their urges in traffic like savages even though they might want to?

Am I asking too many questions? Doesn’t matter. What kind of world would it be if we were all riding around in minivans getting our oral stimulation on? Heaven maybe? May be?

Place Holder

I’m only posting this to make sure my blog has at least one post for the month of March. It’s cheating, but whatever; this is another snippet of the essay I wrote in a workshop. Maybe next month.

It was in the literal haze of one cool crisp morning that I found myself touching down at some archipelago of soccer fields right before dawn one Saturday. My oldest daughter and I, were the first ones from our soccer team to arrive. The fluorescent flood lights gave the morning fog a pleasant, but eery effect. There’s something about driving almost an hour to some hick suburb, at the crack of dawn, to watch your daughter play soccer all day with people who were nice enough, but I can barely tolerate, had me questioning all of my life choices.

Laundry Losers

During the course of the day, the goings on of the morning had been reduced to a dulled irritation that had almost been forgotten. The wife and I were on the way to pick up our oldest daughter from basketball practice that evening; and like we always do, we talked about whatever we think is interesting about our day. My contribution to this conversation is a standard “nothing”, which if expanded, would mean that my day was filled with the standard amount of bullshit and stupidity that accompanies a man in my position. My wife, is a bit more forthcoming about the specifics of her day, so my job is just to respond in affirmatively, ask the occasional follow up question and to take her side on any perceived wrong doing that may have been done to her.

So, she’s talking about something or another like she always does, and then asks me “Were you able to dry Raven’s pants this morning?”. It’s an odd question, and out of context, needs a little bit of explanation.

The mornings in our house stay in various states of disarray, confusion, and anxiety; common sense approaches to getting out of the house in the morning in a timely manner are shunned. Taking baths/showers at night, picking out/ironing your clothes, fixing lunches the night before etc., none of that gets done in my house. These offenses are minor, and could be overcome by waking up early enough to get all of these things done in the morning, but again, none of that is happening. As for me personally, I’d like to think that without the hinderance of a wife, and six too many kids, I would be the most punctual person in the world. But that’s neither here nor there.

That morning, as we made our daily scramble to dress ourselves and our children for school, we discovered, with little surprise and yet much vexation, that none of our daughters uniform pants were clean. This is not uncommon in our house, and can be easily resolved with a quick wash/dry before we head out the door. However, our dryer has unofficially quit on us; and by unofficially I mean that it turns on, but does not actually turn up. (the heat) It takes forever to dry a load of clothes, and due to several critical areas lacking, (money, time, will) we have yet to replace the thing. My wife, decided to wash the pants anyway, and give our dryer try anyway, an endeavor I suggested against and was ignored.

My suggestion, was to spot clean the least dirtiest/funny smelling uniform pants (don’t judge me) so we could find so we could keep it moving. The morning schedule is too tight to try and have our geriatric dryer try to handle a quick dry on a pair khaki’s. It was almost 7:00, and the pants weren’t dry yet, but we had to leave to ensure jobs still deposited checks. The wife, in her infinite brilliance, told me to look for some random laundromat, and dry the pants there before I take the daughter to school, an idea I dismiss as pure idiocy. I was immediately irritated, my spot cleaning idea was already better than this.

We leave the house late; and I would be lying if I said that the idea of flying that wet pair of khaki’s out the back window of the minivan like some odd, domesticated freak flag didn’t cross my mind. Instead we drop off the wife, and head towards my daughter’s school. My daughter cons me into getting her breakfast before dropping her off, I consent feeling somewhat responsible for sending her to school in wet pants.

While in the drive thru of Jack in the Box, (a more than adequate breakfast menu btw) I notice a cleaners right next to it. The back door was open, a few employees milling about, and sitting there, in plain view is a shiny looking dryer. I’ll blame it on caffeine deprivation to explain why I thought it was a good idea to walk in there and ask them to throw this semi-wet pair of khaki’s into their dryer for ten minutes. Both the lady picking up her laundry, and the lady behind the counter looked at me like I was crazy when they heard what I was asking.

I’ll admit that my request might have been a little out of the ordinary; but they had a dryer that wasn’t being used at the moment, and considering I was willing to pay up to ten dollars to get this done, I didn’t see the problem. I won’t get into the politics involved of me not having a haircut since October 2012, or that I might have been wearing a stained t-shirt, sweatpants, with flip-flops and socks, because that’s not the point. The point is, I am a man, with a wet pair of khaki’s in one hand, and ten dollars in the other, asking his fellow man (woman in this case) to help dry his daughter’s pants in a time of need, and the best you can do is tell me “We don’t do that heah”.

I was getting angry, and before I gave them the special kind of crazy that only my wife knows, I stepped back and asked the lady if she knew where the nearest laundromat was. There was one down the street she said, before you hit the freeway she said. It was five minutes away, three if we made all of the lights. We made it there in no time, wasn’t crowded at all. The place looked closed, but the hours posted on the door said that they opened at 7:00 a.m. and it was almost 8:00 a.m. There was a number on the door, I called it, just in case they were on the way or something. The phone rang endlessly, they weren’t on the way. Probably still counting all the quarters they ripped off from poor saps like me from the day before. My daughter’s fate was sealed, to school with wet pants she would go. I suggested she ask one of the coaches if they had a dryer on the couch that she could use to dry her clothes. Seemed reasonable, but I later found out the coaches weren’t trying to help me either.

I got angry all over again. Because not only was I not down with this goofy ass plan, but I was gifted the impossible task of completing it. “Hell naw I didn’t get to dry Raven’s pants this morning!”, I say. “Those stupid #@#$%^&**!! at the dry cleaners wouldn’t help me at all! And then I go to the laundromat and they were closed! Matter of fact….” I pulled out my phone and went to retrieve the number of the laundromat I called earlier that day. My wife looks at me with a bit of bewilderment while I hit re-dial on the laundromat’s number. “Who are you calling?” she asks, I hold up my hand while waiting for the phone to be picked up. It rings a few times, and they finally answer.

I hadn’t planned this far ahead, so I just kind of blurted out “What time do you guys open in the morning?” I didn’t wait for them to answer before I told them what their hours said on the door. “The door says you’re open at 7:00 am! Me and three other people were waiting to go in and spend some money this morning! Why wasn’t anyone there?”

The lady proceeds to tell me that they normally open at 9:00 am and that the hours are incorrect. “Well you need to update your hours immediately, because there’s no reason that you should have posted hours and not honor them!”. They didn’t care what I had to say, I was too angry to put together coherent complaints, and not angry enough to curse them out like I felt like they deserved. When it was over, my wife was laughing at the rambling, incoherent, idiot I was, which made me laugh too. What I just did was too ridiculous for words, and even though I know the person on the receiving end of that call gave less than two shits about what I just told them, I felt better having said it, and that was all that mattered.