There are times when I just let my mind wander, when I have nowhere to be and nothing pressing to do. I’ve gotten better at writing down some of these random thoughts, these jaunts through my mind, wanderings of the brain. I’ve collected some here. After I reveal these, I hope you won’t think any less of me than you already do.
Sometimes when my daughter drops food on the floor then
picks up and shoves it in her mouth, I tell her “Gross, honey. Once if falls on the floor it’s dirty, throw
it away.” Then I watch the dog eat everything and anything that falls on the floor,
which happens a lot in a house with three kids. The dog never gets sick, not even after
eating a pound of bacon. Raw bacon. Seriously, she swiped it off the kitchen counter, ruined BLT night and she didn't get sick. The other morning while cooking breakfast, I
dropped a sausage link on the floor. I
picked it up, rinsed it off in the sink then put it back in the frying pan. A dropped grape I will throw away. A sausage link? I can’t lose that.
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| Heh, heh, you said "butt." |
When I ask my kids what they want to eat and they don’t answer, I tell them I’m going to make them butt
sandwiches. Sometimes they shout “No,”
and “Dad, that’s gross,” and then quickly they tell me what they really want.
One day I’m going to make them a butt roast (look it up, it is a real thing)
and I’m not sure they will believe me when I tell them we are eating butt
roast.
On Sundays, I just want one hour of solitude to read the
newspaper and drink my coffee without having to help children get juice, or
turn on the TV, or find their blankets or let the dog in and out out or whatever else
needs to be done in the morning. Some
Sundays, I set my alarm for 6:30am, so I can have that time to myself and every
time I do that, the kids wake me up before the alarm goes off. On the other Sundays, where I’m the first
awake and everyone else is still sleeping, the newspaper never shows up until
8am. I know I can read it online, but
then how am I going to get newsprint all over my hands, my face, my coffee cup and
the kitchen table? The smell of the
newspaper ink is part of the ritual.
Our Super Bowl party now has more kids than adults and no
one stays until the end of the game. So, it's really just a different way of us not watching the game at all, but now there is a lot more beer leftover.
Some days I wake up and I’m like “I’m the boss,” and I’ve
got these people working for me and I’m in charge and I totally know what I’m
doing.
Some days I wake up and wonder when they are going to figure
out that I have no idea what the hell I’m doing and how did I end up in charge
of people at all, am I as bad as Michael Scott, and remember when the only responsibility I had was getting my
homework done and my god, I’m so old what the hell happened, how did I get to my
forties so fast?
Looking back at my parents, they are a lot like I am as a
parent: they had no idea what they were doing, they were totally
winging it. I mean, at the time it seemed
like they knew everything but maybe that’s because we are trained to believe
everything our parents tell us. Well, until we are teenagers and then we roll
our eyes at everything they tell us and we go and learn things the hard way. I
can already see the conversation I’m going to have with my children when they have
their own children, and they are going through the same things all new parents go through
and they ask me how we did it. And I’m
not going to lie and tell them we knew what we were doing. I’ll tell them we just made it up. Sometimes you went to bed early because mommy
and daddy were tired. Sometimes the TV
got turned off because mommy and daddy didn’t want to hear it. And when you have your own kids, you get to
make up arbitrary rules for them to live by, too. Seriously, I had more training in driver's ed than I did on how to be a parent.
I also got into two car accidents in six months after getting my license
and I didn’t drive for a year and half after that, so, uh, maybe that isn't such a great comparision.But I haven’t screwed up the kids too much. Yet. There’s still time.
