7/24/12
It's not all sunshine and lollipops when you're the stay at home dad. Don't get me wrong, there's lots of both of those, just not always. My wife needed to stay late at the hospital for some joint replacement talk or something equally mind blowing, and normally this would mean I enlist the help of another capable human being to soften the blow of the extra 3 hours of child care. See, I hit my wall at about 5 PM, and turn into a piece of shit. Semi literally. However, this time, I thought somehow I could manage this on my own, put both kids to bed and get dinner inside them with no hitches. Ha. Ha. Ha.
To kick it off, Miles wakes up screaming. Not like an "I'm hungry" scream or "change me" scream... this was more of a "The motherloving world is falling down on me and all I have is my own two shoulders to hold it up and now I have a charley horse" type of scream. After some coddling and prodding and a big pot with some water in it to play with on the kitchen floor, Miles was squared away. Now I needed coffee - pronto. Enter Isla, hair all over the place, rubbing her eyes. "Daddy - I'm starving and my tummy needs pancakes." Totally understandable, I'll get to the coffee in a second. Instant pancake mix, Minnie Mouse shape, ready to go - one side done and BOOM! "Waaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaah!"
Somehow Miles had faceplanted onto the kitchen floor, and was now screaming louder than when he woke up. I pick him up, dust him off, and notice that his upper lip is now 3 times the size it's supposed to be. Holy crap. I grab an ice cube and hold it for him to suck on for a minute when I realize that the kitchen is filling with smoke.... PANCAKE! Shit. Ok, that is toast, I'll just make another batch. EXCEPT THAT THERE's NO MORE PANCAKE MIX IN THE BOX. It is now 45 minutes after I woke up, no coffee, both kids screaming, the house smells like Charlie McGee got ahold of it (look it up) and I'm ready to quit. I still have 13 hours and 15 minutes to go.
Fast forward about 8 hours, because they're a blur anyway.
It's 5 o'clock, and I decide to get a pizza after Isla's soccer practice to eat while we watch movies until mom gets home - totally doable. Isla is starving and extremely vocal about it - Miles is just mad that I'm still nearby, so he's screaming in the carseat. The caterwauling reaches a fever pitch as I totally run the stop sign nearest the pizza place. I have no idea how it happened, besides the fact that my brain was trying to get to the building faster than my body and the car was allowing - but it was no big deal, as there were no cars around. That didn't stop Joe Citizen from approaching me from the liquor store with denim jacket on yelling "YOU JUST RAN THAT FUCKING STOP SIGN!"
Now I am not a man of violence, nor do I look for confrontation. However, I am not having a great day, and señor obvio over there has crossed some kind of line with me. I walked up to him calmly, in my beastie boys t-shirt and flip flops and said "You are not a police officer nor my father. GO the FUCK away." There must have been something in the bloodshot murderous gaze I was giving him that spoke a bigger truth than he could have come up with, so he went back inside to buy his Zima or whatever. I order the pizza and commence waiting. All I got was 2 small pizzas, one half cheese half pineapple, one jalepeño and mushroom. Don't judge. The pizza artists at this establishment made one pepperoni and one olive and bell pepper - I'm not even kidding. When I looked at them and asked what they had written down, the kid at the front said - "one half cheese half pineapple, one mushroom and jalepeño." as he WAS LOOKING AT THE PIZZAS. I was beginning to feel like this was either a twilight zone episode or a Tarantino movie and I was about to start shooting. After another wait while they made the right pizzas, and my children sobbed in the corner from hunger, this goober behind the counter hands me a diet coke and says, "here, it's on the house."
"That's really nice," I say, "may I have something different, I don't like diet."
"No, that's what I can offer you."
"But there's plenty of other sodas in the fridge, I can just grab a different one."
"Sir, do you want the diet coke or not?"
At this point I considered placing the diet coke into the anus of this kid with a bad Bieber haircut and movie 3-d glasses with no lenses, but I maintained a calm demeanor for the benefit of my children.
"Not."
Back at home, we watched a terrible movie, neither kid fell asleep, and when Tegan finally came home, I walked straight out the door saying - "I just need to take a walk or something." I had no shoes on. AH, and this will be repeated on Thursday when my wife has another staff meeting until 8:30. Pray for me, Argentina.
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