Man oh man has it been a long couple of weeks of blogging. I have so wanted to write so much. And if you are reading this now it means that I have finally caught up to this point on my blog. What that means is that three weeks of daily blogs have been added to my blog because I could not find the time to handle them as they happened.
My blog so needed love I could not give it. Glad it can’t divorce me because it would so have grounds.
Anyway, I am going to try to stay on top of things around here. Not saying I am going to. Just saying that I will try.
In 1985 I got really into skateboarding. I am not sure what it is that got me so into the sport but I really got into it. I also had gotten some of my friends into it with me so that we could all have something to do together. It didn’t take long for all of us to become enormous skateboarding obsessed fanbois.
I also became a huge fan of the Bones Brigade. So much so that my little clique of friends actually emulated the them down to my friend Jason Theil taking on freestyle skating a la Per Welinder and Adam Green skating in a lanky, gangly fashion like Tony Hawk.
The reason I was thinking about that is because of a totally raw out video I saw the other day. It is a video of Tony Hawk tearing it up on a freakish ramp doing things that really only a skater like Tony Hawk can do. What stood out the most to me was that I got into skating 23 years ago.
Side note: there is no way in hell I am old enough to have picked up a hobby 23 years ago.
Whatever the case, Tony Hawk was only 17 at the time and had just turned pro a few years earlier. He was bad as all get out back then, doing things that no one else was doing, including preparing for the 720 and doing a sick number of consecutive 540 McTwists. I remember watching Bones Brigade Videos and watching the guys skating streets, launch ramps, quarter pipes, half pipes and downhills.
In fact, the most memorable moment I had of the gang was the end of the Search for Animal Chin video when they finished up the movie on that sick back-to-back half pipe that had the inner cut away taken out for a spell and allowed pretty much the whole crew to skate at the same time while some were catching air over others skating through. It was sick.
The ramp had half pipes on the deck too, and the entire thing had to be 60 feet wide. It was awesome. Have a look:
Then along came this little gem. And I am taken aback. I knew Tony Hawk kicked butt. I never knew he kicked butt licked this. Prepare to have your mind blown to bits.
I so want to be this rad when I am Tony Hawk’s age. And if not… well, hopefully I can still find videos of him.
I am not exactly single. In fact, I am nowhere near that. No no, I am very married. But my wife, unfortunately, has been hit with a rather debilitating illness that renders her pretty much incapable of performing tasks that she used to perform regularly in the course of day.
What that means is that my workload has increased dramatically over the last few months. No longer can my wife spend time during the day doing laundry, washing dishes, teaching the kids, running errands, planning for and preparing meals, managing the finances and scheduling the calendar of events that is always exceedingly large in our house. And with these things being not done the onus falls on me to get them done.
Except I am not really in a position to take all of these things on in a given day. The reason is that in addition to taking care of all of the things that a stay at home parent (SAHP) would normally do I still have to work my regular day job (roughly 7:00 AM to 6:00 PM) in addition to client work I do on the side (which I usually work between 9:00 PM and 11:00 PM weekdays). Where in all of this do I get to take care of my home? Weekends? Not exactly, since I have to schedule client work for Saturdays as well. Sundays maybe, but only after about 1:00 PM since we usually go to church until then (unless my kids have a wicked strain of undying headlice).
All this leads me to one enormous question: how the bloody gripes do single working parents actually go about parenting their children while still managing the responsibilities of the home? I am finding this to be quite difficult and extremely frustrating as I watch my house get thrashed daily, my dishes get used but not washed daily, the laundry pile up daily and my kids go unparented daily. What is a parent supposed to do?
I am seriously feeling wholly inadequate to be a father right now. I feel like I am letting my kids down so bad. They hardly get to do anything. They never really get to go anywhere. They are almost as imprisoned in our home as I am. I feel guilty and I feel as though they deserve so much more than what I am giving them. All the while I am feeling less and less adequate as a provider as I watch my finances spiral out of control and continue to avoid certain telephone calls from certain 1-800 numbers that I am certain I don’t know.
If you are a single parent would you mind sharing some of your tips with me? I am fairly certain I am going to be into this situation for a while and would love to hear how some of the pros do it. I am at a loss to be perfectly honest. This is the hardest thing I have ever done in my life and everyday it gets harder. So any words of wisdom are much coveted and appreciated.
And if you can’t spare that, could you spare some babysitting time?
Yesterday, as I left work, I couldn’t help but notice how gray the air was. It had been smoky like this for a while, but not this bad. In fact, today it was so bad that it was not only difficult to see, it was actually a little weird to breath.
I could actually taste the air around me. It tasted chalky, smoky and dusty. My throat felt dirty and scratchy very quickly and my nose felt like I had been cleaning the garage all afternoon. When I opened my mouth to breath I could almost feel the air filling my mouth with particulates. It was a little disturbing to be honest.
Given the insane number of fires that the state of California is experiencing at the moment it is no wonder that our air is as unhealthy as it is. There are, from last I heard, about 1,000 fires burning statewide which have consumed about 20,000 acres of property. That is a lot of burning land.
Throw in the winds coming from the North, where some of the most intense wildfires are taking place and you can see that the recipe for tasty, smoky, charred air is well positioned to bring itself to everyone’s door.
An example of what I am talking about can be seen in the following image, taken as I walked out of my office yesterday evening. It is a photo of the Concord airport airstrip, which is usually plainly visible. Additionally, the trees behind the airfield are usually well within view, not to mention the huge range of hills just behind it.
On my drive home I noticed that something seemed to be terribly wrong with my view. The more I thought about it the more I realized, it was that the mountains that are usually so majestically plastered against the skyline were absolutely non existent in the current airspace. The sky looked like a foggy winter morning when it was indeed a warm summer evening.
My heart, thoughts and prayers go out to the people affected by these blazes. I am also praying for all of the firefighters that are upholding their oath to protect the public and are putting theirs lives at risk to make sure people are safe.
These are tough times for California. By most accounts we are entering into fire season about three months early and already we are experience more fires than we usually do in an entire season. Please keep the state of California in your thoughts while the brave men and women that are battling these fires continue to protect us even at the cost of the very lives.
More Pictures
On the way home, Southbound 680 in North Walnut Creek
More driving… I can’t help but notice no mountains
There should be more greens and blues in this picture
Usually at this point I would be seeing some hillside
Still not a hillside to be seen outside of the very close one here
I am a huge proponent of learning. I love learning. I believe that the only way to grow effectively in your life is to allow yourself to learn regularly.
But there are some lessons that, when you learn them, you almost wish you could go back and try to learn what you are learning a different way. Lessons like these make me not want to learn so much as get mad and cuss loudly.
Today, while I was in the shower, I noticed the shower started to back up. I didn’t worry about it too much seeing as this has had happened before and had actually corrected itself when it happened last time. So I got out of the shower and went about the rest of my very busy day without giving it much thought.
Later on in the day I checked on the shower and the water was still there. Plunging the drain was totally fruitless so I decided I would try some Drano gel stuff to try to break through the clog. So I headed for the drano and stopped along the way to move laundry down because of the many things I had to do yesterday, laundry was a priority.
Before too long I was back in the bathroom and pouring the remainder of the half full bottle of Drano into the shower. I then went back to work for my family by getting some meat prepared for cooking. A short time later I went to check on the shower and to my surprise I found my shower drain not only not draining but to the contrary, it was spewing water like a fountain. And it was not just any water. No no. It was Drano ridden.
As I stood in awe over the mess that was unfolding in my bathroom I began to wonder how in the name of all that is good and cuddly I was going to get this thing handled. In the time it took me to think of options my bathroom had about an inch of Drano water in it and the level was rising.
After some (brief) deliberation with myself and my wife we decided that a call to the plumber was in order. Can you feel a lesson about to me learned coming on?
I called the plumber and he showed up about an hour later.
Brief sidenote: Given my wife’s distaste for people seeing our house dirty I experienced a tremendous bonus… my living room, my hallway, my laundry area, my hallway bathroom, my bedroom and my bathroom we are cleaned in the hour or so before the plumber got to my house.
After looking at my blocked up shower and running two very brief checks, he determined (and I concurred) that my entire plumbing system for my house actually leads into one pipe. At the very least, the hallway bathroom, the laundry area and my bathroom all tie into a single drain. So he gave me two options: 1) he could go up on the roof and, using his electric snake, cable the drain through the roof stock vent; or 2) he could try to cable the drain through the shower. Of the two choices, the roof cabling, he said, was the most effective.
Of course the roof cabling fix would cost $225 as opposed to the less effective shower cabling process that would cost $175. Can you hear that? It’s the sound of a lesson not being learned yet.
I gave the plumber the go ahead to get on my roof and cable the roof stock vent. 20 minutes later, as I signed the credit card charge for $225, it hit me.
Why couldn’t I head to Lowe’s or Home Depot and rent a power snake and do this myself? Did you hear that? That was the sound of an expensive lesson being learned out loud.
Once my signature was on the contract and I had the yellow copy in my hand, my plumber, Rudy, made sure to tell me that if this ever happens in the future I could save myself some pretty decent money if I just head to Home Depot and rent a power snake. Did you hear that one? That was the sound of stupidity being confirmed after an expensive lesson was just learned. Thanks Rudy, that hurt more than just a little.
On the bright side I now know that if I ever have 20 pounds of hair clogging my shower, or for some reason my washer machine doesn’t drain, I don’t have to spend $200 on a 20 minute plumb job. I can just go to Lowe’s and rent a power snake for $40 and be on the road to clean showering once again.
Lesson learned. Just wish it was learned a little cheaper.
Today I had the pleasure of attending an anniversary party. I was a great party for a great anniversary. My aunt Connie celebrated her 50th wedding anniversary to my Uncle Manuel. Yep, you heard me. 50 years.
50 years is 17 years longer than I have been alive. It is half a century. It is five decades. It is enough time for three generations to pass. It is, in a few words, a long freaking time.
As I was at my aunt’s house I couldn’t help but wonder how many people nowadays enter into matrimony with their beloved with an expectation that their marriage will last until death. I think more people are of the mindset that they will stay married as long as the other person doesn’t screw up and makes them feel good about the marriage.
I know that views of marriage today are not what they used to be. In the 50’s, when you said “I do” that meant “you did”. There were not a whole lot of “re”marriages. Now it seems like you almost have to go through at least one to get to one that will work for you. It is a little sad really.
I would be remiss if I did not mention that I have had my share of questionable moments in my marriage. A lot can happen in (almost) 13 years. A lot of bad decisions can be made. A lot of nasty thoughts can be hatched. A lot of feelings can be hurt.
I can say, too, that I have never really wanted my marriage to end. I have considered what life would be like as a divorcee. I have considered what it would be like to be on the business end of one of those “it’s not working out” discussions. And I have totally contemplated being on the giving end of that very conversation.
There are no situations though in which I have actually thought about being single again. Am I weird for that? Are there people out there that really give marriages the level of priority it deserves?
Well, I know my aunt and uncle do. To you two, happy anniversary. No, wait, happy 50th anniversary.
Today was a day to end all days of soccer momming, driving, taxiing and shuttling. Wow. Did I ever drive today!
It started out not driving, but still having some responsibility to get things done for the kids. Blueberry pancakes was the order of the day and as is usually the case when pancakes are called for it falls on daddy to do. So I did. And they were you-uh-me. Or so I was told.
There was not enough blueberries for a full batch of pancakes to be made with blueberries. In fact, I was only able to make half the pancakes with blueberries. So I did. 22 total pancakes, 11 of which has the little blue orbs of goodness and juiciness that is the blueberry.
And with five kids in my house, two of whom are blueberry fanatics, you can imagine that 11 blueberry pancakes do not get very good mileage. So I had the regular ones.
After that it was time to start working on some technical stuff I needed to do for my clients. I was able to spend all of five minutes on that if I remember correctly. From there it was time to get the kids ready for their events of the day.
My two oldest daughters had a party in San Jose they were invited to. And I had to get them there by 1:00 just after stopping by the pharmacy for some meds for mom. I was a little late.
My two younger daughters had a party at 2:00 that they were invited to. Lucky for me I was a little earlier for that one. I dropped the two girls off and headed home by way of McDonald’s.
This is the part of the show where things get a little interesting. I had about four weeks of work to do today. My wife had a few hours of sleep to catch up and some preparing to do for a party she was going to tonight. My son was supposed to have slept during this time so both my wife and I could get done what we needed to get done (and no, we didn’t “do” that).
AJ decided to sleep earlier in the afternoon so the plans we had were shot straight to heck. But neither my wife nor I ever talked about what we were really planning on doing. To that end she decided to put AJ in the bedroom with me while I worked so she could go sleep on the couch. Except I did know she was sleeping on the couch. So I kicked AJ out of our room. Sandi called me out loudly and I knew it was time to leave.
I grabbed AJ and we headed out the door. I didn’t know where we were going to go but I knew Sandi needed sleep so I left. We ended up hitting up Big 5 and playing with boy toys for a little while. Then we left to go get the two younger girls whose party ended at 5:00.
Luckily we got home in time for the three youngest kids to say goodbye and goodnight to mom. She left a few minutes after we got home (looking hotter than ever I might add ).
It was just a few moments of quiet then it was time to head out to get the older girls from their party. It was about 7:20 when we left San Jose and one of the girls mentioned she was hungry. After a quick vote we decided that it was time to hit up Claim Jumper.
The events that unfolded at dinner tonight are totally for another post at another time. In fact, this is a great place to end this days recap since it only gets worse from here.
I will say that I had an awesome day with my kids today. It was busier than crud, but still awesome. Plus they got to get out of the house and see some friends. And I got to spend some boy time with my son.
Sometimes I look at my daughter Alaynah and think she is so grown up. And sometimes I look at her and know immediately that is still so four years old.
Man, it is so hard having a daughter be so cute. Seriously.
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