Note: I wrote this last year when the girl turned 13 but I never hit publish. I don’t remember why. This week, she turned 14.
This dreaded day has come, Li’l Diva.
I’m not kidding myself. It’s the first of many scary moments in my future.
Your first date. Your first heartbreak.
Your first solo outing with the car. Your first prom.
Leaving for college. Moving out.
Marriage. Children of your own.
What happened to all the time in the world we had?
Even minor of atmospheric disturbances seem to cause a power grid failure in our slice of suburgatory. As such, I instinctively grab a flashlight when I sense a hint of a breeze or that a member of our household has consumed Mexican food.
These frequent and prolonged outages prove especially precarious to our family as Uncool Estates depends solely on electricity. Not just for lighting and refrigeration but also for heating (electric baseboards!), sewage (injector pump!) and sanity (Excitable and Li’l Diva are surgically attached to iPhones, iTouches and ¡Ay, caramba! who knows what other gadgets).
This spring, My Love and I agreed we had had enough of bad weather and the occasional burrito turning us Amish. We blew a few years of the kids’ college tuition on a standby generator: a 20-kilowatt-creating, blackout ass-kicking savior.
Or so I thought.
What follows is my official “Superstorm Sandy / Frankenstorm” diary:
Time to play “What the devil is going on in this photo?” in this week’s Fill ‘er Friday. Here is the bedeviling photo for the week:
Clue: That blur is me in the lower left corner.
Good eye! Yes, I AM wearing one of the free suits I got for a blog post two years ago. This must be a big event I’m at if I left my normal work attire of beer and baseball team T-shirts at home.
Yes. This photo was taken by My Love, who demonstrates why even despite my proven lack of shutterbugginess, I usually don’t allow her near a camera on vacation.
Am I leaving a court building for crimes against typing and headline puns? Not completely accurate …
I have only one thing to say about this photo I took in my local supermarket:
Rose Marie Gallace, you are not the brightest bulb in the marquee but, dang – do you have nice penmanship.
Thank you, VeriFone.
Thing 2’s Little League team started the season 0-8 this spring and the only bright side to that is that I’m not to blame.
You can look it up. My name is nowhere on the official league coaching roster.
I put in for the job but, as seems to be the case every year with our Little League, the folks on charge passed on me. They obviously aren’t aware of my work in the dreaded local youth soccer league where I have proven my obvious talents for coaching youngsters, a deep respect for authority and, most importantly, my patience to tolerate the little nosepickers week after week.
Instead I’m one of those dads. You know, the fun and helpful ones trying to relive their childhoods. I show up at practice in my old softball cleats, wad of top-shelf Bazooka in my cheek and a load of ultracheap Dubble Bubble in my pockets for the kids. I pitch batting practice, shag flies and try to impart wisdom about the finer points of the game like everyone lining up in parallel lines to play catch so an errant throws doesn’t clock one of your teammates in the back of the head.
I also try passing on the wisdom learned from my many years of playing ball. However, since I spent most of my time in high school warming up pitchers in the bullpen, I’m pretty much out of material once I explain the importance of a proper fitting protective cup.
One principle they teach in hitting is the need for the batter to shift his weight get more power into his swing. The best way to do this is for the batter to bring his hands back a bit before swinging to gather his energy and strength, as they note, like a cobra that is about to strike recoils before attacking.
You have to “go back to go forward,” they each repeat several times.
I’ve been thinking about that mantra a lot lately, but it has nothing to do with baseball.
I spent this past Wednesday driving 70 minutes each way to the children’s hospital with Thing 1 asleep in the backseat most of the way. In between her snoring and my skipping back and forth across the tracks of a Stone Temple Pilots compilation CD I made 10 years ago, we visited our local specialist to update him on her juvenile myositis flare.
While the rash on her body looks better, Thing 1’s neck and trunk muscles have grown weaker in the past few weeks even with all the IV steroids and other meds coursing through her veins. She’s not falling over when sits on the couch, like she did at her worst at the tender age of 33 months but she’s not quite the spunky tween I knew only three months before.
The local doctor consulted with our specialist in Chicago and they agreed Thing 1 should go back on methotrexate, the foul yellow liquid I injected into her thigh every week for six years. It was the medicine that made Thing 1 puke simply by me telling her it was time for the injection.
“Go back to go forward,” Cal Ripken Jr. said into my left ear.
Through all that Thing 1 has gone through since this relapse two months ago, the news of weekly injections was the first to bring on a full-fledged meltdown.
“No no no no,” she cried, bawling into a pillow on the couch. “I don’t want shots. No no no no no. Don’t make me get shots again.”
“It’s only for a little while, sweetie, it’s to make you better so we can get you off all these other medications.”
“No no no no,” she wept, refusing to pull her face out of the cushion. “No more shots, Daddy.”
Thing 2, like any little brother, is normally his big sister’s mortal enemy. But there he sat on the lounger across the room, his lips curling and eyes welling. Then he ran into the kitchen and offered to his sister the Whoopie Pie dessert he had been hoarding.
He even offered to take some of the shots for her. I think he would if he could, at least until he saw the uncapped 27.5 gauge needle in my hand.
“Go back to go forward,” Billy Ripken said into my right ear.
I wish I could go back, even if it was just to two months ago. We wouldn’t need to go forward after that. We could just stop time and live forever in the moment.
# # #
DONOR TO MATCH YOUR CURE JM GIFT
DOLLAR FOR DOLLAR
If you haven’t donated to help Cure JM Foundation put an end to this disease that Thing 1 can’t seem to shake, then I have good news.
A special donor has come forward with an offer to match every dollar our family raises between now and race day (June 25), up to a total of $3,000.
So your $3,000 plus the donor’s $3,000 would put us just shy of the $20,000 fundraising goal our family has set for this year.
What are you waiting for? Give to Cure JM now!
They say dogs tend to look like their owners.
You do.
Well, maybe it’s vice versa.
In either case, Murphy, Murph, the Murphinator, Murphilicious, sometimes Murpy or just plain Murp (because the first time I ever made a name tag for you, I inadvertently forgot the “H” in your name), you do your species one better.
Your girl has a relapse of her autoimmune disease, so you – dear dog – a few weeks later, you go ahead and have a relapse of YOUR autoimmune disease.
And your re-diagnosis comes, yes, on your birthday to boot.
Now you and your girl are on some of the same meds. Again.
“You hear that, puppy?” she says snuggling her rashy face against your pocked noggin. “We’re in this together!”
E.B. White once wrote:
"A really companionable and indispensable dog
is an accident of nature.
You can't get it by breeding for it,
and you can't buy it with money.
It just happens along."
You certainly have been an accident of nature, Murp.
And we couldn’t be happier that you happened along in our lives.
Happy 5th, my four-legged friend.
Now stop licking me there!
I mean it.
Quit it!
* * *
Throw Murphy’s girl a bone. Donate to Cure JM to support our family’s efforts to make sure no children suffers from juvenile myositis diseases ever again.
For St. Patrick’s Day, I will attempt some lovin’ in the oven in the form of a loaf of homemade Irish soda bread today.
If I’m lucky, the bread will be filled with plump, juicy raisins and doughy goodness. If I’m not, the house will be filled with smoke, firefighters and claims adjusters.
Come tomorrow, if the kitchen is still intact and so are all my limbs, I’ll be celebrating the big day by breaking in a new roasting pan with a slow-cooked, Guinness-and-Jameson’s braised corned beef. I figure if the meat turns out bad, at least I’ll be able to pour the drippings in a pint glass and have a nice toasty buzz.
I don’t why I’ve been into the whole St. Pat’s thing the last few years. Maybe it’s a deep longing to better understand my roots and find some grounding in this wacky world. Maybe I just have time on my hands.
Despite our Irish surname (What? You thought “Uncool” was Jewish? Oy gevalt!), we are the muttiest of mutts. Mostly Italian, some Polish, dash of German, a hodgepodge of odd middle European countries (My Love’s side, though they claim only to be Nebraskan, through and through) and, apparently, a touch of the Emerald Isles. At least in name, as no one on my side has any knowledge of an Uncool coming over from there.
My guess – a distant relative wanted by the law in his real home country gets off a ship at Ellis Island and steals the identity of an Irish hobo he found stowing away in the hold and later killed for cheating during a game of Crazy Eights.
Hey, why bother digging around your family tree when you can just pick up any of the unclaimed nuts on the ground around it?
Speaking of nuts, swing over to DadCentric for a debriefing on my vasectomy of many years ago, among other things, in “Birth Control: Your Balls are in Whose Court?”
Until next time, L'Chaim!
Dang it! I mean, Sláinte!
The muscles around the inside of my left elbow ached.
They ached with a steady pain that felt like a prizefighter had laid into me until his glove wielded to the fiber and tissue under my skin. It was a constant, weighty pressure, but I could move my arm without issue. Up, down, around, grab, push, pull, stretch.
I shook it off. Must have slept on it the wrong way, I thought.
That was in June.
In the weeks that followed, some days brought an ache mild and barely noticeable. Other days, my arm felt like a knotted beach towel being used in a tug of war.
After a few weeks, my index finger periodically started to tingle on the verge of sleep. Some days, there seemed to be some unseen swelling that put pressure behind the nail. Other times, it felt fine.
Doc Bollywood II (yes, a sequel -- the first Doc Bollywood moved elsewhere without even a word to her favorite part-time panic attack victim) initially diagnosed carpel tunnel related strain causing a pinched nerve. I assumed as much, having had a similar issue with my right arm a few years ago. That one lacked the pain but heaped on the numbness and tingling in my index finger. It took a few months to resolve itself, mostly with rest.
So I rested.
I popped Motrin and all its generic variations like vintage House on a Vicodin binge. On occasion, I’d dip into the special stash of codeine-enhanced ibuprofen My Love had brought home from a London pharmacy. Bless those wacky Brits and their socialized medicine! But even those happy pills didn’t seem to make much of a difference.
The pain remained, and started migrating like a drunken Canada goose. One day, my shoulder. The next, my neck. Then my forearm. The intensity and location changed daily.
I iced, I heated, I immobilized, I bandaged, I supported. I used enough self-adhesive heat patches that I would sometimes find rectangle patches of shirt lint on various places that I had failed to scrub hard enough in the showers.
I got massaged and chiropractored by professionals. I received electric muscle and nerve stimulation from amateurs (they are morticians by trade, so I hoped they may know something about treating the dead). This helped for days here and there, but the ache and tingling and numbness never completely left.
It felt worse when I sat. At the kitchen table, in the car and especially at my computer – something not being helped by habits of Web surfing, writing and rewriting, and, finally, tackling a feisty online program meant to help me do the entire layout of the Things school yearbook.
Still most days, I could ignore it enough that I could go about my business. Until I couldn’t any longer.
That’s when I started spending 30 minutes a night trying to adjust my pillows to minimize the pain and tingling, which had started periodically spasming from the back of my lower left shoulder blade down to my fingertips. Then I’d wake up at 3 or 4 in the morning and spend another 30 minutes trying to remember how I got into that first relatively pain-free position.
So last month, I shut down as much as possible. Limited extracurricular activities online – Facebooking, tweeting and, as you’ve noticed, blogging.
Nothing.
I finally realized I was past the point of helping myself when every time I Googled “arm pain,” the only thing that kept coming up was “you’re having a heart attack – seek medical advice, IDIOT!” and even I knew that wasn’t right.
So, I went back to Doc Bollywood II. I asked her to stick me in a MRI chamber so we could find the problem and get it the hell out of my body.
But insurance companies won’t let you do that without first seeing a physical therapist, she said.
Obamacare, I’m so disappointed.
Sixty-five tortuous minutes, my therapist P.T. Babem figured out every possible subtle and not-so-subtle way to aggravate my arm. Then she pulled out the rubbery yellow and red model of a spine.
“I think you have a slighted herniated disk near the top, right about here,” she said. “I think you’re not too bad off.”
So now for an hour twice a week and 20 minutes the other days, I’m stretching rubber bands, leaning through door frames, laying on rolled up dish towels and generally yanking my arms and necks in opposing directions.
And things seem to be finally getting better. P.T. Babem has put an end-of-March deadline on me being pain free. (“You have to be, because I’m leaving for a new job them,” she said.)
There you have it. I’m back.
Dear Little Girl I Used to Know,
You just started your first day of fifth grade. I know that in six hours this peace enveloping me at home for the first time in two months will again be pervaded by the forced studio laughter of the Disney Channel or the bubblegum reverberating from your boombox, but it will be different even though they are the same sounds we shared together all summer.
Today is your last first day of elementary school. You’ll have many more first days, academically speaking. There’s middle school and high school, definitely. Maybe a first day of college if I can ever convince you that reading is, while boring from the prospective of a 10-year-old fueled by the swooning pleas of Justin Beiber, still pretty essential to getting somewhere beyond definitively average.
But this was the last first day that I will ever walk you through those doors and into that alternative reality of homeroom.
The last one at which I’d personally hand your teacher a note about why your need sunscreen and a hat when outdoors while trying to quickly explain what sets you apart from all the other kids medically but pretty much not in any other detectable way.
The last one where you’d really be a little girl in more than just my memories. You and I and Mom all know this.
Middle school, sweetie, it changes a kid. Girls, especially. The meanest classmates I ever had were in middle school and most of them were girls. They say girls mature faster; I say they grow up too soon for their own good. We boys, we like to stay boys well past our due date. That, you’ll learn, can be a good thing. Within reason.
I wish I had a photo from your first day of preschool after we moved here. You were so excited to be with kids your own age again after two years of hanging around with nannies and nurses and doctors. You were only supposed to be in preschool for half a day, to get you acclimated to your new surroundings, but when I came to pick you up, you asked if you really had to leave all your new best friends in your whole wide 5-year-old world. So you stayed. Your brother, he cried when he saw me a few minutes later and pleaded to come home for lunch and a comforting heap of Nick Jr.
It’s been so long since I’ve seen you all pudgy faced and stuffed with the wonder you readily ate out of the everydayness of life. Remember that Disney Princess backpack from kindergarten? You transported a zillion paintings and drawings and scribblings home with you in that pink and purple nylon time capsule. You said you wanted to be an art teacher. I said even art teachers need to learn to read. You shrugged and Crayola-ed on.
This moment from the first day of first grade might have be the happiest you had all year. Through some quirk, not one of your 20-odd kindergarten classmates ended up in your new class. A bully refused daily to let you play “Family,” telling you you couldn’t even be the family’s dog. In class, several other kids always required too much of the teachers’ attention. You suffered for it. We laid on your bed one night way too late into the school year and you cried – one of the only half dozen times you ever cried from something other than physical pain. You hated school. Hated those kids. You didn’t fit in and you didn’t know why. I wish I had a better answer for you then. Or now.
And that bully? When you saw him on the playground, you put him in his place by chasing him around under the threat of being kissed. I laughed when you told me this then, but sweet thing, this was the first time you struck fear in my heart for the teen years ahead.
But note the crossed arms in the photo. The rebellion had begun.
By the next year, while your brother still needed to physically push Mom and me out of his second-grade classroom to make him feel empowered about the whole going-to-school thing, you wanted us out of sight as soon as possible. You stopped kissing me goodbye when I’d drop you off at the side door in the morning this year. Some days, I couldn’t even get you to kiss our dog goodbye.
I knew it would happen. I knew it would hurt. I understand it, though, and I’m over it. That doesn’t mean I still can’t miss the way it used to be.
And here we are. We had to bargain with you for this last photo. Mom promised not to talk to anyone once inside the school and I promised not to cross the homeroom threshold.
We have officially become the enemy that loves you from a distance so your friends won’t see and that loves you quietly so the world won’t hear.
Loathe us publicly as you must, remember we are still your parents and we are always there for you, our sweet little Pumpkin Head: then, now and forever.
Daddy
I’ve just mopped up urine in the foyer for the second time this morning. Dusty containers of tile and grout sealer, unopened and mocking, sit just behind the hall closet door.
Now, on to clean the couch cushions. Even in his urgency, Murphy followed his ancient instincts to lift his hind leg, high and proud, like he still holds his noble head on days the medication doesn’t leave him stretched sideways seeking the cooling comfort of the marble floor. You have your dignity, boy, even in the moments I know the shame drapes your shoulders like an anchor chain.
“That’s normal,” the veterinarian had warned. The steroids will makes him want to drink more and that will make him go more often. “Even if he hasn’t had one in years, he might start having accidents,” she said.
I’m hoping that’s not the only part of her prognosis that is right.
* * *
Let’s rewind.
It’s a June morning. Murphy is violently rotating his head back and forth like the Things do when I have the audacity to place a vegetable that is not a raw sliced baby carrot on their plates.
“I thought Murphy was sleeping in your room last night?” I say, turning to Thing 1 over breakfast.
“He was,” she says, “but he started shaking his head and rubbing his face on the bed and all over the floor.”
“Better than scooting his butt all over your sleeping face ...”
“Dad-deeee!!”
“So you let him downstairs?”
“Yep,” she says. On cue, Murphy pushes the side of his snout across the rug, his rump up while his hind legs perform a spastic box waltz around the dining room table.
Later, Murphy rolls on his back, eyes closed and paws up. He’s telling me, as he does too often, to stop staring blankly at the computer screen and give affection where it will be handsomely returned.
My hand reaches for his barrel chest and I notice marbled black lines around his mouth. I get him to sit up so I can take a better look.
His fur is thinning out along the folds around his mouth, and in a subtle patchwork all around his nose and eyes.
* * *
Our vet has vainly scraped the lesions that have recently ballooned on Murphy’s head in six different spots, abrading them until his blood seeps out. Her microscopes and mystery machines have found nothing. She sends us, via the winding backcountry roads to the north, to a dog dermatologist over the state line.
This is the animal hospital to the stars. Glenn Close calls in with a question while I’m talking to the receptionist. “Oh, Chevy Chase, Joe Giradi, they all bring their pets here,” the woman tells me. “Luckily, they just usually send them in with a housekeeper or something or else there would be a commotion.”
I imagine Chevy Chase bumbling through the automatic doors. He stops, takes a hard look at Murphy, and his eyes bug. He looks at me and calmy says: “I'm gonna need some pliers, and a set of 30-weight ball bearings. It's all ball bearings nowadays.”
Instead, the docs do biopsies, leaving three Frankensteinian stitches on Murphy’s face and a foppish blue Victorian collar around his neck. He’s the picture of pathetic.
And we wait.
A week later, I hang up my cell phone with a snap, then flip it back open and speed dial My Love.
“Hey, hun,” I say. “Looks like we have a daughter AND a dog with an autoimmune disease.”
* * *
You won’t find much on the Internet about sterile nodular pyogranuloma syndrome. From what we we’ve been told, it’s treatable if not curable. It just takes steroids plus time and patience in dealing with their side effects.
The scars are not overtly noticeable on Murphy’s face these days, six weeks since it all started, and his coat is a bit mottled but smoothing out. Missing fur notches the edges of his ears; it reminds me of the worn patches that decorated the ears of the stuffed rabbit I kept close to me at all hours as a little boy.
The neighborhood dogs he loved to romp with he barely acknowledges now; he’s either too tired or too embarrassed.
Yet there are a few flashes of his old self: chasing down a fly ball during my Wiffle ball games with Thing 2, following me every where I go in and out of the house, barking a good second before a stranger rings the front door.
Time and patience.
I’ll try to have the latter, dog, if you can promise me you will have the former.
+ + +
THING 1 STILL NEEDS YOUR VOTE
Our effort to win a $250,000 Pepsi Refresh Grant to pay for research to find a cure for juvenile myositis, the autoimmune disease Thing 1 has been battling for almost 8 years, isn’t over even though we didn’t win last month.
We finished 12th, high enough to qualify for a second go at the prize this month. After one day of voting we are fourth.
FRCKIN’ FOURTH, PEOPLE!
We need only to finish second to win the grant.
We –- me, My Love, the Things, even Murphy -- need vote every day this month. Go to the Make Juvenile Myositis a Memory application, click the "Vote for this Idea" then either vote by using your Facebook sign-in or creating a unique sign-in based on a valid e-mail address.
You can place a second vote every day by texting 100850 to
Pepsi (73774).
If Cure JM wins, every cent of that $250,000 funds research studies or pays the doctors and scientists who help children with juvenile myositis at "JM Centers of Excellence" the foundation has help set up in Chicago and Washington, D.C.
Blog, Tweet, Facebook, grab a widget (like the one I have at the top right of my home page) -- every little bit helps to get the word out. And vote!
Here is the widget code:
<iframe src="http://www.refresheverything.com/widget/?i=5cc97f04-a2e5-102d-b2ee-0019b9b9e205&w=250&mc=333333&mt=Thing%201%20needs%20your%20support%20every%20day!%21" width="250" height="255" scrolling='no' frameborder='0'></iframe>
If this piece reeks, blame aromatherapy.
Specifically, you should complain to my wife. She's the one who bought this bottle of Focus Oil, which its New Zealand maker says is a blend of bergamot, lemon and cinnamon that should "promote clarity of thought."
The label also denotes the essential oil mix is "'energising.'" Please notice the manufacturer uses a Kiwi-fied spelling to show authenticity of the product's origin. It also puts the word in quotation marks to indicate its marketing team either is trying to be folksy or is letting you in on the joke.
Whoa. Duuuuuude! You see that?
Filling our home with scents other than Windex (the cleaning people), spilled beer (me) and the funk of the unwashed (the kids) falls squarely on my wife. The origins of her relentless burning of scented candles and warming bowls of liquefied salad seasons remain mysterious, though I can offer three guesses:
Whatever. All I know is nowadays the rest of us have to live with the stench.
Yes, I said stench.
The occasional hit of lavender at the spa, in a bubble bath or on a laced-trimmed silken negligee as it mingles with a warm summer breeze rising with the musky essence of her … umm … uh … wait … (SNEEEEENX SNORT SNORRRRRRT … brrrbrrrbrrr) -- is heavenly.
But most every weekend, My Love pours another vial of Lavendula phewitreeksalotis or something into a porcelain cup on the kitchen counter and shoves a lit tea candle under it to smolder. For 16 hours straight.
When the wind's right and the windows are open, our neighbors must think we were running a renegade potpourri lab out of our house. The overwhelming fumes makes a guy want to head outdoors for fresh-air activities like picking up a week's worth of doggie doo.
Hold the phone.
That sneaky woman o’ mine!
Face it, too much of even a good smell can be bad thing. For example, back when I worked for a national homebuilder during the boom years, our salespeople would run a bread maker or a miniature cookie oven in the model homes to create a cozy, inviting atmosphere that would entice buyers. Look where that got us.
Home mortgage crisis!
Wall Street meltdown!
Unemployed communications professionals overusing exclamation points!
Hold it. Do you smell that?
It smells like … (SNUKUKUKUKX sniff sniff SNIIIIIICKERS) "the end."
optimism
Every few days when I’d stop by the store, whether it was to treat myself or the family (excluding the dog, who’s trying to kick caffeine), I’d reach for the handle then pause ever so momentarily to stare at this assembly of letters.
optimism
Who put this here? Why was it here? What does it really mean?
optimism
This vexed me for weeks, and weeks turned into months.
optimism
Do I interpret it at face value? Is it a whisper campaign for local band that covers No Depression alt-country? Was its placement just to the right of a computer printout taped to the inside of the glass warning that this door is locked after 9 p.m. a simple coincidence or a flailing attempt at irony?
optimism
Every time I saw that stupid word in its stupid black, stupider san serif type, and stupidiest-yet lowercase smirk, it irritated me like a rash of unknown origin. Optimism, my bloody eye.
Then, one day, it was gone.
I ran my fingers over the metal plate it had been affixed to and felt no adhesive tackiness. The baby blue paint that had always been beneath it showed no flaking or hint of discoloration to suggest anything had ever been stuck here before and pried off since.
It was like “optimism” had never existed.
At that very moment, I felt strangely angry with all of mankind.
Every time I entered that door to the coffee shop from then on, I looked at that blank plate and wondered why and how and to where my “optimism” had disappeared.
I did so again yesterday when I wandered in around 2:30 in the afternoon to order a Latte Lite.
“Do you want sugar in that?"
“No,” I said. “That kinda defeats the purpose of ordering a Lite.”
“Splenda?”
“No. No sweetener.”
The clerk disappeared around a stack of the industrial-sized, stainless steel deus ex machina that make coffee from this place taste so much better than what I brew from the same beans and water through the $200 coffee maker in my kitchen.
“Hey, uh, do you know what the deal was with the sticker that used to be outside by the back door?”
“Excuse me,” she said, reappearing with my coffee.
“For the longest time, there was a clear plastic sticker with the word ‘optimism’ printed on it that someone had stuck just to the right of the back door. It’s been missing for a couple of months now.”
“I’m sorry,” she smiled and shrugged. I figured her English was roughly as suspect as my question.
“Never mind,” I said, handing her a five for the coffee. She made change and I pocketed the bills before dropping the coins into the ceramic “tip mug” on the counter.
I made a quarter turn then hesitated. I reached back into my jacket for a dollar and let it fall on top of the coins lining the bottom of mug.
When I got into the minivan, I peeled back the lid to my coffee, carefully avoiding the sharp edges that had slit open a finger more than once before.
I brought the steaming, caffeinated cup of joy to my lips.
An unexpected sweetness hit my tongue.
I puckered. I winced. I eyed the cup like a deceitful spouse.
Yeah, that’s frickin’ optimism for you.
For more than 24 hours, I kept my morbid curiosity at bay.
Had I seen her on New Year’s Day 2009? Was she one of them?
Doesn’t matter.
Don’t look.
You have projects. Projects need planning. Plans need completing.
Was she among them? Was she among the many, many people who helped give the Things the time of their life that week?
I hit the “On” button anyway.
What is it that compels us to want to confirm these things? Why do we need to feel these faint connections that never really were there at all?
Human nature. Good, bad, ugly. Unexplainable. Sometimes you need to know, even if knowing means nothing.
(Clicking “My Pictures.” Clicking “2009.”)
That was an amazing week. From dawn to dusk to dawn again. Seven times in a row. The Make-a-Wish people had given us, especially Thing 1, an incredibly special treat.
(Clicking “Make a Wish” folder.)
In Orlando.
At Disney World.
At Universal Studios.
And at SeaWorld.
And if I’m right …
this woman …
is this woman …
is this woman.
I don’t know how to feel.
Do you?
The automated messaging system called to let us know that schools would be closed today because of the impending blizzard.
That call came at 7 o’clock.
Last night.
The Things, however, decided not to take chances.
Right before bed they continued their long-standing “vague hint of a snowstorm” ritual involving poor fashion and kitchen utensils.
Thing 2’s teacher also didn’t want to take chances. Before she dismissed class yesterday afternoon, she gave them the following action list that if -- and only if -- completed would ensure a thick, hearty snowfall overnight:
So if you are buried in the white stuff today, please blame my children. And our nation’s system of public education.
Then, use your non-shoveling time to read another snow-related essay of mine over on DadCentric called “Snow Brick Castles in the Air.”
First one there gets to use the neon green brick maker:
Even with my fuzzy vision, I could see that my optometrist had made a mistake last week.
The prescription for the contact lenses he gave me was actually weaker instead of stronger.
He double-checked his computer and shook his head.
"No, that's the right strength. You're sight has improved a little bit in your left eye," he said. "Put in the lenses and I'll show you."
I sensed I was being Punk'd.
Even though I have been told I’m a good candidate for laser surgery, I have never seriously considered it for two reasons:
Therefore, if not for the miracle of polycarbonate plastics and hydrogels, I'd be walking around with two corrective Art Deco glass bricks strapped over my peepers.
About 15 year ago, when my then-regular optometrist was on vacation or sick or possibly just putting his newly Lasiked retinas to the test in a poorly lit strip club, his temporary replacement decided my eyesight was not just poor but lopsided. Possibly fearing that I'd permanently pull to the right, maybe to the point of spinning in clockwise circles until I turned to butter, he jiggered with my new prescription to slightly weaken my stronger eye and slightly strengthen my weaker eye.
The result: I was slightly off kilter for the next six months. It was kind of like how I image Keith Richards feels all the time.
I got my prescription fixed before the feeling got too nice.
I'm not sure whatever happened to that fill-in eye doc but I sense he headed up to Alaska and set up shop in Wasilla, you becha!
When I moved a few years later, the new optometrist I had told me I had floaters.
Floaters are like optical space junk -- bits of useless material just kind of hanging around the ether. Most people have some (they look like little twisted and transparent versions of Plankton from "SpongeBob Squarepants") but they are normally cruising your eye's periphery and out of sight. When you have too many of them and they start interfering with your viewing of Gabrielle Anwar's short-short jumpers on Burn Notice, well then, you’re in trouble.
"Do I have them that bad?" I asked him.
"Oh, definitely not. But if they get that bad, let me know," he said. "You're eye might fall out."
Actually he said "your retina may detach" but that's not how my mind processed it at the time.
Back to my current optometrist. A little while back, he showed me a digital image of my eyes and pointed out some vague abnormality.
"If you ever start seeing flashes of light, call me immediately," he said. "Your eye might fall out."
"You mean my retina may detach?"
"That's what I said. What did you think I said?"
"Never mind."
"But the chances of this are pretty small. Maybe 1 in 10,000."
Odds, schmodds.
Thing 1 has an autoimmune disease that only about 3 in a million children in the United States are diagnosed with annually. Given this information from my optometrist, I now panic any time someone unexpectedly flips on a light.
I'm sitting in the chair last week and the good doctor is now holding one monocle after another in front of my left eye.
He's right.
I can see much better with the weaker prescription that the stronger one.
"Sometimes we doctors want to make our patients too happy. We want them to walk out of here feeling like we've made an immediate difference and we overcorrect,” he said.
I then apologized to him for being such a boring patient.
He looked relieved.
His patient before me, he said, was a young person with brain cancer who he’s been working with for more than a year. As he talked his voice wavered and his focus moved to something off beyond the walls of his office.
“Boring is good,” he said. “Let’s get you that new prescription.”
But clarity had already been achieved without them.
The first carcass appeared the day after New Year's in my neighbor's front yard.
The next morning, a second victim lay smack in the northbound lane of street outside my neighborhood. An elderly man inched his rust-colored sedan toward it, attempting to either drive over the dead or push its remains aside. The rest of us drivers looked on -- some in anger, some in disbelief, but none shedding a tear -- as we looped around this awkward dance.
The body count has grown considerably since then. I even added to the tally this past weekend, humming to myself:
"O Christmas tree, O Christmas tree.
Your branches brown and shedding."
Despite all the 
My Love delays this annual misery as long as possible because she hates to see all the festiveness she's hung, strung and displayed in our house disappear. Though I usually have my fill of snowmen singing "Winter Wonderland" in our foyer and shriveled poinsettia leaves crunching under my feet well before New Year's, I relent.
"The house always feels so empty after we've put everything away," she sighs every year, helping disengage my grip on the green snap-lid tote bins for another week.
We compromise with a day of undecking our halls sometime between the season's traditional end on January 6 (The Epiphany to Christians, Twelfth Night to the Shakespeareans) and the third Monday of the month (Martin Luther King Jr. Day to the federal government, Trip to the Indian Casino Day to My Love). Our lone exception is the miniature lights strung around our bushes and railings outside in accordance to the ancient proverb: Better to light a walkway than curse the dark ice.
My main role is tree disrobing and disassembly. Breaking down the artificial conifer in our living room always amazes me because, compared with my childhood memories of the 624 dangerously sharp metal and plastic branches on my parents' old faux tree, this one is a three-piece model of scientific ease. It even fits easily back into the mammoth plastic duffle bag it came with. This probably explains why JCPenney discontinued our particular model.
The live Fraser Fir in my office goes last. This year it was under-lit, owing to my switch to more efficient LED (or Less Exciting and Dimmer) bulbs, but it had lots of character.
The Incredible Hulk, Spider-Man, Cosmo and Wanda from The Fairly Oddparents and other cartoon folk to be exact -- all ornaments picked out over the years by The Things during the annual tree trip to Stew Leonard's in Norwalk.
Then there were the handmade trinkets from pre-school and school years past.
Popsicle sticks with glitter glue.
Die-cut foam and construction paper.
A few made of some strange hardened dough that unbelievably have never been discovered by the dog.
Back into plastic bags and boxes they all went. But not without me giving each a final look in an attempt to recall the initial excitement and wonder that holiday magic brings, only to disappear as soon the wrapping hits the trash bin.
This sentimentality stopped with the final closing of the bin, which for the next 10-and-a-half months -- along with a dozen other bins like it, several yards of artificial evergreen roping and many other seasonal items that hang, light or sing -- will be the sole occupants of our attic.
If, of course, you don't count the dust bunnies.
My wife and I then hauled the fir out the front door and set it next to our mailbox, where I see it now every day alone and cold.
So long, pal. Mulch luck in your future endeavors.
