St. James the Dubious

I confess I never thought I was a very good father. I don’t know much of anything about kids, even after all these years of having a pair of great ones. However, I did have two rules that seemed like they were worth following:

• Get your kids to play with Legos
• Read to them every night

I started reading to Natalie when she was like 2 or something. I don’t remember exactly when, but it was picture books with like 3 words on a page. When Nicole was around that age I would read to both of them, a half an hour for Nicole, then a half an hour for Natalie. Eventually, the summer before the 4th grade, I read my last book to Natalie, it was one of the Nancy Drew books. She went off to Japan and read the next 50 or so. I kept reading to Nicole.

So for the last decade I have read to my daughters basically every single night. So many great books. A couple of months ago we realized that Nicole should probably start reading more on her own now, so after we finished the “Percy Jackson” series, we would end Story Time. I petitioned for one final book, and we just finished it about 20 minutes ago.

Girls, if you ever read this blog and are reading this now, I want you to know that reading to you has been and honor and a joy and one of my favorite parts of being your dad.

My mom said I’m beautiful on the inside. Turns out she was right, at least as far as my colon is concerned. I can’t say I was actually nervous, but it’s still nice to hear that everything is clean. They even gave me pictures to prove it, which I won’t be posting here.

The procedure itself was about as easy as it gets. Turns out I love anesthesia. They wheeled me into a room that looks like the ones on TV, with the lights and computers and doctors standing around. They put a warmed up blanket over me. Then they told me where to move my butt and the next thing I know I’m waking up in recovery.

The preparation for the procedure was really awful. Almost 48 hours with no food. I was actually kind of interested to find that the hunger pangs go away after a while. But that left me with a headache and dopey feeling. Anyway, Junko took me home and fed me two heaping portions of lasagna. Then we called out for Thai and I had a full serving of pineapple fried rice. Now my tummy is full again and I’m content.

Happy pooping everyone!

Many years ago, when I first moved to New York, I had to find myself a doctor. Not because I was sick, but just because having a doctor is something grownups do. I had no idea how to go about finding one, so I just grabbed one at random from the insurance list. It turned out to be something of a disaster. I think the guy’s nephew was working at the front desk, because he was just loud and unprofessional. He kept bitching about some delivery service. Then during my actual examination, the desk guy just walks right on in to get his lunch from a mini-fridge in the exam room. The doctor himself was a bit nicer, but at one point he couldn’t find his prescription pad so he accused me of stealing it. He also offered me a whole menu of erection medicine with a sort of wink and a nudge and a “these are great fun” kind of attitude. So yeah, not the greatest doctor, and I did a bit more background checking to find my next doctor (who was awesome). All of that is not really pertinent to the story however, except that doctor delivered one of the funniest lines in medicine. I was in my mid-30s when I saw him, and I was kind of questioning the whole point of seeing doctors. I mean they poke you and prod you, measure you, then send you on your way. I was never sick, never had any concerns, don’t take any medicine. Why bother? So I asked him as much and he delivered this gem: “Oh, it’s pretty simple really. In your 20s and 30s we build up a medical history. In your 40s we start to test that medical history. Then in your 50s all bets are off, we strap you down and stick things in all your holds.”

Well I’m not 50 yet, but I’m getting close. At this very moment I am prepping for my first ever colonoscopy. Get it? They’re gonna stick a camera in one of my holes. My family has been super nice to me, helping me make it as enjoyable as possible. Last night we went to a buffet that’s really close to home. It was Amazing! I mean the food itself was good (not like the best food ever, but good) but the sheer quantity of it was mind bending. Ribs, chicken, seafood, you name it. A whole table of desserts. And the place was full of families laughing and stuffing their faces, it was wonderful. I had 2 heaping plates of dinner, and 2 full plates of dessert. We called it “the last supper” as I haven’t been allowed to eat anything since. Now I’m fasting all day and overdosing on laxatives. My family occasionally asks me how the pooping is coming along. The hunger isn’t as bad as I thought it would be, but I am kinda groggy and with no real will to do anything.

Tomorrow is gonna be tough, the actual procedure isn’t until 2pm. So I’m gonna wake up, head into town to our apartment (yes we still haven’t sold the apartment, that’s a whole other story) and take the second round of laxatives. Still no food allowed until I head down to the hospital.

Anyway, that’s the update. It’s 5pm so I need to go mix up some “medicine.” I’ll see you all on the other side.

I tell folks this story fairly often, but I thought it would be worth writing down so in the future, long after I’ve repressed the painful memories, I’ll be able to experience it again.

So yeah, we decided to buy a home during one of the craziest years in home buying in the New York area. The news was constantly filled with stories about all cash offers for over the asking price, and other insanity. So really it was about the worst time ever to buy, but sometimes there are good reasons. In our case it was the impending New York City Middle School. We live in a neighborhood with a truly amazing Elementary School. However we do not live in a neighborhood with a good Middle School. So about a year ago we started talking seriously about moving out to the suburbs for Natalie’s 6th grade year. So regardless of the market or finances or anything else, we sort of needed to find a home.

Here’s how the process works. You set up a home filter in Zillow that will only display homes in your preferred school district, that have come online within the last 5 days. Why 5 days? Because after 5 days every home will already have a pending offer on it. So starting on any given Wednesday night you review the list and send the interesting ones to your realtor, who in our case was the nicest man in the Universe, Bob. I wonder if I’ll ever find time to write more about Bob. Anyway, Wednesday through Friday evening you send every good looking house to Bob, who will set up appointments to view them on Saturday morning. Then on Saturday morning you meet Bob, who will tell you that half of the list is already off the market. You can look at the rest of them and if there is any that you like (after your ten minute window of looking) you will ask Bob to submit a *full asking price* offer. This offer will not get you the house, it will get you on the list of interested buyers. This the buys you 24 hours until Sunday night, where everyone on the list will be offered the opportunity to make a “best offer,” which is just whatever stretch above the asking price that you’re willing to pay.

Sigh.

Anyway, it still feels like a stroke of amazing luck, but we managed to get an accepted offer on our home. Hooray. This was only the beginning of a pretty hellacious journey, which I might write about another time. The punchline is that we now have a home… that we can’t move into for another 9 months. During that time we’ll be doing some renovations. We got a designer to come up with some pretty great ideas for our bathrooms. Today I met our first contractor (we’ll get bids from 3) and he was pretty awesome. Oh, and we also had a new garage door installed today, which is awesome.

Just about a year ago I received my very first banjo. I thought maybe I somehow needed to commemorate the occasion by making sure to make a post about it. A common question I get is, “why the heck did you buy a banjo?” Well the truth is that I have loved the banjo for quite some time now. Then a few years ago I started joking about how the banjo was gonna be my “retirement instrument.” I saw myself sitting around on the porch as an old duffer, playing a banjo. Then the pandemic hit and some people seemed to pick up new hobbies, so I started joking about how I’d drive my family crazy by picking up the banjo. And then as the final step, my daughter decided to take violin lessons. That’s when I finally said that if she could practice an instrument in the house, then so could I!

So with new found enthusiasm, I hit the Internet to learn what I could. I was totally convinced that I was gonna get me a closed back 5 string so I could play some bluegrass. After a fair bit of reading, studying, and listening I purchased a 5 string open back so I could play me some folk. Funny where these things take you.

So like I said, that was a year ago. At first I kept my hobby a secret because I half expected I’d give up after a couple of months, but it turns out I love playing the thing. I never really liked playing the guitar all that much, but the banjo is a whole other thing. It’s fantastic. Simple enough that even without really knowing anything you can make some great sounding stuff.

So what’s next? Well I ordered myself one of these banjos. The price is eye watering and it takes 12-18 months for it to be made, but the down payment is pretty reasonable. So I figured I’d put a down payment on it and then when it’s time for them to start building I’ll see how I feel. So far I feel pretty damned excited.

In other news, I bought a house.

I don’t really want to write anything about covid or 2020 or all the unpleasantness of the past year. But I did want to write that I got my first shot. Seems like a pretty eventful moment. It was April 2nd.

It occurred to me the other day, that maybe this blog is actually for my daughters. It’s not really of any interest to anyone anymore, but maybe one day when I’m dead, they’ll be going through my things and they’ll find this and wonder about the person I was. This turns out to be pretty great, because it means I can write passive aggressive messages from beyond the grave when they totally piss me off. Because it wouldn’t really be the height of good parenting to tell an 8 and 5 year old when they break my heart.

To My Daughters: you may not remember this, but we live in a one bedroom apartment in Manhattan. Honestly we’re extremely lucky to be able to do this, not very many people get to spend their time in this great city. And as one bedroom apartments go, ours is pretty great. We’ve lived 4 people in this space for years now. However we’re running out of space because you two just keep piling up the shitty plastic toys. You really and truly break down in tears when we try to throw away the smallest thing. Today I took half a day out of work to help with the cleaning. I watched your mother throw out 20 years of scrapbooking work, 20 years of memories carefully cherished so you could keep your fucking LOL Surprise dolls. As for me, I threw out a model steam engine that my father left me when I was about 4 years old. I don’t think I have anything left from him anymore. I then spent like 15 minutes standing over Natalie trying to get her to throw away one measly stuffed animal. I finally gave up because it was heartbreaking watching the pain on your face.

I have on more that I’ve been saving up. There will come a time when you both enter the working world where you will break down in frustration and say “Can everyone please stop interrupting me so I can get some work done!” When you say this I want you to think of me, who has been working from home due to the endless Coronavirus pandemic. I want you to try to remember that brittle smile on my face after you interrupted me for like the thousandth fucking time in a day to ask “so how’s work going?” or maybe to show me how nice your sparkly head band looks.

I love you both very much.

When I was a little kid, my grandmom took me to the US Mint in Philadelphia. I loved it! It was a seriously cool place and I always wanted to go back. Well this past winter we finally got around to taking the girls to the Mint, and it was just as cool as I remember it. However this post isn’t so much about the Mint as it is about this amazing pair of pictures we got just outside the Mint. I guess really this post is about sisterhood. Here’s how sisterhood looks when your big sister is off somewhere else and the whole picture is just all about you

Pretty cute, huh? Big sister is off to the left, getting her picture taken in some other frame, so this one is all for Nicole. Sisterhood at it’s finest. Here’s how it looks when big sis comes to join you in the frame

Is that one tough to see? Let me zoom in on the important part

This picture kills me every time.

I have a secret, something I’ve never told anyone. I’ve had this secret for about 35 years now, which is pretty impressive I think. How many secrets get to be that old? For the past year or so I’ve been wondering who gets to know about it first. I decided I’d just post it here, because then it’s like telling everyone and no one at the same time.

So what happened about 35 years ago (give or take) that makes up this secret? I started to notice something amazing. I started to notice that my birthday is printed on cup lids. But not just any birthday, oh no, specifically it’s my 45th birthday. When I first noticed this I was shocked and confused. Was someone out there stocking cup lids specifically for me? Did other kids have their birthday printed on their cup lids? Was I being watched? Was there some kind of fancy cup magic that could detect and print the birthday of any kid that touched it?

The bigger question though, is why my 45th birthday? Why not some other birthday? I mean when you’re around 10 your 45th birthday seems like a year that will never come. What’s so important about that birthday that it made it worth printing so often? And it didn’t stop after I was 10. No I’ve seen my 45th birthday printed on cup lids my entire life, like this constant reminder that it’s approaching. When I turned 40 it no longer felt like some far off future. A couple of months ago I took a picture of it as proof, check it out:

Can you make it out on the lower left? It says 12/16/20 right there. And that’s this year! It’s coming up in just a few short months. After 35 years of waiting, it’s almost time. What could it be? I used to consider this kind of joke, but the way this year is shaping up, I’m actually kind of dreading it a bit. Like what fresh Hell is 2020 gonna throw at us after all this time? Well I certainly don’t know, but I’m curious to find out. It will be kind of weird when it passes. I’ve spent my whole life wondering what it will be like when it arrives. I’ll spend the rest of my life knowing. Let’s hope it doesn’t suck.

I wish I had more time to write in this thing. The family and I just returned from a trip to Italy and I’d love to write up all the stories, but there’s just no time for that kind of thing, so here’s the condensed version.

Many months ago Junko and I started wondering about what we’d like to do for our tenth anniversary. The obvious answers (an island in the Caribbean) were all much to expensive as it’s February. So we hit on a less obvious answer, Italy. Specifically, Florence. Not really sure what made us think of Florence, but it was probably an episode of that TV show, “Somebody Feed Phil,” or maybe “I’ll Eat With Phil” or something. There’s an episode where Phil gets a gelato at some amazing place, so we decided we wanted to get a gelato at an amazing place. So a plan was hatched to spend a day or two in Rome, then a week in Florence (with a side trip to Bologna for a day) then back to Rome for a night, then home.

So yeah, lots of great times, and lots of gelato… though it turned out that the place we saw on the TV was closed for the season. On the day of our actual anniversary we climbed the Dome in Florence. This was a fair amount of work, 400+ steps carrying Nicole the whole way, but it was an awful lot of fun too. The view from up there is great, and seeing the inside of the Dome was really spectacular. some of the other great moments from Florence (in bullet form because that’s how little time I have these days:

• Eating Florentine steak at a nice restaurant
• Eating deli food while sitting around the kitchen table with my family
• Taking Natalie to see Botticelli’s Birth of Venus
• Taking Nicole on the carousel every day

The original plan was actually to not take the girls to any museums because I figured they’d be super at art museums. Turns out I was wrong. Natalie chose to see The Birth of Venus, and we were happy to take her. Here’s a picture of her with it

So while it turns out that Florence was a lot of fun, the surprising thing for me was how much I fell in love with Rome. We stayed at the most amazing little boutique hotel that in the middle of everything. A short walk to the Angel Bridge, the Pantheon, Trevi Fountain, and just about everything else. The city is amazing. What I really loved was that just about every single street just begged to be discovered. Every little hidden corner seemed to house a cool little place to eat or have a glass of wine or a gelato. A truly amazing city, I can’t wait to go back.