How to make a bad thing worse….

How to make a bad thing worse….

I am not a fan of May right now. May 4, 2010 my wife got the word that her job was now located in Rockville, MD. We live in New Jersey, she works in New York. We would have to make the decision for her to take the job 300 miles away and uproot our two kids, age four and six, and start a new life in strange state. The decision had to be made by May 19. The very same day, we had scheduled to leave for the once-in-a-life time vacation trip to Walt Disney World.
Needless to say the two weeks have been jam-packed with nerve wracking decisions and emotional gut checks. Peaks and valleys of emotions --- How to tell my recently widowed mother? How to tell the kids? What will our friends think? Will we be able to sell our house in time to buy another before school starts in August? Also, we found out in the process that our house is now worth less than what we paid for it, after we spent over $100,000 to bring it into late 20th Century standards of living. With such, lavish amenities as a dishwasher, a paved driveway, a phone line on the second floor, and cable television. Do you see what kind of picture I am painting here? We did a lot of work to this house. I did a lot of work on this house.
Anyway, two 600 mile (roundtrip) trips to our new land opportunity later, we are grappling with when to put the house Kevin built on the market to sell… before we leave for our amazing family vacation to the House that Mouse built?
Now you must understand, by not putting the house on the market before, we are losing a very valuable weekend of house hunting in the all important Spring home buying season.
Now I swear, we spent more time planning this trip to Disney than we did planning our wedding and honeymoon. How would we see all the parks in the allotted times? Where should we stay? In the park or out? At an upscale resort or a moderate priced one? Do we bibbity-boppity botieuque for the girl or not? When can we have lunch with Mickey? When would we have breakfast with the fucking princesses? Can we see the cryogenically frozen body of Walt -- I’d like a word with him? Which of the 45 different Disney theme parks would we go to first? I swear to God, all of this preparation to listen to my two kids whine and bitch about having to wait on line for 30 minutes for every ride? “I am hungry.” “I want ice cream.” “I want a stuffed Minnie.” “Shut the fuck up—I want to stuff Minnie too. I want to fucking shoot her and stuff her and put her head on my wall!”
However, up until the earthshaking news of May 3 and the looming move to Maryland, we were all getting very jazzed about going to Disney. It will be Star Wars Weekend. My son’s head is going to explode. My daughter will never be the same. It is going to be the trip that memories are woven from.
As I write this it is 11:15 pm on Monday, May 17, earlier in the day I spent about two hours with a handyman neighbor going over all the things we needed to do to get the house ready for market. I also confirmed all our reservations for our visit to Mouseland. And I spoke to the super nice family that would take care of our dog – feed her, walk her, keep her alive. I have also spent the day doing the family laundry so we can take tomorrow before we leave, at 4:30 a.m. in the morning to make our 6:40 a.m. flight to the Magic Kingdom.
This fucking Disney trip was really becoming less of a vacation of a life time and more of a nuisance that was in the way of the big picture – Selling our house and buying a new one in time for our kids to start school in Maryland in August.
What is the worst thing that could happen to a family less than 32 hours before leaving for a trip to Disney? A family feeling the stress of a major move that will displace their children, uproot their dreams, and force them to start a new life, a family struggling to find a balance between selling their beloved house before or after the trip, a family that really needs to be home this weekend to work on the house and get it on the market to attack potential buyers, a family that has a little 10 pound dog named Maggie that will be staying behind to guard the house while they are Hoop-Do-Doing it up in Disney.. What is the worst thing?
No.. not somebody dying. That would be easy. Trip is off. Not a major illness, trip would be off. Not the house burning down, insurance covers that. No.. that worst thing that could happen is, ten minutes after my wife finished filling out the paper work to accept this new job and officially sealing our fate to sell the house, yes the worst thing that could happen at the point in time is for the fucking dog to get sprayed by a fucking skunk.
Yep…now the dog that will be left behind to guard the house and be walked by kind caring friends will smell like fucking skunk. And when we get back and put the house on the market, the whole fucking house will still smell like fucking skunk, because the fucking dog got sprayed by a fucking skunk.
Right now my life stinks, literally.

Storm Warning

It had been coming -- coming for six months or more. This storm was gathering. It was never going to happen. How could it? Well, even if it did, we wouldn’t do it. Would we?

Well, it came and now that storm is bearing down on us like a twister in a trailer park.

For the last six or so years, I have been a working bum, a jack of all trades, a man outstanding in a field full of women, a contractor, a carpenter, a book-keeper, a tender of wounds, the man that wouldn’t say yes, cleaner of rooms, keeper of secrets, scheduler of playdates, personal secretary, mower of lawns, scaper of land, volunteer, coach, homework inspector, arbiter of candy, procurer of groceries, chief, cook, bottle-washer, and last not least a changer of diapers.

I have been a stay-at-home dad.

My kids, are six and four. Girl is four and Boy is six. I used to write a blog about being a Stay-at-home dad called The Poop Truck. However, the kids got older and less cute, so I stopped. My wife is The Boss. (those of you who know me, know who Boy and Girl are, but in an effort to maintain some internet security I will refer to them as Boy and Girl, when we get together for our cyber-fireside chats)

I look at our lives like this, if our family was a company. The Boss would be sales. She brings home the money. I am head of research and development, and the kids alternate between employees and the product we are producing. We produce good, well-adjusted, well-mannered, humans which will someday have a great impact on humanity.

Management, which consists of The Boss and myself are responsible that our employees have the proper skills to someday be good products. (I know… kinda weird, but it makes sense to me, and I am the only one who’s going to read this. And to answer your question, the kids are not for sale....today, but I will entertain offers.)

Up until this week, our company has been rolling along quite well, thank you. Profits increased steadily; while our employees developed the skills need to do their jobs. Boy and Girl are doing well in school. They have friends. They are well-liked, sought-after friends. And our company has managed to team up with a number of other like minded companies producing well-adjusted, well-mannered humans.

The kids have friends, and we like our kid's friend's parents. School is great. Boy plays tee-ball, both myself and The Boss coach. Boy and Girl take Tae Kwon Do. Boy plays soccer, I coach. Life here at headquarters is really good.

But there is this storm coming.