Category: Parenting

  • Need to Get Outta Here

    Need to Get Outta Here

    I have been feeling a little stir-crazy in the apartment of late. Spring has arrived, we even had two days of Summer, and with the windows open, warmer weather, and everything turning green, being in the City all the time has started to feel like a drag. It’s time to do some travelling and see something new. Well… newish would also work.

    We are fortunate enough to have a car, and during the Pandemic, it was a lifeline as it allowed us to get out of New York, and see green spaces, or spaces that had no people so we could spread out. We even went through, what we can now define as, our hiking phase which took us all over the Tri-State area. But the wife has a back injury, so hiking has taking a backburner role in our life, at least until the wife gets her full mobility back. Yet, with the car, we can travel in the realm of day trips.

    That’s where I am at right now. I’m a bit anxious to get in the car and just drive up along the Hudson, and look at antiques. Maybe even a charming café would be nice. I won’t say no to a craft brewery, as I am a man of that age, and the wife can drive home.

    But what I really want is to just go. To move, get action, sully on to someplace. To be in motion and not feel static.  

  • Local Middle-Aged Man Buys Shoes from His Youth

    Local Middle-Aged Man Buys Shoes from His Youth

    This is a long story, but follow me here…

    So, back in 1992, I was a sophomore in high school, and the way my town ran their schools, 10th grade sophomore year was your first year in high school. As such, we sophomores were the new kids in class, and as such, we were all figuring out how high school worked.

    I had come into high school with this idea that theatre was going to be one of my things, as my high school not only had a proscenium theatre, but also a theatre classroom and a blackbox theatre as well. Now, let’s not get crazy here, this was still Texas, so the entire focus of the school was on football, and that got all the money and attention. Yet, for some reason, there was this little pocket of theatre in the high school, and I wanted to be a part of it.

    And as I navigated this new world of high school theatre, with all of the pretension and promise, one of the upper classmen, a senior whose name I no longer remember, told me as he looked at my Reebok high-tops, that theatre people wear black high-top Chuck Taylor All-Stars. I was gullible and desperate for approval, so clearly I had to go out and get a pair of All-Stars. To my mother’s dismay, as she had just bought me a new pair of Reebok high-tops for school, I had her take me to Dillard’s so I could spend my own money ($20) to buy a pair of black high-top Chick Taylor All-Stars.

    From 1992 to this day, I have always owned at least one pair of All-Stars.

    Now, the only change that has occurred with my owning a pair of All-Stars came in 2000, when I went to buy some, but the store was sold out of high-tops, so I bought a pair of the low-tops.

    And Thus! From 2001 to 2025, I have owned only black low top Chuck Taylor All-Stars.

    Except when I went shoe shopping with the kid the other day. As she was looking at a pair of pink All-Star high-tops, I was drawn to the black high-tops. More for a lark than anything, I tried on a pair just to see. The kid encouraged me to get them, as she hasn’t seen me in anything but low-tops her whole life. I had to make sure she wasn’t messing with me, like telling me to do something to make me look silly. But, my kid isn’t vindictive like that, so she must have meant it, that the shoes looked good on me.

    Funny how that guys comment from high school has stuck with me; He was probably messing with me when he said it.

  • ODDS and ENDS: Everything is Green, Son of a Clothes Horse, and Sick Kid on the Couch

    ODDS and ENDS: Everything is Green, Son of a Clothes Horse, and Sick Kid on the Couch

    (Who said that!? Not Me!)

    …And I hope you enjoy the weird AI image that was created for this post…

    Came out this morning to do the Alt Side Parking Dance, and discovered that our little car was covered in green. The wife had parked under a tree, and now there is a fuzzy haze of pollen all over the vehicle. Besides the fact that my allergies started weeping in despair as I felt my nose simultaneously running and clogging up, I also wondered how much pollen could this car collect? Could my car have so much pollen on it that if I drove around the City, even out in the country, it would act as a pollinator? I know the bees are dying off, but if push came to shove, couldn’t we just drive are cars around to, in a very basic rockbottom way, pollenate the world? Just an idea, cause there is a crap ton of tree pollen on my car.

    First of all, let me start by saying this very loaded statement; I love my wife very much. And as such, we tease each other often, as is our want. There are many things she makes fun of me over, but one of the most recurrent jokes of her’s is to call me a “clothes horse.” Going on twenty years, she’s called me this. Until I had met my wife, I had never heard this term before. A clothes horse is a folding frame used inside someone’s house to hang laundry on while it dries, or a fashionable person who thinks too much about their clothes. (I bet you can guess which definition my wife uses for me.) Most specifically, she will uses this term towards me on days when I have a sitting around the home outfit, a running errands in the neighborhood outfit, and then a third running around town outfit. Not that I do this all the time, but it does happen; I have been known to wear three different outfits in one day. So, I was home visiting my dad the other week, and I witnessed my father doing the same thing; over the course of the day, he had three different outfits he would put on. I had never noticed that, nor thought about it, as that’s just who my father is. Now, I clearly see the depths of the influence this man has had on my life, for I am the Son of a Clothes Horse.

    The kid was sick the other night. Like very sick, and throwing up. She was weak, and needed to be comforted, which I was more than happy to do. As she gets older, the opportunity for a snuggle starts to decrease, you know. But I noticed something as we were on the couch at 2am, hoping that she would be able to keep crackers down; That when she’s sick and on the couch in the daytime, I watch whatever she wants to watch – But at night, I make the kid watch what I want to watch. Nothing inappropriate, but it’s my choice. So, the other night, at 2am, I made my kid watch the MST3k episode “Cave Dwellers.” It’s one of my favorites, and to be honest, I wasn’t too concerned with what the kid thought, as she was nauseous and going in and out of sleep. The next morning, she was feeling better, still a little under the weather, but better. And to my surprise, she was making Cave Dweller jokes – like, “I fell on my eight sided dice,” “Gotta a Minute!” and “The tapes not queued up!” I couldn’t have be prouder to be her father!

  • Schlepping Days are Here Again

    When I first moved to the City twenty years ago, I was very fortunate, with the help of some very nice and generous friends, to get cast in a puppet show pretty much as soon as I set foot off the plane. At my first rehearsal, the director/puppet designer arrived in the studio carting a file box, a backpack, and a shoulder bag full of props and puppets. She then went on to tell me that she lived in Brooklyn, worked in Queens, and came into Manhattan for rehearsal. And being that there was no storage at the rehearsal room, she was forced to schlep these bags all over the City. As she put it in her sing-songy way, “Schlepping days are here again!”

    Currently, I am taking part in a schlep myself. When I pick up the kid from school, I have to bring her big soccer bag as practice is right after she gets out. And being that practice is also an hour and a half, I bring along my bag with notebooks, my computer, and other survival things. And when I leave the apartment with my bags to get the kid, I can hear that phrase singing in my head…

    Schlepping Days are Here Again!

  • ODDS and ENDS: Trains, Planes, and Roadtrips

    (Into this house we’re born…)

    I like the train. See, the kid’s soccer team has started practicing not too far way from the Metro North tracks on Park Ave. The team mets up in the early evening, so all the trains going by are for the rush hour heading out of the City. I’m not saying that I want to commute out the City everyday, but I do miss riding the train for work purposes. A long time ago, I would occasionally take the Long Island Railroad (L I Double R) out to the college I used to work for. On those days, I would be heading in the opposite direction of everyone else; They were coming into the City, and I was heading out. The train was sparsely filled with people, and I got a bit of reading done, or journaling. Other days I would just enjoy watching the City unfurl around me, and give way to Nassau County. It wasn’t the happiest time of my life when I was riding the LIRR, but it was a time that allowed me to be introspective.

    I hate airlines. Flying sucks, and it is not enjoyable. No matter which airline it is, they all blow. Flying today is worse than being on a crowed bus at rush hour. When we make vacation plans, the flying portion of the trip is equal to a hammer being dropped on my foot for three to four hours. The seats suck, the boarding sucks, the nickel and diming sucks, and the other passengers also suck. It’s amazing how the airline industry took something as fun and exciting as flying, and made it uncomfortable as a root canal.

    I love driving across America. And if I have a choice, I will always choose driving over flying. I like highways, and interstates, and roadside attractions. Dinners that are open late, and gas stations that have amazing local restaurants in the back. I like the sound of 18-wheelers passing you on the other side of the highway. I like naps in the backseat, and wondering what is around the bend. I love seeing America, who we are, and how we do things. I love yelling “moo” out the window at cows, and singing in the car. I love moving and discovering.