Episode 158: FINALLY

Good news everyone, I did not go out to get a gallon of milk or a pack of smokes and never come home. I know you were all concerned that I had gone out on the lamb with some tattoo-covered, short-short-wearing chick in a wood-paneled mini van, dusting up the country side and breaking various local blue laws with my rebel-rambling ways. No, instead I was just toiling away in the purgatory that is Monica's Acer laptop with the 6-inch screen while I waited for this beast to be repaired after a screen-rocking tumble off of the arm of the couch a few weeks back. Note to self: buzzed vacuuming is detrimental to the health of small household electronics. Call off the search party, Joey Greco.

So, here we are. It has been about three weeks, it is 96 degrees outside, I have just downed a Red Bull and I am ready to write. Let's do it. Where to begin... Oh, ok. Yeah, Avelyn.

A few months ago I was talking to someone about how I thought the 'terrible two's' were a bit exaggerated. Av must have heard me have that conversation because she is seriously making up for lost time. There have been at least four times this week alone where I contemplated just handing her to the first police officer I saw and saying 'here, you deal with it.'

It isn't that she is a bad kid. It is just the whiny, bratty behavior that comes along with being two. She can pretty much say anything and put together complete sentences now, but instead of just not being a dick about things she is demanding, bossy and mean. For example. A few months ago mornings would go something like this.

Wake up around 7-7:30. Play in the crib, yell for mommy or daddy. Get up, change diaper. "What do you want for breakfast?"

"Ummmm. Cereal."

Done.

Now it goes like this:

Wake up at 6:15. Whine, yell, throw things until one of us gives in. Stand in the crib and f with us until finally we lift her out and change the diaper.

"What do you want for breakfast?"

"NO! NO BREAKFAST! CARS AND BLOCKS!!!"

(Just a side note, cars and blocks used to be a game where we would build tunnels and towns and buildings and then drive the Matchbox cars through them and knock them over and laugh. Now all it is is her playing with her Thomas the Tank Engine train set with missing parts that we bought off of Craig's list, breaking the track and yelling at me to put it back together. No fun).

At some point during cars and blocks she will yell/whine something along the lines of "I NEED CEREAL!" And then there will be a whole fight about how she isn't asking nicely and she can't have it until she does, at which point she will cry and scream until you threaten to put her back to bed, which brings more screaming.

There are also similar fights throughout the day that involve taking tubbies, eating lunch, brushing hair and cleaning up messes. So. Many. Messes. Seriously. I feel like we are in that weird transition where she is way to big for baby things, and she wants to use adult things, but she isn't coordinated enough to do it without spilling juice everywhere, knocking something over or just generally destroying everything that she touches.

I hate to say it, but since Monica has been home for the summer it has been more miserable than not. It isn't anyone's fault, it is just the terrible twos. Someone is always yelling or screaming or fighting or spilling or throwing or pooping. Av will piss one of us off and we will snap at the other and it is a whole thing. Some days I can't wait to go to work... Still, though. I always bring the milk home.

...

Perhaps the most positive thing going on right now is the fact that we are finally, FINALLY getting the hell off of Roslyn Street. Finally getting away from 2 a.m. fireworks in June, crazy neighbors fighting over stolen cigarettes, college kids drunkinly playing football in the middle of the road at 6 a.m., people hitting my car from all angles, getting contact high at 8 a.m. because my shower is over the crazy stoner bitch's bedroom downstairs, broken appliances, absentee landlords, clogged drains, convicted felons, half-way houses, dudes walking down the street pushing mattresses on top of shopping carts, stupid friggin taxi cabs beeping at all hours of the night, dog shit all over the sidewalk and W.H. Goodwin and his loud-ass, always working on his own house general contracting company. FINALLY.

I am willing to bet that most times when I am standing in front of the Walgreen's cooler, holding the milk, wondering where I can get a mini van, it is because of Roslyn Street. Now we have found a nice apartment on a tree-lined street in a duplex. It has a dishwasher and a washer and dryer on the same floor that we live on so I no longer have to swear and kick things because I can't get the overflowing laundry basket past the stupid damn baby gate that has to be up because we live on the second floor of an about-to-collapse building. FINALLY.

Perhaps the two most important things to me will be be the fact that I can purchase both a real grill and a real chair. These are really the only two things in life that I want (realistic things, I should say). I am a dad. I need a grill to cook meat on and a chair to drink beer and watch sports in. FINALLY.

...

All of this has inspired me to take a new outlook on life. An outlook that has landed me a surprising amount of ridicule. But my thing now is I am just going to try not to care. I am going to wake up, go with the day and try to do the things that make me happy, whatever those things may be. I will meditate, maybe try to be a bit more active. I have been trying to walk more to places and listen to more music. Both for physical and mental health. It is good to clear the mind. This is the new zen Dan. So far it is working 50/50. I still have a few kinks to work out. Life is confusing sometimes when you let your instincts take over. That is all for now.

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You knew I wasn't going to come back from a three week break without at least one BLack Keys song. If this song doesn't make you want to get it on you either have no soul or no sex drive.