I can explain away the break with a thousand excuses. I have less time since Lucas was born, I havent had a reliable computer in years (My tablet isn't charged so I'm currently typing this on my phone, which is more frustrating than you can imagine), I haven't had much inspiration and on and on. But if I'm being perfectly honest with all of you, I stopped writing simply out of laziness. I have two kids now so time to myself is much more limited than it was before. I started using the time I once dedicated to writing to do things like take naps, catch up on TV shows that I missed or simply sit down on my couch and enjoy the silence. All of this spiraled out of control and somehow we reached 2015, at which point I woke up and realized that I have essentially become a fat house plant who has nightmares about fictional characters in psychological crime dramas and sometimes wakes up at night not knowing which room of his tiny apartment he fell asleep in. I need to regain some semblance of purpose or every day is going to become Suicide Tuesday.
A lot of people find this difficult to comprehend, probably because you all have "real" jobs, but staying home all day with your kids can be absolutely soul crushing. You feel useless, tired, strangely lonely yet you're never alone.
You see people rushing to work, putting on suits and slacks and you envy their purpose. It is easy to forget that I am home because I'm keeping someone alive. I didn't get fired from Family Dollar for snorting Oxycodone in the stock room. I'm not on unemployment or welfare and I don't buy cigarettes from Eastern Market wearing a pair of Tazmanian Devil sweat pants, work boots and a wife beater. But sometimes, especially in the winter, it's easy to look out the window at all the commuters going to the train station and feel like I'm one bad day away from robbing a guy for lottery tickets.
Truth is when I had a 9-5 I hated that too. Of course, most of that was because it was a soull-sucking, 30k/year newspaper gig, but the point is it's easy to forget that raising kids is a job, and an important one at that. If only someone would pay me for it.
I'm not a social person, I don't do mom groups or playdates. I feel awkward around other people's children and even more awkward around the parents. So for someone like me, having a day where my kids are animals, the house is a disaster and I'm exhausted and broke can be really hard to deal with rationally. So my tendency is just to give up and let it all slide off. Wait til the kids go to sleep, make a stiff one and escape in to whatever is available On Demand (hey, XFINITY, I promise to talk about how great On Demand is in every post if you pay my cable bill). Don't judge me.
That's another thing. I have friends and acquaintances who are visible online, usually posting endlessly about how wonderful children are and how fulfilling their days have become. Smiling pictures of loving hugs and wonderful impromptu lunches at the corner cafe, musing about how truly life changing having a child is and how having their specific child has become a significant moment in the grand plan of the universe. I read these posts and some days I just say to myself "that's really nice, guy, but don't you ever want to just stuff those damn kids in a trash can and have a drink?"
Same thing with the God Squad upstairs. I never even hear their kids let alone hear them getting in trouble. My kids are always yelling, running, banging, breaking. Does this make me a horrible parent? Is Jesus the answer?
Let's not misconstrue what I'm saying here, either. I've got good kids, they're awesome and I love them. But sometimes I don't like them very much and sometimes- ok, a lot of the time- I lack the drive and creativity to have a super awesome dad adventure or a nice quiet creative Bible-based craft project and, honestly, that kind of bothers me. I just don't know how to not be tired all the time.
Anyway, We'll learn more about our 2015 selves as we move forward, but for now a brief catch up. Avelyn is almost six and Lucas is almost two. We call him Duke. He is significantly more well behaved and probably a lot smarter than Av and nearly as well spoken. He can count to eight and says almost full sentences already. He is an 85-year-old man in a baby's body.
Av is in kindergarten and we fight like she is 16. She is very curious and talkative. I can imagine she must drive her teacher insane. I do not feel bad for her teacher.
I am still responaible for these children during the day, which typically involves Av yelling at me before and after school, Duke pooping frequently and politely asking me for treats and me battling random bouts of anxiety, narcolepsy and childhood flashbacks. Every day is a roller coaster. Hop on, there's no height requirement. Having Duke all day can be a blast. We play trains and cars, we wrestle, run errands and snack. A lot. So. Many. Snacks. Also, Duke never wears pants. Like Murray Goldberg.
Monica still hasn't left me yet, which is good, because she's the one holding down the whole operation. I'm still a bartender at the same place, which has somehow gotten even more impossible to handle. But it turns out finding a new job isn't as easy as Step Brothers made it look so here I am. We have the same apartment but I DID buy a new car. I don't want to get too braggy, but I live the Mazda lifestyle now.
As always, I vow to be completely honest here. I'll try to swear less at the request of my father, but I am still a pretty big asshole so no promises.
As I mentioned, I've been catching up on a lot of crime drama lately, so I'll share my thoughts on some of those as well as my plans to finagle my way in to some sort of career as a brilliantly troubled mystery solving bad ass. Stay tuned.
P.S. I successfully typed this entire thing with an Android cell phone. There should be some sort of award for that. Or at least a nomination.
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I'd have some Deflated headache after typing that on a larger Apple
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