Puddintopia

Sometimes, life conspires against you. Sometimes you’re looking for the simple route, but the only decent road you’ve got takes the long way. Sometimes, no matter how much you want to do the right thing, you get nothing but a kick in the face.

Obviously, I’m talking about lunch.

I had a bunch of work to do today and, as is common when that’s the case, I decided to work through lunch. Yes, I’m sure there’s a bunch of reasons that’s a bad idea: mental fatigue and burnout and all that. But when the rubber meets the road and you’re staring a project deadline in the face, you have to decide if you really want to tell your five year-old that you can’t read to her at bedtime because you have work to do. Do you want to carry that guilt around because you pissed an hour away at midday while reading the latest Kardashian gossip online* while stuffing your face at your desk?

And no, quickly recounting the E! Online headlines to you daughter framed as a bad princess story does not make it okay. Quit thinking that you can just tell her the cautionary tale of the Spoiled, Wicked Step-Sisters Famous for…um…Being Famous or Goldilocks and the Enchanted Ankle Sensor. How about we take the high road for once?

Indeed, my decision was an easy one; I would be working while I noshed. The problem then was that The Voice really wanted a sandwich. It often wants sandwiches, because sandwich makers are usually enabling enough to offer a plainly ridiculously size loaf of bread jammed with meat. As I said, it’s not often that I order a reasonably-sized sub.

Size considerations were irrelevant, though, because while I do have sandwich options for lunch, they all involve at least a fifteen minute drive. The idea was to spend the hour working, remember? Sadly, in the immediate vicinity of the office, the food options are limited. Truth is, I kind of work next to the ghetto. Not smack dab in the ghetto, thankfully, but near enough that I probably have better access to a variety of high-quality controlled substances than I do high-quality take-out.

Of course, there are a handful of fast-food options, yes. But I do my best to avoid fast food whenever possible. I’ve done plenty of damage to my body in the past 37 years; the last thing I need to do is feed it fast-food value meals that are the caloric equivalent of all the food consumed in an average third-world country today. Why yes, thank you, I’d love a half pound of high-fat meat on a bun and a trough of fries. Can I get that delivered to Sierra Leon? Sally Struthers asked me to help.

Also, did you not read about The Voice? The last thing I need to do is go into any establishment offering a Super-Size/Royal-It/ Embiggenate option. The Voice never saw an up-size it didn’t like.

So, my choices were thus limited to mediocre Chinese take-out or mediocre Chinese take-out.

Surprisingly, I went with the mediocre Chinese take-out. The hot and sour soup isn’t bad, if you can get past the sensation of injecting sodium directly into your bloodstream.

IF nothing else, the Chinese place is quick, at least; I was there and back at my desk in five minutes. Upon my return, as I began to eat and work, I was struck with two odd thoughts regarding my lunch:

1. How is it that tiny little Chinese places have soup heated to nuclear-detonation temperatures? Every time I peel the lid off of one of those foggy plastic containers and slurp up that first spoon of hot and sour, the skin melts away from the roof of my mouth like those dudes in Raiders of the Lost Ark. I couldn’t make something at home that hot if I summoned every BTU available from my stove, oven, fireplace, gas-grill, and outdoor fire-pit and focused them into a single beam of Ultra-Mega-Jedi-Light-Saber Heat. Clearly, they must have a dragon keeping the soups warm in the back.
2. Why must the people working in the kitchen at tiny Chinese restaurants scream constantly as if arguing? I used to think they were pissed at each other, permanently. Probably for having to work with a dragon. Nowadays, though, I think it’s just how things work. Kind of like how the waitress at the Waffle House has to be in exactly the right spot relative to the cook to call the hash brown order or the scattered, smothered, and chunked won’t come out right. Likewise, if the General Tsao’s isn’t ordered with a threatening tone, it somehow won’t be spicy.

Unfortunately, my mediocre Chinese take-out was less than outstanding. Shocking, I know. It might have gone a long way towards actually being mediocre, but I ordered the Chicken and Broccoli, extra spicy. It wasn’t spicy. It was just chicken with broccoli.

They must have been having polite day in the kitchen.

But at least I got to read to my kids before bed.

Pud’n

An old friend that I used to work with in the way-back time (before there was a Puddinette or clean laundry on a regular basis) sent me an email today with a brief message. I’m sure he probably would have preferred to send me a text message, but I can’t send or receive texts (and yes, that’s another post).

At any rate, his message was delivered succinctly in just the email’s subject line: “They are leveling the old office.”

The place was one of those connected office condo-complexes where you’d usually find a dentist, a general practitioner, maybe an ambulance chaser, a CPA or two, and a few small, eternally optimistic businesses that no one really understood but continued to struggle on in the face of lost sales and disappointment.

We worked for one of those.

My initial reaction was not that surprising. Fitting was my first thought, which was quickly followed by long overdue.

Unfortunately, the place had been mostly vacant for a long time, and really, it hadn’t been very nice since even before then. The offices inside were a depressing combination of dirty tans, and I’m pretty sure the carpet was original when Nixon was in office. It might have been plush back when I was in elementary school, but by the time I started working there, it was pretty threadbare. Familiar paths of discoloration were worn into it so well that they seemed like runners.

My friend and I referred to the décor as Early Brady Brunch because it was that dated. So, yes, the place was pretty much a dump, and it made no difference whatever you tried to do to spruce it up. It was just unspruceable. The doors squeaked, the screen doors were hopeless, and the toilets were a permanent shade of something I’d rather not describe. And apparently getting the building owners to even change light bulbs in the outside lights was much akin to herding a deaf wildebeest into an active volcano.

So, yes, long overdue.

Except, that wasn’t where my thoughts ended. On the heels of that was a twinge of melancholy, and that took me completely by surprise. The place had become an empty husk of an office complex that probably had more teenagers hanging on the grounds at night than tenants during the day. And, honestly, the last stages of working that job had been one of most unhappy experiences of my professional life. There was truly a sour taste in my mouth at the end, so I couldn’t believe I was feeling nostalgic.

But although Time can be a thief, it also heals and provides clarity. I see now that things happened the way they needed to and that nothing could have been done to prevent the end when it came. That particular ship had been sinking for so long that we’d all just learned to overlook the water we were up to our necks in.

On top of that, something else occurred to me. I spent years of my life working in that office, and they weren’t all frustrating. There were good times too, plenty of them. We’d play after-hours games of Quake, frequently, and the smack talk would get as thick as molasses. When the weather was nice, we’d grill brats and JTM burgers for lunch on a Coleman camp stove on the little porch outside. Sure, the porch was terrible, but a steaming bratwurst with a dab of horseradish and mustard makes you overlook a lot of faults.

I grew up a lot through all my time in that office. When I started there, I was a wet-behind-the-ears know-it-all in my early twenties. When the end finally came I was nearly thirty and a little wiser, but only wise enough to finally understand all that I didn’t know.

A demolition company leveled that office complex today, and frankly, it needed to be done. The physical structure is probably nothing more tonight than a pile of rubble and rebar, drywall and dust. But the place will always live on in my memories; memories of gladness and pain, success and failure. Mostly, they are the memories of the period in my life when I truly matured out of childish ways and into the first faltering steps of real adulthood beyond.

Some part of that dump of a building will always be with me. And it makes me glad to know it.

Pud’n

Yesterday afternoon, I told my co-workers that the family and I would be checking out another dog today. I promised them that if it worked out, I’d be sure to post a picture of the newest addition to our family.

We’ll get to that in a minute.

On Tuesday last week, the last day before school, the Puddinette took the kids to a local animal shelter to visit a new potential family friend. She always likes to do something fun on the infamous Last Day of Summer before School, and that certainly fit the bill. Who doesn’t enjoy going to meet loveable new doggies?

Somewhat to my surprise, the Puddinette sent me an instant message after the visit saying that the dog seemed great, and that she loved the kids and they seemed to like her. Having been on the lookout for a canine pal for a while and having had one or two seemingly good matches slip through our fingers because someone else got to ‘em first, I was afraid to do nothing. Losing out getting a new dog is only slightly less disappointing than seeing your outlandishly tall McDonald’s swirly ice-cream cone do a header onto the pavement.

But…it was Tuesday afternoon, and since I’m a software engineer that pretends to write rather than an actual writer, I work a normal day like a normal person. For those of you that aren’t aware, Animal Shelters have some extremely flexible, work-friendly hours. Well, they’re work-friendly if you’re a professional welfare recipient or you happen to work nights. I don’t really fall into any of those categories, so getting out there to meet that prospective pooch between 10 AM and 4:30 PM on a weekday just wasn’t feasible.

So I called them to drop a hold on her and said we’d be there Saturday morning so I could check her out. Based on what we’d seen so far, I was optimistic she might be the one but still felt the need to make sure she wasn’t the kind of animal that would rip your hand off if you try to take her bone away.

There’s only room enough from one food Voice in our house.

So we waited out the week, and I spent last night with the usual fantasy visions of a devoted mutt panting happily at my heel while the wind whips through my hair on a bright, warm spring day.

I was even going to promise to eat my broccoli.

So, anyway, I promised a picture. Here it is:

.

(Thanks to Disney for letting me link a picture of Pluto; I look forward to the cease and desist letter*.)

So what happened? Well, we arrived at the shelter, giddy with the prospect of taking home a new pet. We found our new friend in her cage, and she happily licked my fingers through the metal.

Ah, she’s cute.

I knew she’d show plenty of shine for the kids while inside the shelter, but that’s really only half the equation, especially with a dog purportedly with some beagle mixed-in. So we asked the staff to take her for walk outside since I wanted to see how she would react out there, as well as whether or not the older boys would be able to control her on a leash.

Now, I’d like to tell you that as soon as we got her outside, we spent an hour playing fetch and the kids ran back and forth across the yard with her until eventually everyone fell into a heap of giggling and tummy rubs.

But…

Unfortunately, as soon as we got her outside, our new friend immediately lost interest in us completely. And I don’t just mean she start doing some sniffing around from the clump of weeds to a tree to the bush to the sidewalk. No, no. I mean we were instantly and totally forgotten; we might as well have been a heap of peas on a toddler’s dinner plate. That dog hit the yard and charged away from me so hard and fast that you’d have thought I was following her with a vet’s coat and a loaded hypodermic. She nearly pulled my arm off. My kids had no hope of controlling this animal.

I’m thinking she might do some fine work strapped to the Anheuser-Busch carriage, though.

At any rate, it took me about 16 seconds to realize that she just wasn’t the dog for us. Which was about 15 seconds longer than she needed to start making a run for the Mexican border. I can only assume she’s wanted in connection to drug trafficking.

Once we knew this wasn’t our girl, it took quite a bit of time to get her back inside without dragging the poor thing. I hope that whoever ends up adopting her has a good fence. A big fence. Tall. And strong. Otherwise they’re likely to find a basset-shaped hole in the side of it soon after they take her home.

So, anyway, today was not the day. Someday, we’ll find the right dog to share in our pandemonium.

For now, the quest continues.

Pud’n

*Just kidding, sweetheart. There’s no need to fear the Disney legal machine.

That post didn’t suck
How to follow it up well?
Haiku! *runs away*

It starts off simply enough; you innocently decide one day to start a family and sometime later you spend a few days in the hospital. When you leave, you have a wrinkled, helpless infant in tow and your life is changed in ways you can’t grasp, describe, or really even fathom.

And that’s just the beginning.

For reasons known only on a primal, conceptual level, you repeat the process until you’ve populated your home with as many rugrats as you can handle without a trip to Happy Acres Psychological Wellness Center.

And then they start to grow up.

You think the growing up is going to take forever. The minimum commitment, eighteen long years, seems a ridiculous amount of time. It’s so long that you don’t even have a frame of reference for it except for your own childhood and maybe an aging car that your grandfather started driving before you could form words.

And then you blink.

You wake up groggily one morning, closer to forty than you were to the drinking age when they handed you a driver’s license; closer to your retirement party than to the day some know-it-all kid with a face you barely remember (or recognize) was handed a Bachelor’s Degree with your name on it. You shower and shave, and go through the morning motions before walking the bulk of your family to the bus stop.

You watch with awe as your oldest steps up onto the bus without even a slight turn back. A seven year-old second-grader, he’s but a year removed from the third grade, which has always been the high-water mark in your head between a young kid and kid starting to find his own way. You suspect that’s because you learned to multiply in the third grade, and that’s officially the start of Serious Shit educationally, but a quiet, conspiratorial voice (you mostly hate) whispers that the kid on that bus is starting to find his own way already. Possibly just to spite you.

Your six-year boards next, asking his older, wiser, brother how far back on the bus he should sit. He’s a first grader now, a bona-fide real student, not like those part-time children whose grade is just a letter and have to sit in the seats with the butterfly-stickers near the front, by the driver. That fact that he gets to eat lunch at school, responsible for himself and his own tray, is the highlight of his day.

And then your five-year old daughter, your little nut-meg, who often forgets to take a breath when telling a story and is never at a loss for words, sneaks out of the bus line to steal one last hug from her Daddy before she takes her new pink backpack and her shiny new butterfly earrings (which match the school bus seat stickers!) out into the greater world without you. You think she’s going to be tearful, or at least somewhat hesitant to take that step without holding your hand.

It turns out that the only one tearful is you, and that you’re much more hesitant about her taking steps.

The bus fades away into the distance, and you shuffle back to the house with a camera full of pictures you aren’t sure you want to see just yet. And the house feels empty because there’s no one in it now but your wife and the only child not yet in school, a 23 month-old firecracker that’s happy to reply “Bear” when you ask him for his name.

You realize that the last time your house was this empty, you had barely taken but a couple of uncertain steps down the path to understanding what all of this would mean to your life. Then there was a blink of an eye, and now you finally see that the path isn’t half as long as you thought, and although you’re not even halfway there, the end is already rushing (much too fast) to meet you.

It’s a lot to process at 8 AM on a pleasant mid-August morning.

And it’s a lot to be proud of too.

Pud’n

As mentioned a few days ago, the Puddinette and I had a lovely Date Night on Friday, thanks to the tireless work of Aunt Babysitter (who shall, henceforth, be known in this space as Aunt Babysitter, regardless of whether any babysitting has actually taken place) as well as the fortuitous timing of a neighborhood blackout. As I said before, the wife and I enjoyed a lovely dinner at The Melting Pot, a restaurant chain that offers an interesting application of the fondue concept to a public hungry with the urge to dip skewered items into a bowl of various…stuff.

Admittedly, I was hesitant about this business beforehand. The Puddinette has, on several previous occasions, attempted to lure me into an evening of dippage, but I’ve always managed to weasel out of it one way or another. Honestly, it wasn’t that I didn’t really want to go; I do enjoy trying new things. And I honestly wasn’t that afraid that such an experience would have my Man Card revoked since I lost it months ago anyway.

The fact of the matter is simply that The Voice would have none of it.

Yes, I have A Voice; it tells me what to do – sometimes. No, course we’re not talking here about that kind of Creepy Leprechaun Voice that tells you burn things. It’s not that bad. My Voice just tells me to eat things. Lots of thing. Everything. It basically tells me all the wrong things about food.

A six-inch sandwich is plenty of food for a reasonable person, right? Well, except when I’m standing helplessly at the counter at Subway. That’s when the Voice says, very convincingly, that consuming anything less than twelve inches will result in my stomach collapsing upon itself long before the dinner bell rings. I mean, nobody wants that!

Does your wife ever take a bite of your food? A taste here or a sample there? Mine does, and I’m always perfectly happy to share. The Voice, though, whispers incessantly
that I need to bury my fork in her outstretched hand to teach her a valuable lesson about what exactly belongs to whom.

Twelve ounce ribeye, sir? Well, I suppose, only if you don’t have one big enough for a man.

Here’s the question: have you ever stood at the Chinese Buffet, your third plate in hand, stacking up the Kilimanjaro of Dumplings while snarling at the little old lady just waiting behind you for her chance to grab the lo mein tongs? I mean, I’ve never done that, no no. Clearly. Ahem.

And really, why the third plate anyway? After that much effort at the Dragon/Empire/Peking/China/Star/Jade (one of those word’s will be in the name somewhere) Buffet, continuing to shove soy-laden food down your pie tube is nothing more than an invitation to either a deep post-buffet nap, an afternoon in the can, or both. And you know it, too. I’m not the only one with The Voice.

“Another plate to get your money’s worth” it says. “Go for another eggroll,” it coos. And after all, what’s one more crab rangoon?

Well, besides indigestion.

The fact of the matter is that the Chinese buffet awakes The Voice of Food Doom in all of us. And that makes me a little glad. At least I’m not a gluttonous heathen alone.

So, when my wife suggested we have dinner at The Melting Pot on Friday, The Voice went berserk with rage, screaming in my ears that she was trying to starve me and that I’d waste hours dipping tiny, bird-sized pieces of day-old baguette into overpriced nacho cheese when I could be firing down a porterhouse. But this was the same woman that recently decided it was time to get a dog for the family, even though they occasionally shed. If she was willing to put up with a lifetime of dog hair for me and the kids, I figured I owed her a dinner at place she truly enjoyed. And she does truly enjoy the fondue fun – her family has some kind of genetic predisposition to want to dip things, but that’s another post.

So I willed The Voice to shut the f!*k up. And it did. And we had a lovely evening.

Of course, I’m not going to tell you that I couldn’t have fondued up about six more plates of bird-sized morsels had I put my mind to it. I certainly wasn’t stuffed to capacity. But in the midst of a wonderful evening with The Puddinette, I realized something important: the enjoyment of a meal doesn’t have to be measured in the tightness of one’s pants.

Sometimes a meal should be measurement in terms of simple enjoyment, and you don’t have to waddle away from the table for it to be a good one. Voice or no voice.

Pud’n

I am exhausted from my many weekend toils. It seems all the effort has burned the creativity right out of me.

Yes, as a matter of fact, I do realize that I suck.

The offering of theoretically entertaining wordage will resume tomorrow. Let us all use this time to rest.

And please, enjoy a haiku based on an office bet, compliments of the house.

Is this a real word?
nondisingenuousness
Someone owes me drinks!

Sometimes the Puddinette hates me. I don’t blame her; I don’t always make life easy. On occasion though, I make it hard by doing exactly what she wants.

Complicated, huh?

Here’s the thing: as a rule, I tend towards the shiftless laying about. I’m not the kind of guy that’s got to be doing something, anything, at all times. I have family like that, to be certain. My brother’s usually up from the dinner table before while I’m still contemplating how much more food I can eat before it’s officially gluttony.

Anyway, so the Puddinette is more of a doer. If she doesn’t have something active going on, you can rest assured that she’s frantically trying to come up with a list of reasonable daily achievements. For her, if you aren’t crossing stuff off a list, time is a’ wasting.

My philosophy, on the other hand, is that life should be full of stuff you want to do, not just the things that look good with a line marked through it.

As you can probably guess, her philosophy and mine aren’t exactly 100% compatible. If I’m happily lounging in my recliner on a Sunday afternoon, I’m typically staring down the Shiny Gun Barrel of the Puddinette’s Wrath. Accomplishment, apparently, is rarely achieved from a Laz-E-Boy.

Every now and then, though, I take a day or a weekend, and I bust that list up. All gangsta-style and whatnot. I’ll set my preference for leisure time aside and commit myself fully to getting things done. This weekend was such a weekend.

Yesterday, after the obligatory kids’ ice-skating lessons and the weekly hunt for Puddin’s Perfect Pooch, I got down to business. I trimmed down some voracious honeysuckle vines and applied the Roundup Kiss Of Death to our prospective mulch bed. I then put down and spread out fifteen bags of mulch, finishing just as yesterday’s torrential downpour arrived. Of course, I never guess enough mulch the first time, and yesterday was no exception. I’d be repeating the mulch task today.

So today, I got up and administered the kid breakfasts, because it was my turn and there shall be no deviation from the morning rotation. By 10 o’clock, I departed the house with older children in tow, and we procured another ten bags of pine bark mulch. Plus a push-broom, but you don’t care about that. Upon returning home, I put down our newly acquired mulch, which was accompanied by much sweating. And a little swearing just for good measure.

And then there was a shower.

Immediately following, we left the house for two golden hours at the local parish’s annual summer festival. These things, as a rule, are not my favorite place to be. But the Puddinette was raised on them and lest her family think me a complete ogre, I have made an oath to accompany her to one, no more, no less, festival per summer. So we spent two hours in 90+ degree heat letting the kids trade cash for lollipops. Well, ok, it wasn’t a direct transaction, I guess there were games played in the middle. But it sure felt like it.

When everyone was appropriately well-done from baking in the festival sun, we went home. I then donned a second set of work clothes and began the arduous task of cleaning our garage. Conveniently, just as I got everything out of the garage, today’s torrential downpour began. I’m just lucky like that. Two and half hours later, the garage was as tidy as a submarine leaving port, and I was again, damp.

And then there was a shower.

I’m leaving the house now because I’ve got a hockey game tonight. Upon my return, I expect to be kind of tired.

And then there will a shower. Followed by a full-body collapse.

The Puddinette, marveling at my massive list of accomplishments, griped that by me doing so much she felt as if she had done hardly anything. I made her feel a little bad; indeed, I’d made her feel like a shiftless layabout. And for her, that’s not something to be proud of. I say, Mission Accomplished.

I’ve done my weekend of excessive work. I’m solid now until January, at least. Bring on the NFL.

Pud’n

The Puddinette’s sister was handy last night, ready, willing, and able to do a few hours of babysitting for us so the beloved wife and I could have (yay!) a date. So we wiped the globs of applesauce off our faces, dressed ourselves up in some relative finery, and dashed out the door for the evening. We even managed to get away before the kids recognized they were being abandoned.

Well, actually, that’s not the case. In truth, they much prefer to hang with their cool aunt for the evening, since she gives them plenty of snacks and lets them stay up late. Typically, when we tell them we’re leaving and to be good, they barely turn from whatever fun activity Aunt Babysitter has already started, and give us a half-hearted, “yeah, ok, bye”. Basically, don’t let the door hit you on the way out.

I seem to recall having largely the same reaction to being left with a babysitter when I was young. The only thing better was being left with a grandparent, because Grandma and Grandpa usually start such evenings with the sole intent of spoiling their grandchildren as completely and thoroughly as possible. Paybacks, after all, are a bitch.

For out date, the Puddinette somehow convinced me to take her to The Melting Pot. I know, right? Fondue for real men is like the Lost City of Atlantis. Sure, it might be out there somewhere, but the Magic Eight Ball says, “All signs point to No.” I’ve actually got quite a bit to say about the dinner experience, but that’s another post. What I will say is that for a couple like the wife and I, who have a limited amount of time for Date Night fun and who would kind of, maybe, actually like to spend some time talking to each other, the place fits the bill pretty well. I mean, a movie’s great, and I heart me some popcorn, but you can’t really keep the intimacy fires aglow when you’re watching a compromise movie in the silent darkness of a theater.

Of course, because nothing we do is every simple, and because the Fates are amused by tossing curveballs at Aunt Babysitter, the power went out last night. In the middle of a clear summer night. Not a cloud in the sky. Over 85 degrees.

Luckily, by the time The Great Summer Blackout of Aught Ten began, we were already on our way home. The sister-in-law did a fabulous job of maintaining order in the face of the potential chaos of darkness, and we arrived to find all the kids happily shining flashlights into each other’s eyes. We thanked her for doing a fabulous job and put the kids to bed.

And then we weren’t sure what to do with ourselves. Normally after such a lovely Date Night, the Puddinette and I would go our separate ways to catch up on DVR’d television. Friday night, is, by and large, the only night of the week I have recorded shows to watch. But no power, no recordings, no TV at all. So we gathered our flashlights and candles, pulled out the box of Scrabble, dusted it off, and spent the next half and a half placing words on a board while genuinely enjoying each other’s company.

It was almost like being a couple or something.

Eventually, the power came back on, just as the Puddinette was beginning to yawn excessively. We finished our second game and went about our normal Friday night business, her to bed, and me to the Recliner of Eternal Comfort.

Usually, a power outage is an inconvenient pain. But when you’re married with four kids and Date Night time is at a premium, sometimes that blackout isn’t as much bother as a way to keep a pleasant night that might have ended too soon rolling on.

Sometimes, the man upstairs gives you a 90 minute time-out right when you need it.

Pud’n