Here is a short list of things I should be working on instead of typing away at the computer:
1) Thank you notes for gifts for my daughter. If I could email you all a general thank you and have you find it to be personal and meaningful I’d do it.
2) Fixing the side gate on my house. I have to go to Home Depot and buy a gate, some anchors, a 2×4 and a couple of hinges so that I can repair the soon to be completely broken gate. I like working with my hands and enjoy these kinds of projects. However something like this is going to take a while and at 7 PM it is way too late to start. For that matter I am one of those people who once I start a project will continue doggedly until it is completed or completely broken into so many pieces it can never be reassembled. So I’ll take this on next weekend or earlier in the day during the week.
3) Clean up around the house. Pretty self-explanatory really. The house is not ridiculously dirty or messy, but two young kids and 230 pounds of me running around have their impact on things.
4) Develop new technology we need. That is a very important task, one of the more crucial is determining how to build a tool/filter that automatically kills offensive odors. The elevator at the office needs this so that I can climb into it and not pass out.
There are three specific smells that I want to mention here, smoke, perfume and gas. Sometimes I enter the elevator and I feel like I am taking an impossible journey through a cigarette or some tired casino. It smells like someone smoked an entire pack in there and I hate it.
Perfume is really directed at women who haven’t the olfactory capacity to recognize that pouring a bottle of perfume on your body is not a good way to win friends and influence people. I don’t know if you are in dire need of bathing and trying to hide it. I don’t know if you have CP or MS and have such poor motor skills that you cannot help it. And I am not sure if you did so much coke in the ’80s that you cannot smell it.
What I do know is that you stink and I find it hard to breathe around you. Cut back on the bottle, put it down slowly and back away. It can be done and you may even find that you get dates with people, not just grungy men in dire need of their first blow job of the past 15 years.
And gas, well that does hit close to home. I have a a “healthy” digestive disorder that gives me the ability to compete with methane output of large factories. I try hard not to force the others in the elevator to breathe this, it is common courtesy. And I ask that others try to do so too.
If not I am happy to follow you into your office, close the door and fumigate it for you. It is a free service that I am happy to provide.
Ok, I have managed to waste another 15 minutes or so. I suppose that it is time to bear down and do some of the less enjoyable things around the house. I hate being responsible. Sometimes I’d like to stop being dad for a few minutes and be the bachelor again. There is nothing like living by yourself to give you some additional free time. If the underwear on the couch still bends you know that it must be clean.
Paper plates are all that you need, but a paper towel is even better. That ring around the tub is something to be proud of. It is like the rings you use to estimate the age of a tree. So many good things to say. But the truth is that I love being a father more.
My son and daughter haven’t any clue just how much dad loves to dote on them. I wonder if my parents got as much pleasure just watching me as I do with my children. My son is taking gymnastics. One of his coaches is named “Al,” but my little boy calls him “Owl.” I don’t know if it is because he thinks that it is funny or if he cannot say “Al.”
I do know that he calls my Aunt Rhoda “soda” because he thinks that is funny. Anyway, I like watching him show me the tricks that Coach “Owl” teaches them. And now, I am off to work for a bit. Back soon.