The JackB

"When you're in jail, a good friend will be trying to bail you out. A best friend will be in the cell next to you saying, 'Damn, that was fun'." Groucho Marx

Holidays

Purim 2008

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It is Purim 2008 and we just returned from shul. My head is pounding. It was loud. It was raucous. It was fun…until the kids melted down. We’re talking nuclear meltdown. Unusually loud and exceptionally long. Ok, it really wasn’t that long, but when you are tired time has a way of dragging its lazy butt around.

Purim is an exceptional holiday. It is one of my favorites which is why I always write something about it:

Purim
The “Purim Code”
Triage For a Goldfish- Resuscitating The Fish
Purim is one of My Favorite Holidays
The Boy Pummeled Me

As I look back at these posts I cannot be help but be struck by how many changes have taken place in my life. In a short period of time the world I knew changed…dramatically.

I can’t really say that I am surprised by any of it. Life doesn’t stop moving. You can’t stop time. You can’t go back. All you can do is move forward. But there is something very exciting about that. It is the tingle I get when I remember that life is what we make of it. Esther and Mordecai could have sat back and let things take their course. They could have watched, but they didn’t.

If I look forward I see the opportunity to do more than grab the brass ring. I can get the silver man. It just takes a little patience and the ability to remember that the world is not black and white.

Life can be fulfilling or it can be incredibly dull and distasteful. It is what you make of it. Purim is another reminder of that.

Enough of the Tony Robbins material. I don’t know about you, but I got suckered into taking the the kids to two Purim carnivals last weekend. They of course won more goldfish. And as expected the damn fish died today.

What a lovely prize. Not quite as good as the ceramic dogs they used to give away on Wheel of Fortune, but close.

Hope that you all had a great Purim.

Chanukah Night Three Notes- The Other Woman

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This is what you call an impromptu series. Just a few thoughts about Chanukah, 5768, as well as a sample of the music of the day.

Under Pressure– Queen & David Bowie

I feel like I am suffering from a bad case of cognitive dissonance or maybe it is just the icepick that someone stuck behind my left eyeball. A relatively short time ago we finished up a midweek celebration at my parent’s house. Thanksgiving revisited. The funny thing about it is that there were probably a third fewer people and it was just as loud.

“And you run and you run to catch up with the sun, but its sinking
And racing around to come up behind you again
The sun is the same in the relative way, but youre older
Shorter of breath and one day closer to death”
Time- Pink Floyd

My children are sitting at the dining room table trying to hold it together. They are wide eyed with excitement and anticipation. One of my brother-in-laws is busy goading them into getting into trouble. I stare at him…hard. We make eye contact, but he doesn’t recognize the sign for “stop revving up my kids or I’ll take your little Hobbit ass and throw it into the snow. He is a good guy, but when common sense was offered he took the pennies instead.

My mother is on fire. I don’t know why or what she is upset about, but grandma is clearly unhappy. It is not without precedent for her to be a little tense before company arrives, but usually that dissipates within a couple of moments. And for whatever reason I am absorbing her tension.

Inside my head I imagine that I am sitting in a dark room drinking some Scotch. B.B. King and Lucille are singing The Thrill Is Gone. Stevie Ray Vaughn makes an appearance and I am caught in a Texas Flood. I have some unfinished business in Dallas, so maybe it is appropriate.

My father and I have a series of code words, looks and signs that we share. Since I have 1,876,098 sisters it was developed out of necessity. There were just some things that the girls didn’t get and frankly sometimes it was better that they didn’t understand.

At some point in my teenage years my father made a crack to me about how the other woman was always making life more difficult than necessary. I knew what he meant, because at home if it wasn’t one woman it was another. Two bathrooms, but only one shower. It had its moments.

It kind of makes me think of Cosby’s routine about chocolate cake for breakfast. If you haven’t heard it before I highly encourage you to listen. As a point of reference if this post feels stilted or disjointed it is probably because I stopped to listen to it and lost my train of thought.

Back to the present. Dinner is good. My mother’s latkes are outstanding. I try not to eat fried food, but this is not an ordinary meal or day. I consume the equivalent of three pounds of potato and console myself by saying that I ate them plain. No sour cream, no apple sauce, nothing. They were so good there was no reason to wreck them with anything else.

Later on the kids reap the rewards of being part of a big family. There are far too many gifts. One of my sisters is way too generous. I need to speak with her about this. She can easily afford to be generous and she is, but it is too much.

A short time later I am buried beneath an assortment of discarded wrapping materials. My children both approach me to say thank you. Something must be sinking in. My son says that he wishes he could have been my brother because grandpa gives more gifts than I do. My father’s laughter drowns out my sputtered protestations to the contrary.

Headache or not, it was a pretty good evening.

Chanukah Night Two Notes- Gratitude

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Life always has its shares of ups and downs, but lately it seems there has been more than the normal turmoil. So I find myself searching for answers to questions that haven’t any answers. Ok, that is not true. I know the answers to many, I just don’t like them.

Frustration sets in so I head out to the garage to work out on the heavy bag. I turn on my boxing music. As you can guess there are a few standards. The theme to Rocky, Eye of The Tiger and The Contender are almost always included. Beyond that it is a bit of crap shoot. I have eclectic taste, but I need something that has a beat or provides energy, not to mention my mood. I’ll hit the meat of the post in a moment.

Here is an incomplete list of songs from my workout:

Girls, Girls, Girls– Motley Crue
Gonna Make You Sweat (Everybody Dance Now)-C+C Music Factory
What is Love?-Haddaway
Run To The Hills-Iron Maiden
I’m Too Sexy-Right Said Fred
Jump Around– House Of Pain
Dragostea Din Tei– O-Zone
A little less conversation– Elvis Presley
I Feel Love-Blue Man Group

It is another late night. Family obligations require my making several stops on the way home and as a result dinner is late. Needless to say this doesn’t make anyone happy. I take my son aside and say “kabed et eevecha” and he says ok. If you are not familiar with it, it is the beginning of the fifth commandment. In this case it is understood by my son as my way of saying that family “does for each other.” I look out for him, he looks out for me etc.

Still he is young and it is Chanukah. Kids and parents are both hungry and cranky. So we move through the night and take care of the priorities. The menorah is lit early in the evening, but gifts do not come until after dinner, homework and showers are completed to the standards set by the parents. For some reason every time we talk about homework I can hear The Who singing Baba O’Riley, specifically Teenage Wasteland. On a side note I enjoy The Blue Man group’s version too.

Eventually the tasks are taken care of and gifts are given. They are nothing grand. A couple of books, a pair of pants, a puzzle and a Batman wallet. We watch the children carefully because most of the fun is watching them experience these things. It is a little unfair, but I am aggravated with my daughter. She doesn’t like one of her gifts and she throws it on the floor. Granted she is 3.5 and overtired, but…

Moments later we send the kids off to bed and I follow them to talk about gratitude and why it is important to be thankful and appreciative of what we have. Some of the children they go to school with come from very affluent homes and frankly some of them have terrible attitudes. I won’t have it. I won’t accept this sort of behavior from my own children.

This weekend we’re going to spend more time sorting through old toys. It is time to speak with them again about how lucky they are and how not everyone has as much as they do. To ignore this and go about our business would be negligent.

Chanukah Night One Notes- Life and Death

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The esteemed RWAC set the tone for my post by turning me onto Life is Beautiful. I liked the song a lot, but these lyrics just grabbed me:

“I know some things that you don’t
I’ve done things that you won’t
There’s nothing like a trail of blood
to find your way back home

I was waiting for my hearse
What came next was so much worse
It took a funeral to make me feel alive

Just open your eyes
Just open your eyes
And see that life is beautiful.
Will you swear on your life,
That no one will cry at my funeral?”

Last night I found out that another one of my contemporaries has died. I won’t lie and say that he was a good friend. He wasn’t. I am not sure if I have seen him since we graduated, but it touched me. He was young. He was a father and he was taken too early. My understanding is that it was cancer, but I can’t say what kind. I just know that he is gone.

I am a bit dismayed by the number of people I know that have died. Look at my wedding photos. More than two tables are gone. But it is the number of people I know that should be in their late thirties to early forties that throws me. How many children have been robbed of a mother or father.

We had a rough start to the beginning of Chanukah. In part you could blame fatigue. The children were exhausted. They had a long and very busy day that left them overtired. By the time we lit candles they had managed to fight with each other over several silly things and left their mother and I pulling our hair out.

But just as soon as we began chanting the blessings I saw a change. The frown on their faces changed and their expressions changed. As I watched the reflection of the flames dancing in their eyes I couldn’t help but smile. Listening to my youngest try and say Shehecheyanu was worth the price of admission.

They received a few simple gifts and we talked about why we celebrate Chanukah. My son made me beam with pride as he recited the story. He understands that this isn’t some excuse to get presents. My daughter, not so much. But that is ok. At 3.5 I can cut her some slack.

Let’s be honest. Every time she crawls into my lap and puts her arms around my neck I melt. Deep brown eyes peer into mine. Sometimes she takes her hair and puts it on her lip and says “I have a mustache like you.” It is cute. But she still hasn’t figured out how to give herself a mustache and a beard.

And thus ends the tale of the first night.

I Was Protecting My Daughter

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If you spend any time reading this blog you know that I am not a fan of the holiday season and that given the choice I avoid the mall. The last thing I want to do is fight the crowds. The situation was further exacerbated by having to take my children with me.

Walking through the mall with kids is like walking blindfolded through a minefield. There is no way to get through it without getting hit with multiple cries of “Daddy! I want that!” No matter how many toys they have there is always that one that they must have, and then the other, and the other and the other….

So before we left I briefed them on the goals of this mission and how it was to be conducted. But if you ask any general they’ll tell you that no matter how well you train your troops there are always going to be surprises that pop up in the field. And sure enough we hit one.

We were upstairs near the food court. The goal was to buy a pretzel for the kids to split. A simple, yet effective way to keep a three-year-old occupied, not me, my daughter. 😉 And then the incident happened.

Let me set the scene. Music is playing. It is not the normal holiday crap. No, it is Tootsee Roll by The 69 Boyz. If you recall last week I blogged about Dancing With My Children. Well, when I heard the music I decided to try and make the kids laugh and started screwing around. Picture big goofy dad screwing around and two children laughing hysterically.

There we are bouncing around when all of a sudden I see this woman heading for my daughter. She is talking on a cellphone and is most definitely not looking at her feet and I just know that she is going to run my daughter down.

Presto-Change-O! Dancing Daddy is now doing his impression of the Secret Service. I take three quick steps forward and bend over to grab my daughter and pull her out of the way. Success! Ok, maybe not so much.

I have managed to pull my daughter out of the path of the oblivious shopper, but in the process I have placed myself directly in the path of one of the makeup girls from Macy’s. Because I bent over to grab my princess she winds up falling on top of my back and then as I straighten up she gets flung off of me.

With a loud oomph she lands on the floor next to me, plaid skirt splayed covering everything but what it is supposed to cover. Time stands still and all you can hear is my son telling us how cool that was and can we do it again.

I apologize and ask her if she is ok. For a moment she gives me the female look of death. I am tempted to explain to her that growing up with 1,987,093 sisters, a mother and having been married for 909 years has given me immunity but think better of it.

Fortunately she has a sense of humor. When I tell her that I was trying out for Dancing With the Stars she smiles and assures me that she is ok. As she starts to walk away with as much dignity as she can muster my son says far too loudly, “dad, her underwear was torn right up her butt.”

I did what I could to try and shush him. I told him that it wasn’t polite to speak about other people’s underwear, but he wasn’t going for it. “Dad, I hope that she did a good job of wiping her tushie or her mom is going to be really upset.”

Oy, as if the woman wasn’t already embarrassed, or maybe that was me. Either way it wasn’t good.

Now, do you see why I hate the holiday season.

Post Thanksgiving Notes

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It is just short of midnight and I am still kind of wound up. I am not sure when Thanksgiving turned into such a big production. I can’t quite put my finger on when it meant enduring a crazed marathon of chaos and cacophony.

Most years it is held at my parent’s house. It is the house I grew up in so it is filled with memories. I still venture into my old bedroom. My parents have turned it into sort of a den/office. It has a desk, a computer and a flat screen on the wall. Pretty different from the various posters I once had and the men at work sign I put on the ceiling. (Point of information- it was a construction sign that had nothing to do with the band.)

Sometimes I find myself wandering through the house looking for my grandfather. It is 18 months since he died and yet I still expect to find him sitting in his chair. Every now and then I am surprised that I haven’t heard him yell at the dog to get out of the way.

Speaking of the big lug it is times like this when his absence is even more noticeable. It used to be that you didn’t worry about dropping food. We didn’t care when my baby nephew through food on the floor because the furry vacuum cleaner would get to it before we did.

Some things have always been the same. My parents kvetch at each other about a few little things. My mom yells at my sisters about doing more to help and my dad tells me to stop aggravating everyone. With a twinkle in my eye I beg my father to send me to my room and he mutters something about disconnecting the computer and the flat screen.

Dinner is loud. There must 287 people stuffed around three tables. I try to sit at the kids table and am scolded by my six year-old niece for being too big. My three year-old nephew thinks it is great. He and his cranberry filled hands are only too happy to pat me on the back.

It is loud, really loud. I have a grandmother and a sister who wear hearing aids and a grandfather who probably should. One of the 929,983 kids turns on the television and 290,873 adults yell at him or her to turn it off. Instead of it being turned off the eldest nephew deftly turns on some kids show and now the 929,983 kids are assembled in front of it.

This raises a dilemma. They’re relatively quiet and occupied. Do we mess with the quiet and insist that they visit. They’ve been hanging out together since the day before, having all survived the sleepover at grandma and grandpa’s house.

My two remaining grandparents are relatively quiet. Just short of 94 it is clear that they are slowing down. They still interact with us all. They’re happy to play with the kids and want to know what is going on in our lives, but still, I see that they are getting tired faster than they used to.

In the kitchen my mother is yelling at someone. She is not really angry. This is her “I am really tired voice.” I suspect that one of my brother-in-laws has been caught trying to sneak a piece of pie before she is ready to serve dessert. He should have asked me for my assistance. I am an expert at smuggling a pumpkin pie into the service porch where I can sample the wares before they are placed for all to eat.

Suddenly I realized that my mother is yelling at me. She suspects that I have tried to use the BIL to do my dirty work. Note to self, mom hasn’t lost a step. She remembers all of my tricks so I need to keep coming up with new ones. In this case she is wrong so it is easy for me to smile and say that I am innocent.

BTW Mom, if you ever read this, I did get a piece of pie. Remember the pie box that looked like someone had accidentally dumped upside down, well you did tell me to take care of it. I shouldn’t admit this here, but that cool whip that you saw on inside of the box didn’t get there because someone dumped it. It was intentionally smeared there.

Amazingly enough the kids make it through the night with minimal fighting. Not too shabby considering how much time they spent together. My three year-old nephew is fearless and tried to take on my almost seven year-old son. Nephew didn’t fare as well as he thought he would. His big brother is very tolerant of his shenanigans. His cousin is not so tolerant, but was careful to try not to hurt the three year-old.

My daughter and niece beg me to play makeup and dress up with them. Thankfully there isn’t time. It is far too late and I take the kids home. But something tells me that tomorrow they’ll hit me up early in the day. Uncle Jack doesn’t look great in drag, but I wouldn’t want to disappoint the kids now would I. Maybe we’ll take pictures.

Then again maybe I’ll consider moving to cleveland. I am spent. Time for bed. See y’all in the a.m.