I love my kids, I just hate parenting
About a year and a half ago, we moved to North Carolina. It was fun while it lasted but, as of tomorrow, we’ll be back in Brooklyn.
I guess, despite being a Red Sox fan, I’m a Yankee at my core. But, more importantly, Mom and Buried and I are city folk, and Raleigh just didn’t satisfy that part of us. So we’ve come to the end of the (tobacco) road.
It’s (not that) hard to say goodbye.
When I was a kid, The Karate Kid was one of my favorite movies. If I’m totally honest, it still is. I see it listed in the channel guide and there’s no way I’m not watching the tournament.
Growing up, I was so enamored with the uplifting tale of Daniel LaRusso’s war against the neo-Nazi community of Southern California that my parents thought I might want to take karate classes. And I would have, if I hadn’t been so terrified of landing in a Cobra Kai-type school with a Vietnam-traumatized sensei who would force me to be racist and do push-ups on my knuckles.
Come on, I was like eight years old. Which I thought was a little young for martial arts. Except almost 30 years later, my son is taking them, and he’s three.
My family is the victim of poor planning.
Like everyone else, we participate in the standard holiday season that begins in November and ends in January.Unlike everyone else, we also have a few more holidays thrown into that fall/winter zone. And I.m not talking about All Saints’ Day or Pitchers and Catchers day.
My wife’s birthday is in early November. My son’s birthday is in mid-September and happens to land on the day before our wedding anniversary, and my own birthday hits just a week before that, although, let’s be honest, my birthday is meaningless. Throw in my wife’s beloved Halloween and the Hallmark hell of Valentine’s Day, and from September until mid-February my life is a calendar-choked spending spree of forced romance and legitimately meaningful milestones that leaves me both physically and financially spent.
Like I said, poor planning. And this long winter is just making it worse.
Raising kids often feels like a contact sport. Or an endurance test. Or both. It’s actually more like 50 different sports all wrapped up in one. In short, it’s like the Olympics.
Maybe it’s not cross-country skiing, and it’s definitely not a biathlon (guns don’t kill people, terrible gun laws that allow people to easily kill other people with guns kill people), but it’s certainly something of a marathon. It might even be curling, but I don’t understand curling, so we’re sticking with marathon, and maybe some ice dancing (I don’t understand that either).
I’ve never participated in the Olympic games, but I have seen them on TV. A lot. They’re always on. And after years of being a spectator, I’ve come to the conclusion that the Olympics aren’t that different from having kids.
Just when you thought it was safe to turn on NBC, the Olympics are back. Again. I swear, ever since they started alternating the Winter and Summer games, it seems like they’re always on, or almost on, or were just on. They’re fine. Some of the sports are great. If there’s a real story –Read more about Zombie Post: Jumping Through Rings[…]