Give Me the Bat, Wendy

The first thing you notice when you walk into the house isn't the quiet. On the whole, Calvin's a relatively quiet kid. Sure there is the thumping of his feet on the hardwood floor, and the background ambiance of whatever video game is left going long after he has lost interest, but he's nothing like his brother who can be heard texting from different parts of the county.

No, with Calvin gone, the first thing you notice is the lack of tension in the room. The calm is palpable. Because there are whole minutes when nothing is vying for your attention, your mind starts to wonder, and it's not long before your head gets heavy and your breathing becomes deep and you catch yourself drifting off to sleep.

When we dropped him off at my mother's she asked if we had been planning to go to a movie. And in fact the answer was far less interesting. All we wanted to do is go for a nice bike ride.

That's it.

We just wanted to get out into the open air and tool around for a bit. We would have liked to take our little darling prince with us.

But no.

It's a tale of woe trying to get Calvin to do anything he has set his mind against. Only yesterday I had a little buddy and that little buddy has been replaced by a myopic teenage girl who can't be left alone in the house.

The crying , the whining, the complaining, the shopping list of things that are wanted and not readily available. He's hungry all the time except for breakfast, lunch and dinner and hasn't used the word "Please" since 2010.

So after our first attempt at a bike ride, I called my mom, for I was one obnoxious whine shy of setting fire to all of his toys, and begged her to take him for the rest of the day and night.

And thank god for that solace. Because, and this may not be true of all men, but for me there is a fine line between easy going cool dude, and "I will fucking kill you with a hammer!" and I had been inching toward that line all morning.

I don't think Jack Torrance was really all that crazy. In fact, Stephen King didn't need to bring in the ghosts. A few sit down dinners with my children is all it would take for me to chase them through a hedge maze with an axe.

And I can only blame the not smoking for so long. I just have to remind myself that an early and painful death is less statistically likely.

My mom, did however, label me spoiled for having the resources to drop him off somewhere on a moments notice. What would I do if she wasn't readily available, huh?

Suck it up and get through the day like every other parent in the world. But lets just agree that a mid-life crisis happens for a reason. No one gets up one day and just decides to tear apart their family unit, distribute all of their belongings in half, and throw the dice in hopes that some one else will consider them pretty enough to have sex with.

But she's right. I am spoiled. Is there anything that I have ever wanted that I wasn't able to get? Within reason of course?

Not really.

If I can't get it for the price that I want to get it at, I figure I don't really want it that bad.

A customer of mine drove up today in a shiny new Jaguar. All the regular folks went out to ooh and aah and I gave him a nice compliment on his choice of color (black), and wondered how much money I would have to have before I considered spending $75,000 on a car. Or for that matter, anything that isn't build on a foundation and has a roof.

And that's what drives me crazy about this new little leech monster that is occupying my third bedroom. Its "want" at all cost, all day and a few hours after sunset. There's no reasoning, just bargaining and acquiescing. Or the converse, yelling and punishing. There's no ignoring (you learn that one quick) and I've even gone the opposite where I've opened myself to full attention mode, which was like throwing kerosene on a grass fire.

So today I will just hide away in my room and write. Maybe later I'll go for a bike ride by myself.

Because all work and no play makes Jack a dull boy.