Last night was my birthday and I crashed (real early) from a hard...week of entertaining.
Kids. Everywhere.
In my class, engaging 46 students and teaching them becomes a Late Night Skit with no laugh track - although, oddly, I did get several applause yesterday. (Literally, I they laughed and cheered and clapped. I've had the laughs plenty of times, but the applause?)
AND they learned masculine, feminine, plural, possessive, demonstrative, indefinite, and relative pronouns in the process. Yes, there are way too many pronouns, at least 85 more whose names I don't know but pretend to do when teaching.
And then Kids. When I get home. Everywhere.
A wife mugging me to have a conversation with someone who she doesn't have to talk about wiping butts, putting wet pull-ups in the trash, washing hands with soap (soap! damn it), not peeing our pants at school. She wants a good-ole fashioned adult conversation. Once a proud AP student, and a High Honors graduate at the University of Illinois, she struggles to hold dialogue of any intellectual merit during the day.
So, when I get home, and she has her chance to speak to a real person (because kids are like fake little dirty puppet things that don't even know how to write the letter "h") this is what she talks to me about:
Wife: Easten isn't wiping his butt. We need to courtesy wipe him. I didn't think we had to but you need to see his underwear. Let me show you. It looks like he's literally shitting all in his pants and digging his fingers in his butt.
Me: It probably itches.
Wife: And Ember can't have her radio at naps or bedtime, because she keeps leaving her soaked, 20-lb pull-up in the middle of her room and not in the garbage like she's supposed to.
Me: Maybe we put the garbage in the middle of her room.
Wife: And Jax pissed so bad during nap today you could literally squeegee his pillow. His pillow! How do you pee on your pillow?
Me: I'm going to get a beer. Want one?
But I digress. Last night, the night I hit the Big 3-3, I was lights-out before the clock struck eight.
I crashed for a solid seven hours before I turned over and saw the clock.
The clock read 3:09am and my body felt like it had been pummeled with a baseball bat the entire seven hours I slept.
But I had options here: 1) go back to sleep and wake up with kids fighting, beds soaked, and Ember crawling in (or lately UNDER) our bed, or I could 2) Wake-up and have three hours of quiet.
Yep, I got up at 3:09 - made myself instant coffee that tasted like road mud (we were out of the regular stuff), and sat myself down in front of my computer. Rogue followed, laid at my feet, and wondered what the hell I was doing.
"Weekend, gaming, baby," I said. "It's just me and you girl." She obliged, and tucked herself under my desk.
My students love that I'm a gamer, and they want me to play Borderlands, and Call of Duty, and Battlefield, and Bioshock - oh and Deadspace, they say, is a good one. But, damn it, I tell them, I have three kids, a fried brain when I get home from Playing Conan O'Brien at school, and a wife who wants to talk about skid marks in underwear.
People, I choose my games carefully - because I don't have an eternity to play them. I have two hours and 19 minutes, starting at 3am, before kids storm the castle; angry, loud, and wanting chocolate milk. NOW!
By 3:17am I had loaded up the turn-based slash real-time strategy giant, Total War: SHOGUN 2, and escaped to feudal Japan. Good thing I'm not a real Commander, of real Samurai Warriors (or anyone for that matter) - because my reactions were slow. I sacrificed needlessly. I advanced too early when I should have held back. I exposed my flanks. Didn't provide cover for my poor bowman who were slaughtered in seconds by opposing cavalry.
At 3:29am, with Mud Coffee in hand, and a quiet house, I realized I was no Ender Wiggin. Just some tired teacher, an exhausted dad, and a man who had to poop from downing two cups of Instant Sludge in eight minutes.
On weekends I let Kristie sleep in, it's the least I can do - I'm up at three anyway.
By 6am the house was overrun, my flanks were exposed, and instead of the air reeking of the blood from my fallen bowmen, it reeked of urine and dirty kids.
I did the only thing a good dad could do to regain control of lost ground: I made them popcorn - don't worry it was all organic - and chocolate milk for breakfast. Next, I sat them in front of the television, put on an episode of Little Einstein, and followed it up with a two-mile walk to exhaust them.
(Even though, by this time, it was only 7am.)
The two-mile walk became one-mile, because, "Daddy, I really need to poop. Can we just stop and I go here?" asked Ember.
Ah, what the hell - it was a Saturday morning, nobody would notice.
Kids. Everywhere.
In my class, engaging 46 students and teaching them becomes a Late Night Skit with no laugh track - although, oddly, I did get several applause yesterday. (Literally, I they laughed and cheered and clapped. I've had the laughs plenty of times, but the applause?)
AND they learned masculine, feminine, plural, possessive, demonstrative, indefinite, and relative pronouns in the process. Yes, there are way too many pronouns, at least 85 more whose names I don't know but pretend to do when teaching.
And then Kids. When I get home. Everywhere.
A wife mugging me to have a conversation with someone who she doesn't have to talk about wiping butts, putting wet pull-ups in the trash, washing hands with soap (soap! damn it), not peeing our pants at school. She wants a good-ole fashioned adult conversation. Once a proud AP student, and a High Honors graduate at the University of Illinois, she struggles to hold dialogue of any intellectual merit during the day.
So, when I get home, and she has her chance to speak to a real person (because kids are like fake little dirty puppet things that don't even know how to write the letter "h") this is what she talks to me about:
Wife: Easten isn't wiping his butt. We need to courtesy wipe him. I didn't think we had to but you need to see his underwear. Let me show you. It looks like he's literally shitting all in his pants and digging his fingers in his butt.
Me: It probably itches.
Wife: And Ember can't have her radio at naps or bedtime, because she keeps leaving her soaked, 20-lb pull-up in the middle of her room and not in the garbage like she's supposed to.
Me: Maybe we put the garbage in the middle of her room.
Wife: And Jax pissed so bad during nap today you could literally squeegee his pillow. His pillow! How do you pee on your pillow?
Me: I'm going to get a beer. Want one?
But I digress. Last night, the night I hit the Big 3-3, I was lights-out before the clock struck eight.
I crashed for a solid seven hours before I turned over and saw the clock.
The clock read 3:09am and my body felt like it had been pummeled with a baseball bat the entire seven hours I slept.
But I had options here: 1) go back to sleep and wake up with kids fighting, beds soaked, and Ember crawling in (or lately UNDER) our bed, or I could 2) Wake-up and have three hours of quiet.
Yep, I got up at 3:09 - made myself instant coffee that tasted like road mud (we were out of the regular stuff), and sat myself down in front of my computer. Rogue followed, laid at my feet, and wondered what the hell I was doing.
"Weekend, gaming, baby," I said. "It's just me and you girl." She obliged, and tucked herself under my desk.
My students love that I'm a gamer, and they want me to play Borderlands, and Call of Duty, and Battlefield, and Bioshock - oh and Deadspace, they say, is a good one. But, damn it, I tell them, I have three kids, a fried brain when I get home from Playing Conan O'Brien at school, and a wife who wants to talk about skid marks in underwear.
People, I choose my games carefully - because I don't have an eternity to play them. I have two hours and 19 minutes, starting at 3am, before kids storm the castle; angry, loud, and wanting chocolate milk. NOW!
By 3:17am I had loaded up the turn-based slash real-time strategy giant, Total War: SHOGUN 2, and escaped to feudal Japan. Good thing I'm not a real Commander, of real Samurai Warriors (or anyone for that matter) - because my reactions were slow. I sacrificed needlessly. I advanced too early when I should have held back. I exposed my flanks. Didn't provide cover for my poor bowman who were slaughtered in seconds by opposing cavalry.
At 3:29am, with Mud Coffee in hand, and a quiet house, I realized I was no Ender Wiggin. Just some tired teacher, an exhausted dad, and a man who had to poop from downing two cups of Instant Sludge in eight minutes.
On weekends I let Kristie sleep in, it's the least I can do - I'm up at three anyway.
By 6am the house was overrun, my flanks were exposed, and instead of the air reeking of the blood from my fallen bowmen, it reeked of urine and dirty kids.
I did the only thing a good dad could do to regain control of lost ground: I made them popcorn - don't worry it was all organic - and chocolate milk for breakfast. Next, I sat them in front of the television, put on an episode of Little Einstein, and followed it up with a two-mile walk to exhaust them.
(Even though, by this time, it was only 7am.)
The two-mile walk became one-mile, because, "Daddy, I really need to poop. Can we just stop and I go here?" asked Ember.
Ah, what the hell - it was a Saturday morning, nobody would notice.
I love you Billings!!!