Category: Children

Oh, eat me. …

~ Patrick O'Grady ~ 9 Comments
“Phone appétit, monsieur.”

¡Basta ya! I embarked on a news diet yesterday. As in “fasting.”

Throughout the long Fourth I consumed exactly zero news, save for checking the weather to see if it was suitable for the healthy outdoor exercise.

And really, I could’ve just stepped outside for that.

But still. Shit.

The media had been keening without letup at a pitch that made an Irish wake look like sitting zazen. The Internet is said to be bottomless, the way a cup of joe used to be, but they came perilously close to filling the fucker up.

The fans in my 10-year-old MacBook Pro were approaching a Boeing level of failure. Every hot take a platter of steaming horseshit, smack in the gob. In my Father’s Bistro there are Many Dishes, I mused blasphemously. I sure as hell don’t have to eat this shit.

So I pulled a Level One Roberto Duran: “No más, no más.”

As mentioned in the previous post, yesterday I took my coffee on the couch, not at the desk. After breakfast Herself and I went for a short trail run. I followed that up with a 90-minute ride.

Then I set a loaf of bread to baking, poured the fixings for Sarah DiGregorio’s chipotle-honey chicken tacos into the Crock-Pot, argued with the Voices in my head about which of our many subscriptions we should cancel, entertained Miss Mia Sopaipilla, and served up the grub.

The three of us dined in front of the TV, streaming a couple episodes of “The Bear,” season three. (Spoiler alert: There was less hollering, even when Sugar was in labor.)

Afterward we joined the neighbors for their annual fireworks extravaganza in the cul-de-sac. No flyers or boomers, just ground-level sparklers and sizzlers. But an enjoyable tradition nonetheless.

One of the grandkids was leaping and cavorting throughout, trying to grab a handful of smoke, as grandpa performed his pyrotechnical wizardry. I caught my share of the exhaust while sitting down, in my clothing, eyes, and windpipe, and both Herself and I had to hit the showers afterward to hose off the residue of whatever those wily foreign devils put in their whizbangs.

The Republic I left to its own devices. I expect there was no shortage of counsel, and plenty of fireworks, too.

• Meanwhile, a housekeeping note: If any of you have tried and failed to post a comment recently, and you are using an Apple device, the problem may reside with the Safari browser. Herself was able to comment from an M1 Mac Mini using Firefox. I’ve pinged the WordPress people and will get back to you with whatever they have to say. But in the meantime, you might try using another browser to make your voices heard.

Offsprung

~ Patrick O'Grady ~ 37 Comments

“Sorry, but I don’t want to go to college.”

I was just scratching Miss Mia Sopaipilla behind the ears while watching a ladder-backed woodpecker tend to his knothole in the backyard maple and thinking how fortunate I am to have been blessed with zero offspring.

That I am aware of, anyway.

My mother laid a powerful curse on me early on. You know the one.

“I hope that someday you have a son and he’s just like you.”

Ouch. I knew I’d get dealt one of those, too, straight from the bottom of the Devil’s deck.

And by “just like you” Mom didn’t mean a smartass beer-addled dope-fiend college-dropout hippie layabout. No, she meant the exact opposite of whatever it was I had been hoping for, sprinkled with a hefty pinch of my own least attractive qualities, which were numerous.

For openers: A son? No, thank you, please. Smelly little dick-twiddlers who hide nose boogers under every horizontal surface when they’re not busy lighting fires in the crawl space.

Plus you know you’re gonna have to fight him one day, and if you pull your punches the best you can hope for is a draw. Then you have that to think about for the next few years as you try to lay down the law while he mumbles into his plate across the dinner table.

A daughter? Cuter, maybe, at first, but still a hard no. A daughter might not punch your dentures down your windpipe — she’ll be savvy enough to hit you where it doesn’t show — but she’ll have other ways to put you in the hurt locker, and I’ve seen a few of them.

Anyway, boy, girl, they, them, whatever. You feed and water them for a couple decades, try to teach them not to stick their tongues in an electrical outlet or have sex with the vacuum cleaner or just coax them out of the basement and into the sunlight, and one day they turn into Seventh-Day Opportunists or Realtors or born-again vegans or just hack your 401(k) for the down payment on a survivalist bunker outside Road of Bones, Idaho, from which they sell secondhand Chinese-made cargo pants to the Patriot Front.

Whoa. Did I say “you?” I meant “me.” My mom didn’t have anything against you. Though if she’d met you I’m sure she’d have come up with something.

You’re probably doing just fine with your kids. Probably. So happy Father’s Day, you poor, miserable bastards. Miss Mia sends her regards.

Chipseal, choo-choos, and curses

~ Patrick O'Grady ~ 9 Comments

Take me to the river.

Yesterday was one of those rare December days in the desert, the sort where you think, “OK, so if we survive the Parade of Plagues we’re all going to be drinking our own wee-wee come summer. It’s worth it.”

I was overdressed when I slipped out midday for a quick 20 miles of rollers, but not ridiculously so. Temps ranged from the low to mid-50s, and the sky was as you see.

Choo-choo-cha-boogie.

Still, there have been Dire Portents of the End Times. My totem, a clockwork railroad engineer who waves from his locomotive-slash-mailbox as I pass, withheld the friendly gesture on Monday. But yesterday he was back on the job, so make of that what you will. Some of us just don’t feel the wave on Mondays.

And one of the cute little girls from next door swore at me like a Vegas Teamster. She’s a bit of a dervish, but usually she doesn’t whirl that way. Mom caught her at it and she was compelled to offer an apology watered down with a grinning decline to make eye contact, followed by a quick ascent of our front-stoop trellis. I suspect a mild case of demonic possession. No vaccination for that.

Speaking of vaccinations, Herself got boosted yesterday, and this morning she feels like she got shot at and hit and shit at and hit. That’s a Thursday Two-fer for you.

Still, better to be poorly for a little while than a long while. This Omicron cootie gets around faster than bad news on cable TV and we have a little old lady in our orbit. Wouldn’t do to fire a round of The Bug into assisted living. That’d be like turning a hyena loose in a Texas Roadhouse.

Speaking of which, who picks the names for these things? I’d just as soon not get croaked by something that sounds like a bush-league Avengers villain hoping for a callup to The Show. Whatever happened to proper plagues like the Red Death? Eddie Poe must be spinning in his grave.

Born to run

~ Patrick O'Grady ~ 13 Comments

Harrison Walter (center) signs a letter of intent to run for Colorado Mountain College. His dad and coach, Hal, is third from the right.
Photo: Joy Parrish

My man Hal Walter recently arranged a small signing ceremony for his son, Harrison, who will be running cross country and track for Colorado Mountain College next year.

Harrison is on the autism spectrum, and so making the leap from high school to college may involve more gymnastics than it did for thee or me. Writes Hal in his Substack newsletter:

It’s been a long run for Harrison, who began his scholastic running career in middle school cross-country and track at Custer County, and then continued into high school. Seven years in all. In the first few years we didn’t know what direction he’d run when the gun went off — or if he’d actually run or melt down. We’re still working out the transition to college. He may be splitting his time in Leadville between online and in-person classes, and doing some workouts next fall with his old team — and coach — here in Westcliffe.

A tip of the Mad Dog mortarboard to Harrison and Hal for a job well done.

And speaking of jobs well done, Hal recently announced that he would be stepping down from MetaFaceButt to spend more time with his Substack newsletter. You can subscribe to that here.

Spring broke

~ Patrick O'Grady ~ 13 Comments

“Yeah, yeah, yeah, you had a birthday. Big whup.
There better be a grand-do and foofaraw when my birthday
rolls around in August, is what.”

Miss Mia Sopaipilla wants to know if all this birthday bushwa is over and done with.

The only birthday that counts as far as she is concerned is her own, which falls sometime in August. Miss Mia joined us in late October 2007, almost immediately after the passing of Chairman Meow, and Herself recollects that she was 10 to 12 weeks old at the time.

Miss Mia, not Herself. Herself is younger than me, but not that much younger.

Meanwhile, now that spring break is over — sorry, kids! — it seems we’re in for some tasty weather, with highs in the 60s and 70s over the next 10 days. Thus cycling of the outdoor variety is strongly indicated. I may even collect a few long-overdue tan lines. We’ve been short on shorts weather in the high desert so far this year.

All in all, it seems a fine time to be childless, with education completely out of sight in the old rear-view mirror. Albuquerque Public Schools will reopen on April 5, for a full five days per week, but students have the option of continuing with remote learning until the school year ends on May 25.

This must be a fun choice for the parents. If you choose school learning, you’ll probably have to transport the kiddos to and fro yourself, because APS expects to be short of bus drivers. If you choose remote learning, you get to continue being an unpaid teacher’s assistant.

Unless your boss calls you back to work. And what if you’re not one of the lucky people who can work from home? How does a teacher handle a class that’s have actual, half virtual? Many questions, few answers.

It’s going to be educational, in more ways than one.