Dorky Dad and the Fondue of Death

This weekend we went to a giant fondue party. I'd never been to one before, but apparently it involves a bunch of people getting together and eating small portions of food dipped in sauces. And then everybody hits McDonald's on their way home because there's no way you can get enough small pieces of bread to make a full meal.

Truthfully, it was a lot of fun, even with the presence of about 5 million distractions in the form of loud, rambunctious school-aged children and at least one baby (mine). But amidst the whining and crying I found myself at the fondue table, where I took my handy fondue fork and began to peruse the options.

(By the way, two days later I still find myself shocked -- SHOCKED -- that The Boy not once attempted to convert his fondue fork into a weapon in the midst of the crowded living room. I've decided that he was feeling particularly generous that day, and decided to spare his father from shouting his boilerplate "Hey! That [INSERT RANDOM OBJECT HERE] is not a [INSERT RANDOM WEAPON HERE]!!!")

I found plenty of options -- chocolate and caramel for my sweet tooth; cheese for my cheese tooth; chips for my salt tooth; crackers for my cracker tooth; apples, bananas, strawberries and pineapple for my fruit tooth and bread for my bread tooth. I also came across some sort of meat, probably chicken, soaked in an Asian sauce, probably teriyaki. I took some of that.

Everything seemed good. The meat was OK, though it seemed a bit funny, so I soaked it in the pile of cheese I took for myself and moved on to the next item on my plate.

Later, as I talked with another of my fellow party goers, I noticed about a dozen fondue forks in one boiling pot, next to the teriyaki-soaking chicken.

"What's that?" I asked, pointing to the forks.

"Oh," the woman said, "you take a fork, stick it in this raw chicken here" -- and she pointed to the aforementioned teriyaki chicken -- "and then cook it in this oil. I'm not sure these are done."

Raw chicken? That chicken was supposed to be COOKED? I just ate RAW CHICKEN?!??

I just smiled and nodded in an effort to hide the fact that I suddenly felt like the pilot on the movie Airplane when he overheard the doctor's descriptions of the symptoms people feel after eating the fish dinner -- as he looked down upon his plate of fish bones.

"I'm totally doomed," I thought. A lifetime of living near and with moms has taught me that eating raw chicken is like skydiving without a parachute. I'll probably get salmonella, or I'll just gradually turn into one giant chicken.

I haven't started clucking yet. And I keep looking at myself to see if I've sprouted feathers. But if you check this blog in a day or two to find indecipherable chicken scratch -- more so than usual -- you'll know why.

See y'all -- CLUCK! -- later.

Parenting at 35,000 feet

The Wife and I decided our lives were too easy, so late last week we loaded our borderline-hyperactive 5-year-old and our teething, ear-infection-prone infant into a plane packed with travelers and flew four hours to California.

Yes, I did this voluntarily, but only two things would drain my brain of enough mental capacity to enable me to make such a decision: A funeral or a wedding. Fortunately, it was the latter that prompted this particular trip.

I've said repeatedly on this blog that I hate flying, and though I've flown enough in recent years that I'm no longer crawling the walls whenever we enter a tad bit of turbulence, the rest of my anti-flying beliefs hold true -- generally poor customer service, overpriced meals, ridiculous luggage fees, the constant prospect of being strip searched, etc.

(That said, I've got to say that my trip was uneventful and pleasant, at least from a customer service standpoint, and I'm not just saying that because my airline, Delta, is taking me to Las Vegas in a couple of weeks and thus has my future in its hands. Nice, Delta. Niiiice, Delta.)

Adding kids to a plane trip is like adding Diet Coke to Pop Rocks. Everything is far more difficult and combustible -- getting tickets, checking luggage, going through security, walking past the rows of stores hocking overpriced food and tourist items without spending an entire paycheck in an effort to keep your child pacified, etc.

The older one, wiggly as he is, is relatively simple once we get him on the plane: Just plug him into a DVD player and spend hours in quiet-child bliss.

(Seriously, in my before-kid days I swore I'd never get portable video players for a vehicle or for a plane flight and had no idea what true use they had; then I had a child and realized that my pre-child self was a complete and utter idiot.)

The infant is not so easy because he's simply try to eat the DVD player. And, upon entering the plane, the baby makes one of two choices:

1. I could spend much of this trip napping and quietly eating and playing with the small selection of toys brought to pacify me with;
2. I could decide to not sleep and instead scream bloody murder the entire trip so that most of the passengers will be wishing to toss my parents from the plane. At 35,000 feet.

Children so often pick Option No. 2 that parents actively encourage loading the baby with over-the-counter depressants. As we waited for our first flight, in a kids' play area, we talked with another parent who had taken his 3-year-old on so many flights that the kid had enough frequent-flier miles to buy an entire ticket. When we told him how long our flight was, his only tip was, "Uh, Benedryl."

So I knew that my baby would take Option 2, and so to spite me he took Option 1 on both flights (though he didn't fall asleep on the way there until two minutes before the plane landed.)

But we were provided with a little perspective on both plane flights in the form of another set of parents, with three children -- the same set both on the way there and the way back. On both flights, the youngest of the three decided to skip past Options 1 and 2 and go straight to Option No. 3 -- The Nuclear Option. She literally screamed the entire trip. (This, by the way, was an absolutely adorable girl who, at one point during the trip there, decided to say "Hello" to every individual passenger.)

All I could do is look at the Dad with sympathetic eyes while thinking to myself, "Oh, Thank God I'm not him."

But it was a good trip. The wedding was fun and I got free cake and copious amounts of decidedly unhealthy food that was funded by someone else. We got to visit San Francisco where we ate sourdough bread and In-n-Out Burger and I got chastised by a cable car operator for my wayward elbow. And then we performed a death-defying drive along narrow, windy roads up and down a mountain in search for big-ass redwood trees. And at some point a woman woke up much of our hotel by screaming and pounding on doors and breaking things. We had a bonfire on the beach and caught wafts of marijuana being smoked by this neighboring party apparently filled with people who need the drug for medicinal purposes. And I now know the definition of "beach bum."

I also got a kid story. The Boy, who is 5 and is eager to spell words, looked out the window as we ate lunch at In-n-Out and noticed a sign to a neighboring restaurant.

"I can spell THAT word, Daddy!" he said, proudly -- and in his normal volume, high.

"OK," I said, not knowing the word of which he spoke. "Spell it."

"H-O-O-T-E-R-S!"

(Pause for laughter from me, The Wife and most of our fellow burger eaters.)

"What does that spell, Daddy?"

"Just wait a few years, kid, and you'll find out."

A Sonnet For Feminine Cheese Sticks

In honor of National Poetry Day, which by the time many of you read this will be long past, I've composed the following sonnet. A poorly written, badly rhymed sonnet that will probably make Bill Shakespeare's ghost scream in agony before it searches me out and rips the laptop from my arms and tosses it out the window.

YOU HAVE BEEN WARNED.

READ AT YOUR OWN RISK.

I'VE NEVER CLAIMED TO BE A POET.

BUT THAT'S NOT STOPPING ME. BAAAAHAHAHAHAHAHA!!

OK. On with the poem. And off with the caps lock button.

A local shopping mall today we went
Because we still had some dollars unspent
Let us go all! We said, and with a laugh
For we both knew that this would be a gaff
But bribed, did we, our son so blond and tall
Not much would he not do for a gum ball
Behaved, did he as we both walked the aisles
He did not climb or run or show his wiles
But this is not a tale of his good deeds
It is a cute kid yarn, I do concede
We walked through Target looking all about
When from behind me I heard The Boy shout
"CHEESE STICKS" he said; I turned to look upon
And saw him eying some women's tampons

Holding On To Summer

It's cold here, which shouldn't be surprising because I live in Minnesota and if Minnesota is known for anything it's cold -- which I had been reminded of about 50,000 times in the month before I returned to the frozen north three years ago from South Carolina.

(Seriously: If I had a nickel for every time I heard the phrase "Minnesota? You know it's cold up there." I'd have a healthy amount of cash. It'd all be in coins, but cash nevertheless. My boy would never want for nickels to put down those, uh ... wells where the coins spin down a drain. What the heck do you call those things, anyway?)

While I like autumn here, it's tough letting go of summer. I try to cook out as much as possible in the last few nice weekends of September. I go for walks. We soak in the sunshine and schedule outings. So, in a sense, I can understand The Boy's reaction a week ago when I set out a pair of jeans for him to wear to school last Monday.

BOY: DAAAAAAAAAAAADDD!!! YOU GAVE ME PANTS!!! I DON'T WANNA WEAR PANTS!!

ME: Uh, boy, it's going to be cold tomorrow. Too cold for shorts.

BOY: BUT I DON'T WANNA WEAR PANTS! I WANNA WEAR SHORTS! (Yes, by the way, he yells. In fact, yelling is his normal voice volume. Unless you want him to talk about his day or talk to another adult. Then he's mouselike.)

ME: It'll be too cold. You have to wear pants.

BOY: NO IT WON'T! IT WON'T BE TOO COLD! NOBODY ELSE WILL BE WEARING PANTS!! PANTS ARE THE WORK OF THE DEVIL! THEY'LL BURN MY LEGS OFF! I CAN'T DO IT DAD! I CAN'T DO IT! DON'T MAKE ME WEAR THOSE SATAN SLACKS! PLEASE DAD, PLEASE!

I did not relent, mostly because I feared a phone call the next day from school, wondering what the heck kind of idiot parent would let his FIVE-YEAR-OLD CHILD risk hypothermia wearing shorts in 40-degree temperatures with high winds. And when he got on the bus wearing pants I thought the issue was done, because he acknowledged that it was cold. But the next day, he was at it again, protesting the pants. And he rejected the jeans again the next day.

I could deal with it no longer after that, and I let him wear shorts on the fourth day, fully convinced that the moment he waited for the bus with bear legs he'd realize his folly and run inside to get a nice, warm pair of pants.

Instead he stood outside, his legs coated in goosebumps, insisting that he was warm.

And it continued like this on Friday, and then into the weekend and again today. Not once did my eldest acknowledge the impact that the cold was having on his bear skin. He simply acted like it was July and he was thoroughly warm. (By the way, on most mornings his first order of business is to go from his room to the living room where he'll bundle himself up in a big pile of blankets ...)

Finally, today, as I picked The Boy up from school, he informed me that he must wear pants tomorrow.

Why, I said.

"Because nobody else at school wears shorts," he said.

And?

"And because they won't let me play on the playground if I'm not wearing shorts." Alas, the teacher who runs his afterschool program laid down the law. No pants, no monkeybars.

Hmmm ... I wonder if that will get The Boy to pick up all his toys ...