Look, Ma! My Pelvis Is Frostbitten!

Do they amputate butts?

I went tubing this evening. Not "slowly-float-down-a-lazy-river-getting-sunburned-and-drunk" tubing. Given that it's late December and snowy and cold and all the rivers are frozen, that would be a bit difficult, and chilly. Instead, we hopped atop said tubes, grabbed onto a rope that pulled us up a large hill, then slid down said hill on those same tubes. Trust me. It was a blast.

This is the kind of thing we do in Minnesota to make the winter pass: We do crazy things in the cold. Some people cut holes in the ice, put a line in the water and then sit patiently, while drinking, for hours on end. Others ski downhill, usually while drinking. Some people ride on snowmobiles, usually to a local bar so they can drink. A few people ski cross country, and I'm sure those people have flasks in their pocket. Some people are crazy enough to strip naked and jump in the water -- those people are definitely drunk. The conclusion: People around here drink a lot.

I do no such drinking, but still found myself sliding down an icy hill without being forced to by bad shoes or an ice storm. I did this because I like sledding and because I have kids and it's my job to regularly help them engage in some silly cold-weather activity.

Truthfully, the tube is an awesome idea, because it cushions your butt (or, for you facefirst daredevils, your genitals) from the rigors of a typical sliding hill and because you can't feel yourself plummeting to your potential doom. I've received many a lower-torso injury sliding in my youth, so the prospect of buttpain-free sliding is a welcome event.

Better yet, the rope that pulls you up makes the process much easier. The problem with sledding down a typical hill is that when you get down, you have to go back up that hill. You climb up the hill, slide down, climb again, slide -- by the time I've done this three times I'm whining, begging and bribing my kid to relent and let us go home. A typical, hour-long sledding session involves about 40 minutes of climbing, 15 minutes of standing around, 3 minutes of trying to get on your sled and two minutes of actual sledding.

The tubing facility took care of this problem with the rope, assuming you can actually grab the rope and hold it. It's like a ski lift, only you're not suspended high above the air (so when it stops, you're not trapped up there and if you fall, you only slide downhill, rather than fall to your doom; this reminds me of the first time I went downhill skiing, I fell down the hill, repeatedly, underneath the ski lift and people kept asking me if I fell off the lift; "No, I'm just a horrible, horrible, horrible skier, now shut up and focus on keeping yourself from falling off that lift.").

The problem with the rope-lift is that you have to hold onto the rope, so if you have no arm strength, you are out of luck, and if you wear slick gloves like I do, then you have to have an extra-strong grip to ensure that you can get up the hill. If you let go, the person behind you hits you. Fortunately, my office job combined with my routine stroller-pushing dad workouts keeps my hands and wrists in awesome shape. I can't quite say the same for The Boy, who periodically lost his grip halfway up a hill, causing a big pileup of tubes and tubers.

But we'd get up the hill, and then we'd go down. Usually we started too far up the hill, so we had to inch and inch and inch our way toward the hill until our momentum finally pulled us down. I tried jumping on my tube to get us to go down, like all of the cool kids did, but when I did we just sat there, making me look like a doofus. Or more of a doofus than I already was.

We got a healthy dose of ice shavings and snow on the way down, so by the time I got to the bottom I looked like a giant snowcone. That is, assuming I didn't barrel into a group of teenagers or a parent with his child or a gang of nuns and orphans or some baby chickens just finishing their own tubing sessions and heading for the rope for their next go-round. And when we were finished, we had to get up and move quickly, lest we be the barrellees. Beefy guys at the bottom barked at us plenty of times to ensure that we got out of the way, but my own fear of broken bones or concussions was incentive enough.

We went over and over and over again, and when we were done we went again. The lack of the tired climb, combined with my overactive child kept us going for a couple of hours. This, even though I got a steadily increasing dose of ice and snow underneath my shirt. If I went down on my stomach, I got it on my lower abdomen, making it numb. If I went on my butt, it got my lower back numb. So by the time we were done I had enough snow caked on my shirt to build Frosty a nice wife and some kids. The skin on my lower back now feels like I was held down and given a tramp stamp. But at least my pelvis wasn't broken.

The Caroling Menace

I went to a Christmas party this evening. It was to be held last week, but was delayed due to unforeseen circumstances in the form of Snowpocalypse 2010. A former coworker holds the party every year. Her house is at the end of a quiet cul-de-sac in a quiet suburb. She fills that house with Santas that number about the population of Rochester, New York. Her 9-foot Christmas tree has so many lights it can be seen from space. She and her husband spend five months decorating for the party, and another five months taking everything down.

They are awesome.

Every year, a group of people attending this party venture out into the quiet, nondescript suburban neighborhood and sing Christmas carols. It's a great tradition, even if it has been bastardized by light rock stations. I, for one, think that songs about a fat guy with bad fashion sense who burgles houses once a year with the assistance of flying caribou and an army of Arctic midgets absolutely makes the season.

A lot of party attendees go caroling, even though it's usually freezing and snowy. But, get a few drinks in a person and loud singing usually ensues, anyway, so why not be festive about it? And most of the time people being sung to don't burst out of their homes with shotguns. Some are actually thrilled to see us. One year some partiers gave us beer. This year a woman caring for her paralyzed brother invited us in and nearly cried and said "God bless you" about 500 times -- even though we sang "Let It Snow." (Must have been a Dean Martin fan.)

So naturally, we were feeling pretty good about ourselves as we walked down the quiet, boring suburban neighborhood, looking for our next caroling victim. We were a group of 20, including several small children (one of whom was an increasingly whiny boy of about 6 who looks a lot like me and lives in my house). Many of us were holding flashlights to see our music sheets, which were prepared by our party hosts.

At this point, two cars quickly approached us from behind, with their lights off, and then shined bright lights at us. We looked.

Cops!

Caroling is a tradition that dates back 800 years to the time of St. Francis of Assisi. I'm therefore sure that we weren't the first festive holiday musicians to generate calls to the authorities. But really, we were that bad? "OH MY GOD! People are walking down the street singing about Jesus' birth! And they're awful! And some of them are midgets! CALL 911!!!"

But, indeed, someone living in this quiet, nondescript neighborhood looked upon our festive group of carolers holding music sheets and flashlights and thought, "gangbangers." The police came quickly, because there was apparently nothing else to do in this quiet suburb. The officers were a little surprised to find out that we were carolers. They looked a little sheepish. "Someone called about a group of suspicious people carrying flashlights," they said. (OH GOD, NOT FLASHLIGHTS!)

What did we do? We sang to the officers. We wished them a Merry Christmas and sent them on their way.

Then we went home. Because when someone calls the cops on your singing, you should probably stop.

The Snow-Filled Birthday Party

The Boy was invited to a birthday party this weekend. Ordinarily, this is a good thing. For the price of a Chinese-made piece of plastic and a cheap card, I get two-plus hours of babysitting that often includes a meal and even a few party favors. Indeed, I find the birthday party circuit a profitable venture. I have one party. Invite lots of kids. In exchange I get periodic respites from the parenting game as my son is invited to other kids' parties out of guilt. This is a huge reason why I keep urging my son to make more friends.

And in this case, the kid lived nearby. So all I'd need to do is get myself off of whatever piece of furniture I happen to be glued to roughly 10 minutes before party start, stumble out to the van while barking at my 6-year-old to get a move on, then drive the two miles to the friend's house, hopefully with the gift and the 6-year-old. Easy as cake.

But, as many of you know, this is Minnesota. And my calendar says it's late fall, which around here means "winter." And "winter" means there is a decent chance that the event will be encumbered by fluffy white stuff and/or frigid temperatures. A few of you know that this is exactly what happened to us this weekend: Seventeen inches of snow, high winds, sub-zero temperatures, sub-sub-zero wind chills. The kind of weather that makes you question your zip code.

It's also the type of weather that can clear a schedule, and that it did. I was faced with a Saturday packed with events -- practices and parties. All of them cancelled or were put off for another week. All, that is, except for the 7-year-old's birthday party.

But instead of a simple, two-mile drive I had a treacherous journey over snow mountains and through icy valleys. I couldn't even get out of my driveway. I had to shovel my driveway before I could even think of escaping. This is no small task. I have one of those old-fashioned shovels, the one that require physical labor rather than a gas-powered engine. I don't have a snowblower because: A. They're ridiculously expensive and I'm cheap and B. I need any exercise I can get to offset my love of cream cheese frosting. I should also include C. I don't have any more room in my garage. If I add one more item to my garage I won't be able to fit my cars in there. And unlike many other people, I think garages are for automobiles. But I'm picky like that.

I had yet to question my no-snowblower decision ... until this weekend. But I shoveled and I shoveled and then I shoveled some more and then my neighbor came to the rescue and took care of part of my driveway so I didn't have to shovel anymore, and good thing because if he hadn't come along I'd still be out there, shoveling and no party for the eldest.

So out I went. The snow was falling so hard and so fast that you couldn't tell where the falling snow ended and the fallen snow began. Yes, snow plows were out, but the snow was winning that battle. And I smartly chose to drive the small car, rather than the minivan, because I thought it would be easy to push. It also gets stuck easier, I found.

I drove slowly, because when you have no idea which is the road and which is the sidewalk and which is the neighbor's front yard, you drive slow. I skidded some. I slid some. I swerved into oncoming traffic some. Fortunately, nobody was out, or I would have gotten into accidents some.

I made it, after about 20 minutes. And my fellow dad confessed that he didn't have the heart to cancel his son's birthday party, something I certainly wasn't going to fault him for. I got home, got stuck once on a busy thoroughfare and passed only three or four cars that had run aground along the side of the roads. I got stuck a second time turning onto my street. Fortunately, this was right in front of my house, so I could quickly dig myself out before anybody came to help me.

I got home and we waited and I enjoyed my eldest-free two hours. When it came time to pick The Boy up, I looked out at the driveway and realized that it didn't even look like it had been touched. So shovel I did, again, and drive I did, again. This time I came prepared -- I had a shovel. And I'd need it too, the moment I got out of my driveway. Because I may have shoveled my driveway, but I didn't shovel the entire route to my son's friend's house. And neither had the plows -- not on the side streets. And by that time the snow was so deep it was all the way up to the bottom of the car doors. And small, two-wheel drive cars don't quite have the power to plow their way through foot-deep snow.

Suffice it to say, the second trip through snow mountains and ice valleys was far more treacherous than the first, requiring a few pushes and a couple of stops to push other drivers out. I got to help one person, saw that his car was buried, declared "I have a shovel!" and ran back to my car. I came back to find that the 50 other people pushing got him out. "It worked," I said.

"This sucks," the driver said to me as he drove away. Couldn't agree more. I may like it here in Minnesota, but that doesn't mean I like these big snowfalls. Sure, I liked them as a kid because 17 inches of snow meant no school the following school day. (Of course, there was the one huge snowstorm when I was in high school when my loser of a superintendent said that school must go on, making him the ONLY SUPERINTENDENT IN THE AREA TO DO SO.)

Now that 17-inch snowfalls require shoveling and driving, plowing and pushing and potentially playing whose-job-is-more-important should a snow day occur, I'm no longer a big fan of them. A few inches is fine. But this storm was measured in feet.

I managed to successfully navigate my way to my son's friend's house a second time without major incident. "Domino's said this was their last delivery of the day," my fellow dad said to me as I waited forever for my son to quit playing with his friends and get his jacket on.

We managed to get home without getting stuck once, which I considered a small miracle, and then we got inside and I declared that we would not set foot outside the house again, a decision I'd ultimately come to regret at about Hour 20 of being snowed in with two restless kids. But that is another story.

The Big Bad Dork

Once upon a time there lived in a suburb a father, the dorkiest person who was ever seen. But his son was excessively fond of him, and so the father did everything he could to please the child. It suited the father so extremely well to be called "Dorky Dad."

One day, the father's wife contacted Dorky Dad at work. "There is a holiday parade coming up," she said. "T'would please our son dearly if you two were to be in it." The father agreed. And in a few short days, the wife came home with the good news: they were selected to be in a Holidazzle Parade, the nightly parade through downtown Minneapolis.

Most people shiver at the thought of a parade in the dark of winter. But the people who live in this land, called Minnesota, are hearty folk, if also a bit foolish. And so, risking frostbite and hypothermia they gather along the streets nightly in December to watch the parade of characters dressed in lighted costumes dancing and singing down the street.

Such a delight this would be for a 6-year-old boy, though the dad. The Boy wanted to be on a float. But instead, they were assigned clown costumes. They would walk alongside the Circus Train. "We can jest with the best of them," the dad said to his son, and the son agreed. "Indeed, father, we are a pair of jesters," he said. (Alas, The Wife, who has Coulrophobia, was not so enthused.)

But, on the day of the parade, a big storm hit. A steady, heavy snow fell all day. Would the parade be canceled? As evening approached, there was no such announcement, so the Dork picked up his youngest son, and then his eldest son, and began the journey along icy, snow-covered roads packed with slow moving traffic toward downtown in the midst of the snowstorm.

Their journey would end in the parking garage of a downtown Target, 90 minutes later and 30 minutes late. Handing off the youngest son to his wife, who met them there, the dork and his son bolted for the several-block walk to the parade route start, with the toddler-lugging wife behind. Only they would find obstacles at each intersection in the form of red lights, and the wife would catch up as they waited for the light to change. Then they bolted again down the sidewalk only to wait again at the next light, where the wife would again catch up.

They ran up to the room to change into their costumes. But the man at the desk said, "There is no clown costume for a child. How would you like to be an animal in the Circus Train, instead?"

Oh, joy! The son would be able to be on a float, just like he wanted and wouldn't have to trudge through snow. "How about it, son, want to be an animal and ride on a float?"

"No, father."

"Alas, my son, my 40-year-old ears do not hear as well as they used to, and this frigid December air is not helping, but I thought you said, 'No.' But of course, you didn't say that, not after that two-hour journey to get here!"

"No, father. I want to walk along side you."

And thus the Dorky Dad was beside himself. What to do? The Boy didn't want to be on a float. But he certainly didn't want to leave. But that's what they did, and soon The Boy relented, but only after the father promised that he would stay near the float the entire time.

So they returned to the man at the desk, and the man looked through his sheet and instead found another costume -- storybook characters who would walk through the parade! The Boy agreed. The dad would be the Big Bad Wolf. And The Boy would be Tom Sawyer (rather than Red Riding Hood, who apparently didn't make an appearance at this parade). "Who's Tom Sawyer?" The Boy said. "I'll read you that story soon, son," the father said.

They got their battery packs and their costumes. The boy dressed in a set of overalls decorated with holiday lights, and wore a well-lit straw hat. The father, it turned out, would get a more dramatic costume. "You won't want to wear your coat," someone said. And the father didn't, because he would wear a large wolf suit, complete with a giant head and grandmother's cape, all brightly illuminated.

They trudged downstairs, the son dragging his heavy battery pack, the father lugging a heavy wolf's head. They posed for photographs, and then lined up outside. The street was coated with a few inches of freshly fallen snow, and the snow kept falling.

The dork put on his wolf's head. He could see, but only barely, and he looked out through the wolf's mouth, making his line of site framed by giant teeth and a big, wagging tongue. "Your task for this evening is to frighten children," the parade guide told the father. "Indeed! I'm a father! Half of my job is to frighten children!"

And so the parade began, and of course the streets were packed with people of all shapes and sizes, including many children who would be perfect for a wolf to frighten. So as the son walked down the center of the street, the father roamed from side to side eagerly fulfilling his wolfly duty -- though, unable to see much through the wolf's mouth, he had to arch his back and neck to see anybody first, which made for a painful parade, and a more painful aftermath.

As they walked the mile-long parade route, the boy warmed up to the crowd and eventually high-fived some of the audience. The father scared several dozen children plus one clown -- at least he thought it was a clown, for he could barely see. He also lost a few pounds lugging a 30-pound head on his shoulders and, surprisingly, was able to run and walk the entire route without falling on his behind.

The parade ended, and the father was only too happy to give up his wolf's head. He had fun, but was tired and worn out. The Boy had fun, too. And so they hopped on the bus for the trip back, only the driver got lost, and the normally five-minute trip back to the start took a half-hour, one in which the father's cell phone kept ringing. The cell phone was in his pocket. But he couldn't reach his pocket through his wolf's suit. It was his wife, who was struggling with a bored and very hungry toddler and had no idea where her husband and eldest son were.

The moral of the story: Next time just walk. Or at least keep your cell phone handy.

In The Mind Of A Toddler

I've never been much of a classroom guy. I went to school for 12 years, and then onto college, but I mostly ignored my teachers and passed largely by learning how to fake multiple choice questions. The fact is, I always learn by doing something. I do it once, make a ton of mistakes and probably injure myself a time or two. Then I do it a second time, the right way. (This is how I built my deck, meaning that half of my deck looks GREAT! The other half ...)

Parenting would be the same way, I figured. I'd make all my mistakes and goof-ups with Kid No. 1, then would have my parenting skills down pat for the second one.

Fat chance at that. I'm now on my second go-round as the parent of a toddler, and I still have no clue what these little things are thinking. (I also thought I'd be well armed for toddler parenting because, let's be honest, sometimes I have the mind, or at least the sense of humor, of a two-year-old. But not even my juvenile brain understands them.)

For instance, The Sequel has recently informed us in no uncertain terms that he would rather not wear a winter jacket. Most of you know that we live in Minnesota. And most of you know, often to a fault, that it's cold here. These days it's been chillier than normal, and so winterwear is not really optional, lest you freeze something off, like a finger or a leg or the lower part of your torso.

The toddler doesn't see it this way. He says, "No, father, I do not want to wear that jacket. Please, refrain from dressing me this moment." Only it comes out something like, "NOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOO!" Loudly.

I suppose "No!" and "Don't do that" are better than the pre-speech version, which was a large, wake-the-neighbors scream. Still, dressing an angry toddler who doesn't want to be dressed is something akin to trying to get an angry, worked-up cat into a plastic bag (a declawed cat, thankfully, unless you haven't cut your toddler's finger nails in a while ...). It's really, really hard. And if you're fortunate enough to be doing this in public, then you have the benefit of doing it in front of a live, studio audience attracted by the ear-splitting screams coming from the toddler (and often the parent).

Eventually, after what seemed like hours of wrestling and bending and crying and cajoling and then more wrestling, bending, crying and cajoling, we got the toddler into his bright yellow winter coat.

And that was only step 1.

Step 2: Get the hat on. Again, The Sequel would have none of this. Not that I can blame him, necessarily. Most toddler hats make you look like a complete doofus. They have frilly balls at the top and they wrap around your chin so it looks like you have a bad toothache. Yet he must also learn that in a place where a "good winter" is described as one in which you don't lose an extremity, looks come absolutely secondary to warmth. When the temperature dips a certain point below freezing, you just don't care what the heck you look like, you only care about getting warm.

The Sequel doesn't think such things yet, and thus he resisted efforts to hat him. But I got it on. And for that I was rewarded with the opportunity to proceed to Steps 3 and 4, or "get the mittens on" and "keep them on."

Mittens on toddlers suck, because it takes about 10 hours to get one of the kid's thumbs into the thumb part of the mitten. And then when you finish one, you move onto the next one. And when you're done with Mitten No. 2, he's somehow removed Mitten No. 1, so then you try that one. And then No. 2 comes off. So you get that one again. and then you realize that he's just playing a sick game with you and you begin screaming yourself.

All of these I got on that morning. And then we waited for the bus with The Boy, who has not quite gotten over his own animosity toward winter clothing but thankfully throws no tantrums about it. (True story: The Sequel saw the bus coming around the corner and said, "Dang bus! Dang bus!" Apparently I must learn to keep my grumbling under my breath on days when the bus is late.)

As we waited, I warmed up the van, so by the time the bus did leave it was well heated inside, so I thought I'd do the Sequel a favor by removing his mittens. "He'll love me for this," I thought. "He hates wearing the mittens, so he'll obviously want them off."

No such luck. He began screaming, yelling, "Mittens on! Mittens on!" Only when I put the mittens back on did he calm down. Never mind that a thumb in a mitten can't be sucked, and nor can he do much to hold any toys or do anything but keep his mittened hands in the air. Apparently, I had done too good a job convincing The Sequel that wearing mittens is a good thing.