Ordinarily, I feel a little bit of a letdown after Christmas – no more cheesecake for breakfast, no presents to look forward to, no reason to listen to Billy Squier’s Christmas song. But this year, I felt, instead, a slightly strange sense of satisfaction. I think it’s because so many of my questions were answered – all of them, in fact, except two.
Those questions were, in no particular order (well, okay, in the order in which they were answered):
How many Apple Jacks will stack on the head of a stuffed bear?
Which fuse turns off the power to the kitchen wall?
Will I convincingly be able to act as though whatever is in the deep fryer box is as good as the deep fryer would have been?
What kind of licorice do cats like, anyway?
How did Michael Myers know it was his sister?
And
What was the point of the second Bourne movie, then?
And
Am I the kind of husband who will vacuum the rug even though you can’t see the pee?
I think, just looking at that list, you will know all you ever need to know about my Christmas vacation. But let me elaborate.
My five days off began the same way all my days do: With an attempt to set a world record, which I am humbled but proud to say I achieved. Even with the whole day to spend with Mr. F. and Mr. Bunches, they were eager to get going and woke me up at about 6 on Friday. That’s about 35 minutes earlier than I usually get up; I find my routine works more smoothly in the morning if I manage to get up with not quite enough time to get ready and get to work at 8. Lots of people would probably just get up a little earlier, but those people would then get to work on time and be more productive and those people would probably have to wipe off the high chair trays after breakfast instead of telling Sweetie that they can’t possibly do that because they’re running late for work and which is more important: wiping the trays or making partner?
The first day of vacation, though, I was not going to have that excuse because not only did the babies wake up early, I didn’t have to go to work and didn’t, in fact, intend to get out of my Buffalo Bills’ pajamas. (Loungewear. If you wear it during the day, it’s called “loungewear” and obviously suited for lounging.)
Not knowing then the excitement that lay in store for me – I was, remember, planning on lounging – I set out to begin on a high note by going for the World Record For Stacking Apple Jacks On A Small Stuffed Bear’s Head. That’s trickier than it sounds because the bear’s head is barely – or should I say bearly (please don’t stop reading!) – larger than the Apple Jacks and because Mr. Bunches doesn’t like things stacked up and if he notices you’re doing it he’ll swipe through it and get mad and make that face that’s really actually kind of cute and you’ll laugh and he gets mad and throws the Apple Jacks and then you’ve got to vacuum, too.
So the record is… Seven. Try to top it if you want. (And if you do, send me a picture and I’ll post it here and you’ll hold the World Record, but you’ll also have to take responsibility for the damage that will be done to my career and relationships while I try to then top that.)(And don’t cheat; who would cheat at that? Why would you do that? Let’s have some integrity here in Apple-Jack Bear Stacks.) But you won’t be able to top it.
My whole weekend wasn’t able to be spent working on that significant project, though, because the kitchen light began blinking. Our house, which we bought extremely used, has wiring which was done by hand by the previous owner, something we didn’t really grasp the significance of before we bought it. We were forewarned, in a way, because the home inspector took a look at a set of wires on one wall and refused to test it. “I wouldn’t use that,” he said. We thereafter put the small green couch that everyone hates and which smells a lot – a lot—like cat in front of it for protection, and periodically we talk about getting rid of the green couch but that would leave the danger outlet open to the public and we don’t want to buy a new couch, so instead we invest a lot in baking soda and hope.
Because the light was blinking, and because it was the light I’d installed myself last Christmas, I had to get it fixed. I gathered up my tools—a ladder, an assortment of screwdrivers and a pliers, and my iPod—and shut off the circuit breaker for the kitchen. Or circuit breakers, because they are hand-labeled in the scribbly writing of the previous owners and say things like “east wall,” but there are no outlets in the east wall of any part of our house, and one says “kitchen” but turns off the upstairs bathroom. So I did what any sane electrician would do: I plugged in the coffee maker to the outlet nearest the light, and instructed The Boy to stand by it and tell me when the little green light went off.
That green light turns off when the coffee gets too hot, too, so I had to hope that I wasn’t near that limit.
On the third breaker, The Boy announced that it was off and I went to work doing the only thing I could think to do: unscrewing and re-tightening all the screws.
That’s really everyone’s solution to everything, isn’t it? Call a computer tech, and he tells you to open and close the computer. Something goes wrong with your car and you go and open the hood and check out a couple of the things you’ve seen them open and close. Light goes out, you flick the switch up and down. TV fails, you unplug it and plug it back in. All a variation of “unscrew it and screw it back in.” If people like me were dentists and you came to us with a toothache, we’d pull your tooth out, look at it, put it back and say “How’s that feel?”
It did not work, by the way – I’ll spoil the surprise and tell you that. But it did not work in a surprising way and I know that the wires were getting some power because on the fourth – the fourth -- set of wires I unscrewed and re-twisted while standing on a metal ladder in my kitchen, sparks flew when I began to twist them back together.
Luckily, I had not limited my safety gear to my Bill’s PJs. I also had on my Green Bay Packer-colored Crocs. Laugh if you want, but they saved my life and if not for them people would have woken up the next day to hear CNN announcing “World record Apple Jack stacker found electrocuted in kitchen.”
The Boy and I rethought our safety procedures and went and turned off all the circuit breakers, which allowed me to re-attach the wires and put the light back, where it still hangs in our kitchen, useless but safe.
It’s a good thing that my Dad was coming during the day and we didn't need that light, because otherwise he might have wanted to take a crack at the lighting situation, and I couldn’t find my vice grips, so disaster would have ensued. Dad requires a vice grips to fix anything, or did when we were kids and Mom wanted him to fix something and he'd tell us to go get his vice grips, which we could never find and after looking for hours suspected never actually existed, a belief which was buttressed by the fact that because we couldn't find them, Dad would not actually have to fix the thing, announcing "I can't do it without my vice grips," so if Dad tried to fix it he'd not only not have approved of my use of other tools but wouldn't have gotten anywhere without my, or his, vice grips. (Dad, by the way, did not approve of my Christmas tree, either. “It looks nice,” he said, but he was gritting his teeth. I couldn’t resist: “How do you like the bottom 1/5?” I asked. And all he said was “Yes.” But I noticed that his eyes never wavered down to that bottom where the lights were out.)
It was Dad that gave me the deep fryer. I opened my present and saw the deep fryer box and whooped. I haven’t gotten that excited about a present since Sweetie found me the “Cheesecake Truck” song. I showed it to The Boy, who gave me an air-five and we began talking immediately about all the things we were going to deep fry until Dad said “It’s not a deep fryer.”
If someone had actually said “World record Apple Jack stacker found electrocuted in kitchen” the mood couldn’t have become more somber. Dad, I believe, was thinking how he’d obviously messed up, while I was thinking “Oh, man, what a jerk I look like now,” while everyone else in the room was clearly thinking variations on what a jerk I looked like, except for the babies, who were thinking “I wonder if that will fit in my mouth.”
So I peeled open the tape, ready to become even more excited, no matter what, and found, inside, a very nice crystal centerpiece, an absolutely appropriate gift for someone who owns three cats and twin 15-month-olds and I got all (fake) excited and said “Wow,” and “this is great” and all that stuff and threw in a few “even betters” and finally said “I love these kind of centerpieces,” and Dad said “It’s not a centerpiece.”
I probably should have just thrown him out then; how could that have been less awkward? Plus he wouldn’t have had to keep not looking at my tree, then. But I soldiered on while he explained that it was a serving bowl for the parties we have all the time, and as he talked and I pretended to be excited, I kept wondering: what parties? Who is it, exactly, that you think you’re talking to? Dad’s not that old, but he does get confused at times and only Sweetie can really understand him then, something I realized when he called and asked me to ask Sweetie who “that guy in that movie was” (exact quote) and Sweetie said “Clint Eastwood.” And she was right.
Christmas was a little quieter after that; Dad eventually left, probably vowing that he’d hire someone to do my tree next year, and we settled in for our Christmas Eve and Christmas Day routine of keeping Herman from eating the red licorice off the table while watching our Inappropriate Christmas Movie Marathon, which this year consisted of the Rob Zombie remake of “Halloween,” and all three of the Bourne movies – Identity, Supremacy, and Ultimatum, but don’t ask me which order they go in because to be perfectly honest I was pretty tired by then, what with all the records and electrocution and not getting a deep fryer, so I tended to fall asleep during the parts that didn’t include shooting or driving cars down stairs; I did at least stay awake during the parts that involved Matt Damon talking on his cellphone with a wireless earpiece, so now when I do that I can pretend I’m a secret agent instead of just a guy caught in traffic.
The upshot was that I missed all the explanations of why Matt Damon was killing everyone, and was thoroughly confused because somewhere between the second and third movie the producers or someone lost track of things and so the first two were about Matt Damon wanting revenge on someone, possibly Russians, and the third was more about the war on terror and how the U.S. was maybe crossing the line, and they never fully explained the revenge part, or, if they did, they didn’t do it during a car chase scene so I missed it.
And Sweetie wasn’t able to help me, because she was caught up in her own question, which was the Michael Myers one. I wasn’t able to explain that to her, either, even though I stayed awake for probably 98% of that movie.
That, too, maybe gives you some insight into our house. All around the world, at dinner time, on Christmas Eve, parents were having this discussion with their kids:
How does Santa get around the whole world in a single night?
Magic.
At our house, it was:
How does Michael Myers know it’s his sister and not kill her even though she was a baby when he first murdered all those people?
And I was stumped.
I felt that I’d let Sweetie down terribly and had to make it up to her somehow, which I finally did last night by not only letting her go shopping while I watched the babies, but also by very heroically cleaning up the rug where Mr. Bunches peed while I was getting them dressed after their baths, even though Sweetie would never have known that he’d peed because she wasn’t there when he did it and it would dry up before she got home, and the babies weren’t going to tell her because all they say so far is “Aaaaaaaaaaaaaa” and, recently, “ooooooooooooo,” and, good as she is, Sweetie can’t translate that into “I peed on the floor and Daddy just left it there.”
I could have done that, but I didn't. Instead, I got them dressed, combed their hair, took them downstairs, and cleaned it up – being the kind of husband who, if he can’t explain slasher films, will at least apply a little baking soda and hope to the rug before going on to set World Records.
And I think that helped Sweetie avoid post-Christmas letdown, too. She may not know how Michael Myers knew it was his sister, and she, too, can't have cheesecake for breakfast 'til next year, but she does know that when she leaves, the house is safe in my hands. Or, if not safe, at least that it will be cleaned up.
Unless I'm running late for work.
Those questions were, in no particular order (well, okay, in the order in which they were answered):
How many Apple Jacks will stack on the head of a stuffed bear?
Which fuse turns off the power to the kitchen wall?
Will I convincingly be able to act as though whatever is in the deep fryer box is as good as the deep fryer would have been?
What kind of licorice do cats like, anyway?
How did Michael Myers know it was his sister?
And
What was the point of the second Bourne movie, then?
And
Am I the kind of husband who will vacuum the rug even though you can’t see the pee?
I think, just looking at that list, you will know all you ever need to know about my Christmas vacation. But let me elaborate.
My five days off began the same way all my days do: With an attempt to set a world record, which I am humbled but proud to say I achieved. Even with the whole day to spend with Mr. F. and Mr. Bunches, they were eager to get going and woke me up at about 6 on Friday. That’s about 35 minutes earlier than I usually get up; I find my routine works more smoothly in the morning if I manage to get up with not quite enough time to get ready and get to work at 8. Lots of people would probably just get up a little earlier, but those people would then get to work on time and be more productive and those people would probably have to wipe off the high chair trays after breakfast instead of telling Sweetie that they can’t possibly do that because they’re running late for work and which is more important: wiping the trays or making partner?
The first day of vacation, though, I was not going to have that excuse because not only did the babies wake up early, I didn’t have to go to work and didn’t, in fact, intend to get out of my Buffalo Bills’ pajamas. (Loungewear. If you wear it during the day, it’s called “loungewear” and obviously suited for lounging.)
Not knowing then the excitement that lay in store for me – I was, remember, planning on lounging – I set out to begin on a high note by going for the World Record For Stacking Apple Jacks On A Small Stuffed Bear’s Head. That’s trickier than it sounds because the bear’s head is barely – or should I say bearly (please don’t stop reading!) – larger than the Apple Jacks and because Mr. Bunches doesn’t like things stacked up and if he notices you’re doing it he’ll swipe through it and get mad and make that face that’s really actually kind of cute and you’ll laugh and he gets mad and throws the Apple Jacks and then you’ve got to vacuum, too.
So the record is… Seven. Try to top it if you want. (And if you do, send me a picture and I’ll post it here and you’ll hold the World Record, but you’ll also have to take responsibility for the damage that will be done to my career and relationships while I try to then top that.)(And don’t cheat; who would cheat at that? Why would you do that? Let’s have some integrity here in Apple-Jack Bear Stacks.) But you won’t be able to top it.
My whole weekend wasn’t able to be spent working on that significant project, though, because the kitchen light began blinking. Our house, which we bought extremely used, has wiring which was done by hand by the previous owner, something we didn’t really grasp the significance of before we bought it. We were forewarned, in a way, because the home inspector took a look at a set of wires on one wall and refused to test it. “I wouldn’t use that,” he said. We thereafter put the small green couch that everyone hates and which smells a lot – a lot—like cat in front of it for protection, and periodically we talk about getting rid of the green couch but that would leave the danger outlet open to the public and we don’t want to buy a new couch, so instead we invest a lot in baking soda and hope.
Because the light was blinking, and because it was the light I’d installed myself last Christmas, I had to get it fixed. I gathered up my tools—a ladder, an assortment of screwdrivers and a pliers, and my iPod—and shut off the circuit breaker for the kitchen. Or circuit breakers, because they are hand-labeled in the scribbly writing of the previous owners and say things like “east wall,” but there are no outlets in the east wall of any part of our house, and one says “kitchen” but turns off the upstairs bathroom. So I did what any sane electrician would do: I plugged in the coffee maker to the outlet nearest the light, and instructed The Boy to stand by it and tell me when the little green light went off.
That green light turns off when the coffee gets too hot, too, so I had to hope that I wasn’t near that limit.
On the third breaker, The Boy announced that it was off and I went to work doing the only thing I could think to do: unscrewing and re-tightening all the screws.
That’s really everyone’s solution to everything, isn’t it? Call a computer tech, and he tells you to open and close the computer. Something goes wrong with your car and you go and open the hood and check out a couple of the things you’ve seen them open and close. Light goes out, you flick the switch up and down. TV fails, you unplug it and plug it back in. All a variation of “unscrew it and screw it back in.” If people like me were dentists and you came to us with a toothache, we’d pull your tooth out, look at it, put it back and say “How’s that feel?”
It did not work, by the way – I’ll spoil the surprise and tell you that. But it did not work in a surprising way and I know that the wires were getting some power because on the fourth – the fourth -- set of wires I unscrewed and re-twisted while standing on a metal ladder in my kitchen, sparks flew when I began to twist them back together.
Luckily, I had not limited my safety gear to my Bill’s PJs. I also had on my Green Bay Packer-colored Crocs. Laugh if you want, but they saved my life and if not for them people would have woken up the next day to hear CNN announcing “World record Apple Jack stacker found electrocuted in kitchen.”
The Boy and I rethought our safety procedures and went and turned off all the circuit breakers, which allowed me to re-attach the wires and put the light back, where it still hangs in our kitchen, useless but safe.
It’s a good thing that my Dad was coming during the day and we didn't need that light, because otherwise he might have wanted to take a crack at the lighting situation, and I couldn’t find my vice grips, so disaster would have ensued. Dad requires a vice grips to fix anything, or did when we were kids and Mom wanted him to fix something and he'd tell us to go get his vice grips, which we could never find and after looking for hours suspected never actually existed, a belief which was buttressed by the fact that because we couldn't find them, Dad would not actually have to fix the thing, announcing "I can't do it without my vice grips," so if Dad tried to fix it he'd not only not have approved of my use of other tools but wouldn't have gotten anywhere without my, or his, vice grips. (Dad, by the way, did not approve of my Christmas tree, either. “It looks nice,” he said, but he was gritting his teeth. I couldn’t resist: “How do you like the bottom 1/5?” I asked. And all he said was “Yes.” But I noticed that his eyes never wavered down to that bottom where the lights were out.)
It was Dad that gave me the deep fryer. I opened my present and saw the deep fryer box and whooped. I haven’t gotten that excited about a present since Sweetie found me the “Cheesecake Truck” song. I showed it to The Boy, who gave me an air-five and we began talking immediately about all the things we were going to deep fry until Dad said “It’s not a deep fryer.”If someone had actually said “World record Apple Jack stacker found electrocuted in kitchen” the mood couldn’t have become more somber. Dad, I believe, was thinking how he’d obviously messed up, while I was thinking “Oh, man, what a jerk I look like now,” while everyone else in the room was clearly thinking variations on what a jerk I looked like, except for the babies, who were thinking “I wonder if that will fit in my mouth.”
So I peeled open the tape, ready to become even more excited, no matter what, and found, inside, a very nice crystal centerpiece, an absolutely appropriate gift for someone who owns three cats and twin 15-month-olds and I got all (fake) excited and said “Wow,” and “this is great” and all that stuff and threw in a few “even betters” and finally said “I love these kind of centerpieces,” and Dad said “It’s not a centerpiece.”
I probably should have just thrown him out then; how could that have been less awkward? Plus he wouldn’t have had to keep not looking at my tree, then. But I soldiered on while he explained that it was a serving bowl for the parties we have all the time, and as he talked and I pretended to be excited, I kept wondering: what parties? Who is it, exactly, that you think you’re talking to? Dad’s not that old, but he does get confused at times and only Sweetie can really understand him then, something I realized when he called and asked me to ask Sweetie who “that guy in that movie was” (exact quote) and Sweetie said “Clint Eastwood.” And she was right.
Christmas was a little quieter after that; Dad eventually left, probably vowing that he’d hire someone to do my tree next year, and we settled in for our Christmas Eve and Christmas Day routine of keeping Herman from eating the red licorice off the table while watching our Inappropriate Christmas Movie Marathon, which this year consisted of the Rob Zombie remake of “Halloween,” and all three of the Bourne movies – Identity, Supremacy, and Ultimatum, but don’t ask me which order they go in because to be perfectly honest I was pretty tired by then, what with all the records and electrocution and not getting a deep fryer, so I tended to fall asleep during the parts that didn’t include shooting or driving cars down stairs; I did at least stay awake during the parts that involved Matt Damon talking on his cellphone with a wireless earpiece, so now when I do that I can pretend I’m a secret agent instead of just a guy caught in traffic.
The upshot was that I missed all the explanations of why Matt Damon was killing everyone, and was thoroughly confused because somewhere between the second and third movie the producers or someone lost track of things and so the first two were about Matt Damon wanting revenge on someone, possibly Russians, and the third was more about the war on terror and how the U.S. was maybe crossing the line, and they never fully explained the revenge part, or, if they did, they didn’t do it during a car chase scene so I missed it.
And Sweetie wasn’t able to help me, because she was caught up in her own question, which was the Michael Myers one. I wasn’t able to explain that to her, either, even though I stayed awake for probably 98% of that movie.
That, too, maybe gives you some insight into our house. All around the world, at dinner time, on Christmas Eve, parents were having this discussion with their kids:
How does Santa get around the whole world in a single night?
Magic.
At our house, it was:
How does Michael Myers know it’s his sister and not kill her even though she was a baby when he first murdered all those people?
And I was stumped.
I felt that I’d let Sweetie down terribly and had to make it up to her somehow, which I finally did last night by not only letting her go shopping while I watched the babies, but also by very heroically cleaning up the rug where Mr. Bunches peed while I was getting them dressed after their baths, even though Sweetie would never have known that he’d peed because she wasn’t there when he did it and it would dry up before she got home, and the babies weren’t going to tell her because all they say so far is “Aaaaaaaaaaaaaa” and, recently, “ooooooooooooo,” and, good as she is, Sweetie can’t translate that into “I peed on the floor and Daddy just left it there.”
I could have done that, but I didn't. Instead, I got them dressed, combed their hair, took them downstairs, and cleaned it up – being the kind of husband who, if he can’t explain slasher films, will at least apply a little baking soda and hope to the rug before going on to set World Records.
And I think that helped Sweetie avoid post-Christmas letdown, too. She may not know how Michael Myers knew it was his sister, and she, too, can't have cheesecake for breakfast 'til next year, but she does know that when she leaves, the house is safe in my hands. Or, if not safe, at least that it will be cleaned up.
Unless I'm running late for work.
