Sunday to Wednesday

In the interest of selling greeting cards there is a holiday called Father's Day, and while i understand the premise behind it i can't help but feel it's another way to stimulate the economy, of course i always dig what the boyos get me because it's a uncensored moment of self expression and needless to say it does make me smile (a fidget spinner and soap shaped like acorns in box labeled "Wash Your Nuts), on this past Father's Day the boyos and their old man decided to live it up and do our parts as good Mericans and consume... we started the day at a swanky, hippie donut shop and after crushing our donuts we relaxed before heading to the local pool for damn near five hours, earlier in the day their old man tossed a brisket into the old crock pot and used his mama's not so secret recipe so a big chunk of dinner would be done by the time they came home...

And so home we came, getting home an hour or so before the storm started, the Breadwinner splayed on her chair, Ipad in hand and flipping away at her fruits or blocks or whatever it is she plays these days, an activity i'm told is mindless and relaxing which helps her forget the stress of her job, now i understand my role as the indentured servant is to cook, clean, wash clothes, cut grass and a myriad of other jobs and chores and far be it from me that i thought i might get out of my cooking duties for one night but alas i was mistaken, and so i set to work on my Brussels sprouts and mashed potatoes, went to work on finding Disaster something he would actually eat, i cracked a beer and listened to the boyos bound about the house...

At the pool i noticed how many women and their children were there and i noticed a distinct lack of men, being the big hairy Carol Brady i saw  fellow soccer moms and the stories all sounded similar, the fathers of the world were out golfing or fishing or getting drunk, i found it strange how so many of these guys wanted away from the very beings that gave them the option of i guess being away from those very beings, but what the fuck do i know? i was happy to be at the pool with my boyos, eating snack bar popcorn and nachos and splashing about, at one point while both the boyos were hanging on me, sore back and all, i don't think you could have punched the smile off my face, i was the happiest man alive...

I was not upset or put off by my making of dinner that night, it did tell me where i stood in one person's eyes but i pretty much knew where i stood, which brings us to Wednesday... dreaded Wednesday... the Breadwinner is always off on this day and during the summer she likes to do "family" stuff, of course the idea of family stuff in her head and the actual family stuff are two different things, i started the day off stepping squarely in a steaming pile by suggesting to the boyos we go mini-golfing, they dig it and it had that might storm vibe about the day so why waste a trip to the pool? and so it was off to lunch at the Indian buffet and then to the mini-golf, we hadn't left the house when i was being told how much the Breadwinner loathed mini-golf and my response was, yeah but they don't and if you have an alternative option then let 'em hear it, her lack of response said it all, the string of comments continued unabated and i was running out of fingers and toes to count how many times i had been told, sometimes all of us told, how much someone despised mini-golf...

Now the night held much promise as it was the first night of some local cults carnival and if there's one thing i fucking love it's a carnival, it's the only time i'll willingly mingle among the Christian types and i always laugh at how since you're at the church carnival they just assume you are of their flock, i''m just here for the grub, the carny games and on occasion the gambling,  it tickles me that cards and dice and money wheels are all cool when it's for the Good Lord's coffers, jack of diamonds and lucky seven save my heathen soul! it's a little (or maybe well known) fact that i'm a man of many useless talents, one of those being an advanced skill at carny games, i believe it was cultivated in my youth at the now shuttered Geauga Lake Amusement Park and along the pier and in the arcades of Ocean City, i don't know why? it's a just a useless skill, like being a repository of useless facts among the couch-locked stoners playing Jeopardy at the Clubhouse, except at least at the carnival i can win stuffed toys and useless crap or better yet help the boyos win, in an advisory role of course...

There is a game where one throws a baseball at fuzzy cat type things lined up in three rows, the object being to knock over at least two but preferably three fuzzy cat type things with the three baseballs you are given, i didn't play baseball after third grade but yet i'm good at this game, the trick being not to overthrow the ball, it doesn't take much to knock down the fuzzy cats but watch and you'll see player after player firing the ball as hard as they can and losing that all important accuracy, the boyos kept trying and kept losing so in a moment of madness i handed the carny kid a dollar and stepped up to take a turn, it was then that i heard the Breadwinner's voice, why was i using her money to play a game? i said nothing, gave the I-mac a brief pointer and handed him the baseballs, it was not a battle i wished to engage in, once again i knew my place, all that for better or for worse jive was just that... jive... or to quote Sam Clemens "God's great cosmic joke on the human race was requiring that men and women live together in marriage"... (because if you weren't legally bound why the hell would you stay? at least i like to think that was Sam's point...)

The I-mac left with a funny hat that would not look out of place at a Celtic football match and a pack of removable tattoos bearing the emblem of our beloved Stanley Cup champion Penguins, Nick Disaster scored a sunglass-wearing stuffed poop emoji (by far his favorite emoji) and another little laughing emoji, emojis being the hot thing in carnival prizes this year apparently, all told between the mini-golf and carnival they had had a banner day and were smiling as we walked towards the car, Disaster even reaching for my hand which makes his old man melt cuz i know that soon it won't happen anymore... you never think about your parents relationship when you're a kid unless of course that relationship goes tits up, when my parents split up i realized there was a whole world i was oblivious to, their world, that there was in fact much i didn't know about my parents and their interactions with each other, and why would i? i was a kid, i didn't think about it much like the boyos don't think about it, this one will most likely last as long as it needs to, for now there is still much to do and if i was kicked out tomorrow i'd camp out in the front yard just so i could get up and still make the boyos breakfast, maybe i don't have the will or energy to fight or more correctly i just don't see the point, and when the day comes when i get my walking papers i will go about it, hopefully, with honor and decency, no finger pointing or blaming, just an acknowledgement that people and things are always in flux and there comes a time when those things go in different directions, you could call it any number of things, i just choose to call it life...