A Day in the Life

This morning I came really close to accidentally putting diesel fuel in my car. I'm not sure how accidental it would really have been, seeing as I had to have consciously removed that nozzle and pushed the corresponding button; but it certainly can be seen as an indicator of my mental state.

I know, everyone's busy, everyone's tired, and everyone's stressed. I won't deny that blanket statement. But we all deal with the shit differently. And any reader of this blog knows on which end of the spectrum I fall.

My stepson probably summed it up nicely in the car last night when he chuckled and said, "You're, like, complaining about a lot of things right now." That kind of comment generally doesn't go over very well either. Dominic's not-so-keen observation actually came just after I was cursing a highway access ramp for having too many fucking potholes. Seems trivial, yes, but consider that I was just then on my way home at about 7:00pm when I'd left work over two hours earlier. I had to pick up one kid in one place, one kid from another place, and then I unwisely chose to drive several miles out of the way to get some decent food for dinner. (Thanks to my brother, at least the food was free.)

I know it's the nature of being a parent, especially one who has multiple kids, to be completely devoid of free time. I honestly consider my drive to and from work each day to be about as relaxing as my life ever gets. But it's not as if I have kids who are overly active outside the house. I'm not yet at the point where my family is driving from end to end across town to get to a baseball game here and a soccer game there. This should be the time that I have some more flexibility to enjoy the child-rearing duties. But I'm not experiencing that with much consistency these days.

I certainly could have used some of that leeway last night, too, after a relatively rocky day at work. While it did have some clear peaks, there were also the corresponding valleys, the low point being when I felt the need to call two of my closest co-workers/friends “fucking assholes.” I meant it more than they seemed to think, but it still did change the tone of their chuckles at the time. My capacity for peripheral nonsense just happens to be at an all-time low. They should know that now.

When I did return home, I found that the door from the garage into our house had been erroneously locked. I don't have a key for that door on my chain, and, fuck, I don't even have a key to the front door on my chain. (I'll admit, I have no one to blame but myself for that, but that doesn't make the situation any better.) I knew there was a box with some extra keys out there, and while the two kids stood startled on the stairs with our poor dog barking on the other side of the door, I frantically had to try to find the right one. Luckily I did before too long, and I was finally able to get inside my freaking house.

It wasn't long after that, however, when one of my boys' chairs at their Lego table had an unfortunate accident. The accident was that it ended up in my hand, which is what led to its demise. The events that led to this incident are inconsequential at this point, but I knew at that moment that my night was going to get even worse. My wife was sure to notice this very quickly upon her return. And she did. If it weren't for Dominic's dad showing up to get him a few minutes thereafter, I might still be in the doghouse. But since Sal hung around for a little while and had a couple of beers, some of the tension was thankfully washed away by alcohol.

Still, the subject was revisited later with the expected hyperbole; my wife often likes to say, "Why do you have to break everything?" I clearly don't break everything, otherwise we wouldn't have anything left. I've responded with that exact line before, and it's not received well. In fact, I believe it was something very close to that that prompted the Line of the Night to be very smoothly and plainly delivered by my better half:

"I have this urge to punch you in the face right now. Right on the cheekbone, I think."

That, my friends, is what family life and love is all about. And at the end of the day, I know right where I belong.