What in the world did cavemen do before the dishwasher was invented? Their stone bowls likely stacked up in the sinks, and bones must have been strewn about in disarray. How uncivilized! Nothing like us modern-day appliance addicts. And while I’ve always thought of myself as a relatively simple guy, I learned a bit about my dependence to this one modern convenience last week when ours came down with a case of the intestinal death. The motor went to the great junkyard in the sky where it is now drinking pia coladas and laughing at me. In dishwasher heaven you use all the cups and plates you want and humans have to wash them. I always thought of dishwashers as rather silly devices. To me they were made for people who were either incredibly lazy, or just terrified of suds. Do we really need them? Would life be so bad without them? After a week of waiting for the new motor to arrive and the repairman to come install it, I can tell you that I have seen life without dishwashers and that life doth sucketh!
Just Call Me Dora
It’s role-playing time at my house. Pretend-time. We’ve all been assigned new names and personalities by the house’s resident toddler, who saunters about rooms pointing at people and telling them who they are. “You are Dora,” she tells me, and suddenly I’ve switched genders altogether. Forget that I’m a guy, or that I don’t want to be a little pint-sized cartoon character. I plead for something else. Anything! “No,” she says sweetly, the word trailing on in a squeaky singsong like it has to hit every note on the scale. “You are Dora.” So, now I’m Dora, the Explorer. “Dora,” she is saying to me right now, tugging on my arm as I type, “play with me.” Who am I anymore? I’m confused. It’s been that way in my house recently. We’ve all become cartoon characters. My wife is now Diego from “Go, Diego, Go!” and my daughter has ditched the name we spent so much time coming up with and adopted Alicia, the name of Diego’s sister. Neighbors walking by call out, “Hi Amelie,” only to have her call back, “No, I’m Alicia!” They stare, scratch their heads and wonder if they’ve been mistakenly calling her the wrong name for almost three years. “I could have sworn that kid’s name was Amelie,” they must wonder to themselves. “And his name I’m certain wasn’t Dora.”
Fall and Memories of Sandspur-filled Soccer Fields
Something about the onset of fall, with those post-summer dips into the mid-80s and that tantalizing realization that the seasons are changing, always takes me back to my childhood. That occurred to me while on a run the other day. The air was just a bit crisper, the temperature beautiful and the sun sagging low in the sky like a fat man testing the limits of his hammock. The sun seems to get tired this time of year — like it just can’t radiate heat like it used to. And thank goodness. A feeling came over me — maybe the way the air felt as I gulped it down, or the fact that I wasn’t drenched in sweat like I was underwater. It triggered vivid memories of being a kid and playing outside this time of year. It was my favorite time of year. When you grew up in Tampa, there was nothing better than the start of October. It signaled you could finally go outside without risking heat stroke, or worse, spontaneous combustion. “Dang, Johnny just lit up like a Roman candle again,” was never uncommon to hear. “Get the fire extinguisher.” But the first inkling of fall was a wonderful time, and as I ran, I remembered soccer practices on a sandspur-laden field that sat next to the crosstown expressway. The sandspurs seemed meaner that time of year, and they all stood at attention like toy soldiers, just daring you to slide through them. Any kid who did […]
Pumping Iron and that Intimidating Gym
Am I becoming a “muscle-head?” Actually, I’m not even sure if that’s the right term. That’s how little I know about gyms and lifting weights. Although I am learning. I’ve been trying to farm-raise a muscle or two along my upper body. A field of abs here. A row of biceps there. Maybe even a plot of pecs for the spring. As an avid runner, my lower body has always been in pretty good shape. My legs were toned with sharply angled muscles. My upper body, on the other hand, looked like a man who had launched a hunger strike about three decades ago. But a few months back, when I was forced to take to the Flagler College gym to rehab my wounded leg, I started looking around at these scary and intimidating devices for arms and shoulders. While I couldn’t figure out what any of them did, or much less how to use them, I got it in my head that I should expand my circuit to add some upper body workouts. So I’ve started lifting weights, and actually I’m really enjoying it. It’s added some variety to my running, and even put some meat on my formerly scrawny bones.
The … um … ‘Quirks’ of a Toddler
You never call your kid nuts. Never. No way. That’s out of bounds and off limits. Parents don’t go there talking about their own children. Other people’s children, sure, why not? But your own, nope! That isn’t to say they’re not nuts. More than likely, they are, especially if you have a toddler. Every parent knows their kid is bonko. But you don’t say it out loud. You don’t mention it among civilized company. You kind of pretend they’re normal, sane, and didn’t just crash into that wall at high speed, only to turn to you and say, “I fell on my butt.” This is what I’m coming to understand as the parent of a 2 1/2-year-old. You invent nice, delicate, PC ways to explain your child’s behavior, and her … um … quirks. Yeah, quirks. That’s it. She has quirks. That’s why she tried to brush her eyeballs with a toothbrush, or nearly flushed herself down the toilet. That’s why she says things like “poopie music” and wants me to smell her dirty shoes. You invent little phrases and sayings to explain all this stuff: She’s having a moment. A circuit must have fried. She’s unique. She’s special. There’s not as much oxygen going around as there used to be. Must be too much sugar in her diet. Must be all those double espresso lattes. Our new one is not so subtle, but speaks more to a time of day than a frame of mind: the 5 o’clock crazies. […]
Happy Birthday, Honey … Now for Some Advice
Happy birthday, honey. Don’t worry. I won’t give away your age, except to say that you look more beautiful today than you did when you were 20. Unless of course that’s giving away too much. In which case, when you were 11. Although that sounds a little creepy. So let’s just say you look smokin’ hot, and young not old … I mean … OK, let’s move on. Anyway, it’s your (age withheld) birthday, and I hope it’s a good one. For my part, I will try not to make too big a mess around the house; I will attempt to do at least one thing you ask (except fold that shirt that’s been sitting on the dresser for weeks — I kind of like it there now); and I’ll do my best to watch the kid to give you a break. (Yes, I know. Watch the kid means don’t let her put the dog in the dishwasher again, and it doesn’t mean two eyes on the TV and one ear on her.) I want this day to be special and relaxing for you. Yeah, I know, that was a good one. Stop laughing. You’re the parent of a 2-1/2-year-old — the responsible one at that — and it’s not easy to take time for yourself or put away your role as the mother of me, and the child. Guys have no problem there, I don’t know why. Shoot, sometimes we forget we have kids. We forget we have houses. […]
Time for a Big Kid House
I want a big kid house. I don’t know what it is — what has changed. Maybe it’s fatherhood, maybe it’s my age. Maybe it’s that I want really nice things so that a storm can come and blow them all away. Or maybe it’s just that I’m finally tired of looking at those wood putty holes in the utility room door that I started over a year ago but never finished. Take a walk around my house and you find many things like that. The trim I never finished painting. The trim I never finished putting up. The trim I never bought. Little things and big things. They’ve all been weighing on me recently, making me think it’s time to finish the house and make it a little more grown-up. I have extra motivation, too: It seems my wife feels exactly the same way. Funny the things that will motivate you! I don’t want to leave my house, I just want to polish it off. Make it feel more complete. It’s a quaint, rustic-looking, century-old abode in Lincolnville that could be at home in Key West or Cross Creek. It has personality — it seeps from the pours of every piece of heart pine, and even the creaking of the floors sound like an old man telling a tale “Did I tell you about the time I fought off a grizzly bear with nothing but a pair of tweezers and a rolled up newspaper?”
Gator Hunting and the Quest for the Greatest Injury
It must be something in our DNA some little genetic tic floating around that makes us this way. Call it the “stupid” gene. All Thompson men seem to have it, and definitely so in our wing of the family tree. It makes us desperate to top each other with the most exotic, or as my wife says, most absurd injury. The Thompson men are on an epic quest, and it has started heating up lately. In the spring I had a surfing accident — a fin on my board stabbed me in the thigh, punching clean through my wetsuit and just missing my femoral artery. While I’m running again, I’m still not fully healed. I set the bar pretty high for the year with my 150 stitches. My brother and father, though, appear to be shopping for a topper. My brother, who has been collecting and refurbishing old vintage motorcycles, has started racing them. And not just on any old track, but on off-road courses mired in mud, rolling hills and tree roots that reach up out of the ground trying to snag an errant tire.
Planning on Wind, Water from Tropical Storm Fay
It’s Tuesday evening, I’m writing a column, there’s a tropical storm cutting across the state … Do you know where your cans of tuna fish are? That’s all I’ve been thinking about. That’s my storm food if the big one comes. That, some canned peaches and a half-eaten jar of salted peanuts. I couldn’t wait. Who knows what we’ll be facing Friday morning when this newspaper hits driveways. Could be it’s a bright sunny day out. Or could be you’re reading this in four feet of water over a bowl of Fruit Loops made soggy by the steady drip coming through that hole in your roof. While I’m sitting here typing away Tuesday night, forecasters are pondering what to make of Tropical Storm Fay. She’s already made landfall twice in the state and is supposed to make a left hand turn back toward St. Augustine sometime … well … right about now. How will this all turn out?
Olympic Memories of Track and Field
The Olympics have arrived — Yahoo! Just in time. As the heat has turned the land into a giant convection oven, and summer enters its more-boring-than-a-lecture-on-wall-paper phase, I’ll do anything to stay inside in front of the TV … even if it means watching water polo. I love the Olympics. The competition. The stories. The variety. The fact that all I need to do is sit on the sofa clipping fingernails and drinking iced tea. Let someone else do all the physical exertion. Shoot, I might even watch synchronized swimming. A lot of people will question whether that is a sport, but I have no doubts. Try to tread water while doing all manner of complex motions with your arms, legs and feet. I would drown in about a minute flat. My brain isn’t capable of doing two things at once, and as soon as I started waving my hands in the air, I would forget I was in water and sink to the bottom like a bag of concrete. Anything I could die in, I consider a sport.