The Adventure (people) Begins

How do you explain to a child about time zones? I'm sitting here blogging at 5:50 am because Corey is wide awake at 7 am...Eastern standard time.

He and Larry arrived yesterday to join me in spending some time at my folks in Chicago. Corey slept most of the flight and promptly called me upon landing to say "Pop-pop and me are ready for you and Grandpa to picked us up. And my tummy is hungry too." He's a pretty good traveler and an even better guest.

The first thing he did when he got into the house was run to the basement where all the toys are kept. We had to remind him to hug and kiss his grandparents first and then he promptly brought out all our old Star Wars figures and Adventure People.

I spent my whole childhood doing imagination play. My first love as a child had been the wooden Fisher Price castle, barn, airport, etc., but those we replaced by Adventure People in the early 70's.

Since these were reasonably inexpensive, it was not uncommon to get 1 or 2 each holiday. My brother and I owned at least 15 of the sets including the rescue helicopter, Wilderness Patrol, Sea Explorer, Motorcross Team, Safari and Northwoods Trailblazer. And in my crazy imaginative mind, all of them interacted and it was not uncommon for me to get lost in play for hours.

I was always pretty good about not losing many of the pieces even though I played extensively with these. Since my parents saved many of our old toys, most are in good enough to snag $40-50 on eBay.

It is sometimes scary to see the characteristics your child takes from you. Corey is certainly blond, left-handed, easily frustrated and sensitive, but to watch him get lost for hours in play makes me happy to see him enjoy the same things I did 30 years earlier.

Part of me always thought we'd sell these toys after this generation grew out of them, but I think it would be fun to save them for my grandkids someday.

Hopefully, that is along way off.

What Was I Going to Say?

This is what I hate most about grad school...my brain is mush. I'm like an 87-year old man who can't remember that I like Jello or just put my teeth in the cup on my night stand. I remember NOTHING these days.

Every day I come across something that I want to tell you. Little anecdotes that I can turn into a funny story. And what happens? NADA. I forget what I was going to say.

Once I even wrote it down. Then I couldn't find the paper.

On the plus side, school is going great. Friday, I submitted a 10-page paper on once-again CEO Howard Schultz's leadership of Starbucks and then jammed out another 9-pager on Meg Whitman from eBay this weekend. eBay was easy given that I could reference my own experiences as a seller. The Strategic Management & Leadership class is having us profile executives and their rise to leadership with regards to their corporate strategy. It's taxing but really interesting.

Economics is going well too. Surprising, it's actually making a lot of sense despite never having taken a class in it before. Mid-terms are in two weeks and I feel pretty good about my understanding of things thus far.

However, keeping myself immersed in this world sometimes makes me forget the other world. I completely forgot to send my mom a birthday card for her special day today.

HAPPY BIRTHDAY MOM!

Christmas Meme

My folks arrive today, so my time will be limited for posting. And since school is done for three weeks, my brain is in neutral. I’m just sitting around a lot in my underwear watching reruns of Designing Women.

Enjoy this Christmas meme that comes by way of Clare’s Dad.

1. Wrapping or gift bags? Everything has always been wrapped, though I’m becoming a fan of gift bags. So much easier…and isn’t that what is the holidays are all about?

2. Real or artificial tree? Like Clare’s dad, we grew up with the bottlebrush tree. Each year, we’d stick the colored tips into a pole and PRESTO we’d have a Christmas tree. When I moved in with Larry, we had a real tree for years. Then I got all environmental and cost conscious so we bought one of those pre-lit ones. It’s like opening a patio umbrella. Love it!

3. When do you put up the tree? This year, all the Christmas decorations went up the Friday after Thanksgiving. The tree went up the next weekend. With school, I just didn’t have the time to spare.

4. When do you take down the tree? It can come down as early as New Years or as late as MLK day. This year will probably be early since school begins Jan 5.

5. Do you like eggnog? Nasty. It’s like drinking snot.

6. Favorite gift received as a child? Fort Apache. My dad spent an hour setting this up and I awoke that Christmas at 4 am. My parents took turns watching me play with it while the other would catch up on sleep. I think I played with this for three hours before my little brother even got up.

7. Do you have a nativity scene? You’re kidding right? I collect these from other countries or ones that depict the holy family in non-traditional locales. I have 19 nativities. The oldest, on the right, is my grandparents from the 1930 (though a few of the people have been replaced). I usually buy 1-2 each year through eBay or specialty stores.

My favorite was made by a woman in Lancaster, PA. It shows the nativity as Amish. In tradition with the Amish culture, the people are shown without faces. The wise men are bringing gifts of pretzels, corn and bread. (That also would describe my dad’s ideal Christmas dinner.)

8. Worst Christmas gift you ever received? I can’t really think of anything I truly hated. My aunt who lived out of town would always send clothes. Finally, my mom just asked if we could stop exchanging gifts with them.

9. Mail or email Christmas cards? Over 100 by mail. As Ava will tell you, I actually have to force myself from not mailing them early. I always have them done by Thanksgiving. I’ve reduced it to just a Christmas letter, and frankly since I love to write, it’s easy to generate. This year, I actually started it in July since I was going to be in school.

10. Favorite Christmas movie? I really don’t get into Christmas movies. Would Die Hard count as a Christmas movie?

11. When do you start shopping for Christmas? We try to shop all year long and just collect things throughout the year. Some years however (like this one), we did most it these last two weeks.

12. Favorite thing to eat at Christmas? Cookies. Seriously, I love my cookies.

13. Clear lights or colored on the tree? We grew up with colored lights, but since we’ve had our own tree, they are all white. The tree is pre-lit with the white lights, but there are sections that keep going out. Larry hates that, but I just think it’s like a holiday dance club.

14. Favorite Christmas song? I did a post on this last year. Here are my 10 favorite songs.

15. Travel at Christmas or stay home? Every 4^th year we travel to Chicago, otherwise we stay here.

16. Can you name all of Santa’s reindeer? Yes.

17. Angel on the treetop or a star? We have the angel from when Larry was a little boy. Growing up, we had this pointy thing that topped the tree. I think it used to be on my dad’s tree when he was little.

18. Open the presents Christmas Eve or Christmas morning? Always Christmas day. When we were little, we could open a gift on Christmas Eve, but for someone reason, it could only be from people who lived out of town. That's when I got those strange clothes from my aunt.

19. Most annoying thing about this time of year? All the people who didn’t give a shit about you for 11 months want you to come to their house for parties. Our rule is that we will only go if we’ve seen them other times throughout the year.

20. Do you decorate your tree in any specific theme or color? Our ornaments are all red, white and gold. We didn’t set out to do that. It has just evolved that way.

21. What do you leave for Santa? Ummm, Santa visits my son at his moms’ house and they leave cookies and milk.

22. Least favorite holiday song? I’ll be Home for Christmas. Not sure why, but it’s never done anything for me.

23. Favorite ornament? The starfish Santas. Our beagle has eaten two of them and every year, we recall the story of him barfing them back up. Who can’t love a memory like that?

Growing up though, we had this one we fondly called ‘Helen’. It’s a doll’s head. She is tin and came from my dad’s tree. However, her eyes have fallen off so we named her after Helen Keller. We’d put her front & center and my mom would always move her to back of the tree. It was a constant battle, but we finally wore mom down.

Hope your Christmas is filled with memories just as special as these.

Games People Play

Last week, I spent five days at my folk's house. Since my parents recently moved, they were extremely excited to have us all visit, but they were most excited about the "grand kid area" they had created in their basement.

As constant yard sale vigilantes, the two of them can score some amazing bargains and thus have stocked their basement much like aisles 3-7 of Toys R Us. There is not a child in the Chicago area who would pick a better destination for their activities.

I am a purger who comes from two pack rats savers. They have kept a ton of our toys from when we were little. Let's just say when we move them to the nearest Leisure World, eBay will be paying for Corey's college education with the sale of these toys.

The most remarkable thing was watching how he was drawn to these items. A recent Star Wars convert, he immediately went for the Darth Vader action figure storage case. We They still have
21 of the figures, along with weapons, outfits, landspeeders and fighters.

Right along side were our old Adventure People. We have about fifteen sets of these and as you can see from the link, they are worth a fortune. Corey would have R2D2 on safari, Lando Calrissan cooking in the kitchen and Han Solo in a canoe. Each figure jumped into a foreign situation, but in my son's eyes, they all belonged together.

We celebrated Corey's birthday out there as well. He got a Spiderman car, a transformer and a game... Buckaroo. As he unwrapped it, I commented, "Wow, what a cool game."

My mom looked over. "That's what you said 37 years ago when we gave it to you. We gave you this game for staying dry for five nights in a row."

It's sort of hard to find a witty comeback after a statement like that.

Flying Home

It's the last day of our trip visiting my folks in Chicago. Why do vacations always seem more tiring than staying home?

Overall, it has been great. Corey has really enjoyed spending time with his grandparents and met his two cousins out here for the first time. His cousin Kevin is only a few months older than him and we were wondering how they would get along. Their conversations went a lot like this:

"Barrrlllppp.....I burped"
"pppfffttssd....oh yeah, that was my fart."
"Toooootttteerr.......I can fart too out my bootie."

Nice huh? 5 year olds will be 5 year olds. Whatever did we get ourselves into.

Corey has had a great time, watching Star Wars movies, playing with all my old toys and getting spoiled in general. We spent a day at Centennial Beach, which is this old quarry now used as a pool and beach. The boys also spent the day at the Dupage Children's Museum. Talk about a place that Purell would make a fortune.

The flight was low key, not that it's hard to have a meltdown in 90 minutes. God bless iTunes who thought it was a wise idea to include Little Einsteins in their programming choice.

We're coming home tonight so pictures later this week.

PS My email notification for comments hasn't been working well at all. My apologies if I haven't responded back.

PPS Drop by Family of Choice and congratulate my friend Bacchus. He and his partner have finalized the adoption of their son.

Something Wicked This Way Comes

It's 7:00 and Larry's in the next room. I think if given the choice, he'd sleep until 11 AM.

Welcome to the in-laws house.

Yep, we're in Chicago at my parent's new house. I have a three-day conference starting on Sunday so we decided to tie in a trip to my folks. Let's just point out that it was snowing when our plane landed.

SNOWING!?! The week after the Easter bunny arrived, saw his shadow and ended winter, right? Whatever... I fucking hate winter.

Their new house is going well, though it reminded me that the thought of ever moving from our home scares me. We've been in our house for 14 years now and everything is how I like it. (Did you know that I was creature of habit? I pretend to be spontaneous, but in truth, I plan it out way early and just make it look like I'm spur-of-the-moment.)

For being here only 10 days, my folks have done a decent job settling in. Don't go down in the basement however. A family of gypsies could live there for a year and no one would have a clue.

On Thursday, we went downtown and saw Wicked. If you've never seen this show, you really should. It's wonderful. We had seen in it in previews in NYC with Idina Menzel and Kristen Chenowith, but these two women here did an amazing job as well. Well worth the money.

For the most part, we've been shopping, playing games and just chatting...or really listening to my mom. But if you close your eyes, you can almost imagine yourself getting a few words in. It's surreal how many words can come from that little body.

In the weirdest reversal of misfortunes, sleeping habits have all changed. My folks go to bed at midnight or 1 am and wake up mid-morning. I on the other hand, can sleep in until 6:30 am and feel rested. It does provide for some great early morning Internet time, but we're eating breakfasts at 11:30 am. My whole day is practically over by 10:30 in the morning. I feel like going into their room, pulling open the drapes, ripping off the covers and screaming "I wasn't the one who went out all night drinking Lowenbrau and listening to Maiden Lady." (She never could get her facts straight.)

However, the thought of going into my parent's bedroom is creepy. What's worse is that we are sleeping in their old bed. They upgraded to a king-size bed so the guest room inherited the old queen-size one.

Larry teased me the first night. "We're sleeping in the bed your parents had sex in."

I didn't take the bait. "Don't be silly. My parents only had sex twice and the last time was 38 years ago when my brother was born. This bed is only 22 years old. It's not the same one."

Parents having sex. Geez, have you ever heard of something so goofy?

A Pictures's Worth 1000 Words

Believe it or not... we just had Christmas. We're were not able to connect with my folks over the holidays so we all just got together these past five days, had a relaxed visit and finally exchanged Christmas gifts.

Buying gifts for my parents really sucks. It stresses me out every year because they have everything they need already... and then some. As you know they are moving (yes, still) so the last they need is more junk. We attempt to buy them unique things or things that get used up (like theater tickets), but that is nearly impossible.

Well, this year kicked some Santa ass.

One of our neighbors had us for dinner a few months ago to meet their new son. During the visit, we noticed a sketch hanging on the wall. It was a hand-drawn picture of their last house. Larry & I just turned and looked at each other. Light bulbs went off. The perfect gift for a couple who was moving out of their house after 32 years.

The artist, Catherine, turned out to be a local DC woman. She borrowed two color photos and began work. After three weeks and a couple phone calls for some detail explanation of the house, she was done. I cannot tell you how impressed we were. The best part was that it cost less than $300.

Catherine is definitely taking on more business and is glad to work with people from out of town. She'll also have the drawing framed if you'd like. She works with pencil drawings and watercolors. And she's the sweetest woman I've ever spoken with.

I won't post her information here, but you can email me to get her contact info. These are great gifts for parents or wonderful for yourself if you want memories of the homes you've lived in. (She also showed me how she chronicled a family business that had grown over time. ) The ideas are limitless.

So without further waiting....the house I grew up in.

The Rest of the Week

Sorry... I feel like I've been gone for ages.

I didn't share this with all of you, but I actually was sick on my birthday. I woke up that morning, emailed my boss that I was staying home and did that post about the big snow. Then I went back to bed for another 6 hours. Pathetic, I know, but there is something to be said for being in your PJ's all day on your birthday.

Not sure where I caught it from, but by last Tuesday night, I was just wiped. The worst part was that Larry was getting antsy about my birthday. It was quite obvious that he had something planned. He'd told me to be ready at 5:30 after work and he would pick me. He even made arrangements to have our dogs let out and fed that night.

By Tuesday night, I hinted that I wasn't really feeling festive and perhaps we could alter plans or pick another night. "Nope, we can't pick another night," he said.

Mid-day on Wednesday, he called me at home to see how I feeling. "Lousy," I said. He just chuckled, "Well, be ready by 5:30."

You can only guess how un-birthday'd I was feeling. I surmised that he had bought theater tickets. My favorite musical, Into the Woods, is running at a local theater. Since he wasn't letting me get out of the evening, that must have been it. "Fine, but freaking let me out of dinner. I'm sick." I thought. He must be reasoned with.

I got out of bed at 5:00, showered and dressed for theater. Preparations began in the shower about how to cut out dinner and just save my energy for the play. I rehearsed the words over and over in my head.

At 5:30 on the nose, the door opens. Larry comes back into the kitchen and has this shit-eating grin on his face. "How's the birthday guy?"

"Umm, sick," I say as I wipe my drippy nose with a tissue.

"Are you excited about tonight," he asks and then walks out of the room back to the front door.

I begin my rehearsed speech. He comes back in, obviously not listening. A minute later he leaves again and I begin getting angry. He returns and says, "Are you ready for dinner?"

You know that look on your face when your spouse isn't paying any attention to what you are saying? That was pretty much happening in our kitchen, but with snot and a really red nose.

"I think we'll all have a good time," he says.

"Are you not hearing anything I am.... WE?"

And with that, my parents walked around the corner. My totally-not-paying-attention partner had flown them in to celebrate my birthday.

Thankfully, we had changed restaurants to something a little more suitable for an ailing son. My folks just smiled for most of the dinner, ecstactic to be a part of the night.

Luckily, they stayed for two nights. I was still not feeling good the next day, so between that and my folks being in town, it just made more sense for me to stay home and enjoy the visit.

They left on Friday morning. I went to work as well. That evening, Larry & I had dinner and just collapsed. It had been a great and exhausting week.

I looked over. "Thanks for everything you did this week. Please tell me we're done."

"We're done," he said. "Until you're 50."

God help me.

Why I Hate the Cold

40 years ago today, this is what I was born into...Chicago's biggest snow storm. Great timing, Mom & Dad. :)

From iPod to Moving Pod

As most of you know (because you read my moving post over at Blogfathers), my folks bought a new house. I'm here in Chicago, moving the shit they should have throw out years ago things that have sentimental value into a POD to help clear out the house for it show better. To say this is going smoothly...ah fuck it, it's not. Plain and simple

True, I am one of the most critical people that inhabits the Northern Hemisphere, but I'm dying here. Item thus far that have moved from their original dusty caverns (but not necessarily into the pod):

‡24 Christmas cassettes
‡My father's 8mm movie projector
‡My grandfather's 8mm movie projector
‡A box of pantyhose (seems they've been discontinued)
‡My old beer can collection
‡Income taxes files since 1960
‡The Neil Diamond album collection
‡My old snow sled
‡Six kitchen cabinets (from when we renovated our kitchen... in 1979)
‡My grandfather's tackle box (we don't fish, btw)
‡Two bowling balls from 1968
‡65 purses (ladies, what is it with you and your handbags?)
‡Over 100 empty Cool-whip containers (did you know you can freeze spaghetti sauce in them?)

The winner:
‡ 24 cans of condensed milk (They were on sale.) Seriously at that point it was good my folks didn't own a firearm.

As of Noon today, the 8x12 pod is packed. We are now moving forward with packing other boxes of crap.

The realization that woke me up last night was that I will have to fly back and upack all this shit. God help me.