Summertime Summertime Sum Sum...

Summertime. I hear it's on the way. Hot and humid days. It was nice to have a June that felt like April. It was nice to have the rain, although not so nice for my grandparents in Marble Falls whose back room flooded just two days before the annual family reunion. Since the town was upside down in asphalt and washed out homes, the reunion was postponed.

Yep, here comes summer. And since we had an extended spring I'm sure summer will last until the first of October, which means the Austin City Limits Music Festival will most likely be another sweat fest fueled by too many beers and spicy nachos. Oh well, you only live once!

Along with finally being able to treat my grass with fungicide to save the remaining sprouts of desperate St. Augustine blades hoping to form a runner to fill back in the bare spots, I'm also looking forward to some thunder and lightning free kickball games down at the rec center!



Little Mr. is on a coed team this summer and they are good! Their team wins every time they play! OK, so maybe they all win every time but that doesn't make it less exciting for the kids and parents. It's not like they are playing high school football or anything. They are a bunch of three and four-year old kids learning how to participate on a team and play an organized sport. I use the term organized very loosely, though. At some point all of the kids take turns running off the field during the innings to give their parents a high five or sneak a sip from their juice boxes.

We have snack duty for tonight's game. I was thinking something really unhealthy like Twinkies but my wife suggested fresh fruit. I guess we'll be taking fresh fruit and Little Mr. and I can eat the Twinkies later at home!

Little Bit, Little Mr.'s younger sister, is a big fan of his kickball games. She runs around cheering and sometimes tries to jump in to kick. She is turning into a little troublemaker and I'm thinking of changing both of their nicknames to Big Trouble and Little Trouble. The two of them together are a force to be reckoned with. In January I wrote an article for Quirkee.com about how they were slowly forming a coup d'état. Their side has grown even stronger since then and I have started to look for hiding places around the house in case I need to reload. At this point I still have the upper hand but as soon as Little Bit gets control of her yogurt weapons I'm a dead man.

At-Home Dad Advantages

Being an at-home parent does have some negatives, albeit small ones compared to the positives. One negative is the lack of adult communication on a daily basis. Sometimes a trip to the grocery store provides a welcome relief by striking up a conversation with a stranger or friendly employee that knows you as a regular.

But the advantages of being an at-home parent far outweigh the negatives for this dad. For example, this week I have been deathly ill with a sinus/cold virus that came with a fever. OK, maybe not "deathly" ill but when you have two toddlers going bonkers around the house because Daddy is too sick to care if they break anything, death feels like a viable option to release the pain that won't go away. Thankfully they didn't break anything. Not even my spirit! The advantage here is that I didn't have to take sick days from work to get better. When they napped, I napped. When they watched a video, I napped. When they played quietly on the floor, I laid on the couch and checked my eyelids for leaks.

Another great advantage of being an at-home parent is getting to watch the US Open all day on Thursday and Friday! If you are not a fan of golf then you could care less about this advantage. Not this dad! It's a great thing when you can watch nine straight hours of golf - two days in a row - and there is not a boss around to make you turn it off.

Since I'm still recovering from the tail-end of this nasty virus, I think I'll head upstairs while Little Bit is napping and catch some of the first round in bed.

instead of going to bed...

I thought I would stay up a little longer and write some stuff. It helps that the Australian Open is on ESPN2. Unlike most people I can sit and watch an entire tennis match, maybe two, without changing the channel. Okay, I surf during commercials but I always go back. I love the challenge of the game and for some reason I keep playing even when I lose...which is pretty much every time I play. It's not like I'm not good at the sport, I've just been mostly playing my arch nemesis from high school who happens to be my best man and finally lives 10 minutes away again. He kicks my butt and I have sworn not to give up. I have beaten him twice in 16 years - both in high school and I believe the second time he had a mild heat stroke or the flu. He insisted on playing so I beat him. It felt kind of like cheating but I needed a win!

We have easily played 250+ matches since we met. The summer after our senior year we were tennis bums before we left for college. My parents still remember those days fondly. Sometimes we would play at one o'clock in the morning by sneaking through the fence at the public tennis center and turning on the court lights. We played there many times and the police never stopped to see why we were there after hours! If I were to try that monkey business now I would surely be facing a judge on a trespassing violation.

I made a bet this month that I would beat him before the end of 2007. We have to play at least 25 matches for it to be legit. If I fail to win a match I have to shave my head bald. Not much of a stretch from where I am now, but also not a haircut I'm ready to don. I think it's time to invest in some tennis lessons.