Wherein I Explain My Recent Absence and Update Readers on Goings-On

I'm a failure as a blogger.

Blogger tells me that my last published post was in early March.

I have let my faithful readership — both of you —  down.

I'd like to say that it is because something terribly exciting has happened. I would really like to say that my band was signed to a record contract worth half a million and we begin touring regionally and thanks, readers, it's been fun these past few months, but I'm off to a life of liquor, groupies, and rock-and-roll.

Nope. I've just been busy. With like, life.

I've started to post something several times. I have two drafts half-begun. I'm hoping this isn't the third. This week was Mothers' Day, and while I did write a rather lengthy post about the Goddess on Facebook, I didn't manage to blog about mothers and how wonderful they are and how much I miss mine and close off the blog with some poignantly-timed reminiscence that would leave you with a catch in your throat and glistening eyes.

Because fuck mothers.

Just kidding.

It has been an eventful period, honestly. I've been gigging a lot recently and have a tour coming up with my band, the Terribly Fat.

Our domestic life has had its ups and downs. One interruption has been the Bernie Sanders' presidential campaign.

I've been doing a (very) little bit of volunteering with the campaign, but one of the things I told the state campaign director was that I could host a staffer in my home. He is a very pleasant young man, straight from college, energetic, and enthusiastic about his candidate. While the Goddess was welcoming, I can tell it has caused her no small amount of distress having a stranger in our home. He usually is out the door before 8:00 or 9:00 in the morning and doesn't return until sometime after midnight. If I catch him, I usually pour bourbon down his throat and force him to talk about democratic socialism until he pleads for sleep.

I did get to drive a big black SUV in the motorcade for the campaign when Bernie came to our state. I would bore you with a long story about it, but I will simply say that I looked and felt like a Secret Service agent. A Secret Service agent with dad bod.

The biggest factor in our home life for the last several months has been our financial situation and the Goddess' job search. She's applied for several dozen jobs, interviewed for about half a dozen, and even been offered a few. The catch 22 of the job hunt has been finding something whose salary covers more than just the daycare we need for her to work. (Case in point: she was offered an office job at a state agency starting at $18,000 before taxes. Daycare costs for us total about $16,000 per year.)

So, it was with great joy and exultation that the news was received last week that the Goddess had been offered a gig teaching music (the field for which she is certified). It has an actual salary with benefits like insurance and sick leave and all those things you hear about on TV. It's quite glamorous.

We've been all a-titter with talk of our plans once she starts the new job: paying our water and gas bill in the same month, state inspection stickers for the cars, and dinner at Shoney's on special occasions!

It is rather remarkable how much psychological pressure has been lifted in the home because of this. We haven't gotten the first paycheck, but it already feels like we have more money, just because we're pretty sure we can keep the utilities from being shut off.

Of course, our residents are blissfully unaware of these pressures and so they are continuing their lives much as before.  Which is to say, they continue acting like total assholes.

Again, just kidding.

Only less so this time.

The Ape is the sweetest one of the bunch. He's fat and happy most of the time, except when teething or being dropped on his head. This guy and accidents . . . man. He was staying with Granny and pitched himself face-first from a high chair. Then on Mother's Day, while everyone was trying to get out the door for a family visit, the Goddess told the older kids to watch their brothers so she could go pee. They didn't, of course (see paragraph above re: assholes) and he managed to climb a step, just to fall again on his head. I'm guessing the Ivy League is out of the picture for him now, but I still think he's good for a two-year community college program or the trades. A few more drops though and the highlight of his day may be talking to the mailman.

The Monkey is in full toddler mode. The Goddess says he's like a bad boyfriend: he makes a complete wreck of your life but still expects heavy affection and wants you to make him snacks. Oh, and he shits his pants, which I'm gonna tell you is getting really old. But he also is our talker and his near-human utterances make me smile all the time. He "reads" Goodnight Moon and since it has become his favorite, insists on going out to the porch every night to say "goodnight" to the moon. (I know: that makes some of your ovaries hurt, doesn't it?) He is also obsessed with Thomas the Tank Engine, which I personally despise. I have taught him, however, to say, "Thomas is bourgeois." He wishes me goodbye every day and tells me to have a good day at work, and when I leave or come home he'll say, "Gimme a kiss."

The seven-year-old is all about singing and gymnastics. Unfortunately, she is less about taking a bath without having a complete emotional breakdown. Also, she will occasionally melt down if her shoes don't "feel the same" or if her friend Alexis doesn't get to spend the whole weekend at our house. (Aside: we regularly have an additional 1-3 children in our home, sometimes overnight. Their main project seems to be destroying anything we love.) But she also loves to be read bedtime stories, which is really cool, and writes eerily prescient song lyrics for a first grader.

The eleven-year-old is all about his YouTube channel and making videos. Some of them are kind of fantastic (in my unbiased opinion), such as his Doctor Who and Spider Man fan films. He really has some groovy editing skills. But then he also does these films of him playing video games which is apparently a whole thing but also what the fuck? I tried explaining that this was really, really boring, but he isn't having it. He's the one I'm most concerned about because he has basically completely disconnected from school. There is almost nothing there that holds any interest for him and if we thought we could, we would pull him out and teach him at home. And he's hitting that middle school phase where he is less talkative, less engaged with us. Yet he is super sweet with his brothers and regularly plays with them and "teaches" them things. For example, he has worked hard to teach the Monkey to say, "What the fuck?!" which seems like a worthy project for any older brother.

All this rambling to say, here's where the fam is today and I hope to be posting more regularly.

If only life will quit interrupting.

I'm Not a Doctor, but I Play One in Middle School

October got away from me.

Last year, we did this whole "31 Days of Halloween" during October. We had activities with the kids planned every day: story-telling, going to the pumpkin patch, decorating, scary movies, you name it. Somewhere in the middle of all that, I also managed to tour for nine days with my band. It's not that we didn't do any of those things this year, but everything seemed so rushed. Halloween is almost on us and I haven't had time to enjoy it.

I'm sure that part of it is because we didn't have the Ape last year. Having a toddler and a baby seems to make every family activity exponentially more complicated. The older two can manage themselves to a degree, but the babies need constant attention.

The last few days have been notably hectic.

Friday night, the Goddess had a burlesque show. She does this cool magic and tap dance number that's a lot of fun. We dropped all four kids with Granny S and honestly, I felt a bit panicky for her when we did. She's watched all four of them before, but the Monkey is more "toddly" than ever, the Ape is teething, and the older two have been very demanding about their costumes recently.

Still, we went to the show and had a good night without them.

The next day we drove to Granny S' and went to the fall carnival/Octoberfest/Halloween party/chili night in her small town. It was a bit mad. The whole town turns out in costume and walk in a line through tent after tent where you can get free samples of chili and/or candy. Everyone votes on who has the best chili and there is a costume contest. There's live music and a bouncy house and people selling crafts and a cakewalk.

Half of us were wearing costumes made by Granny S. She herself was wearing this steampunk get-up she made, I was in my mad scientist gear, and the eleven-year-old was wearing his Foxy (from "Five Nights at Freddy's) costume. (She really out-did herself on that one. It's pretty incredible and the kid got lots of compliments and photos taken.) The seven-year-old was a "rock star," which mostly consisted of neon spandex, rhinestones, and a toy microphone. Ape and Monkey were dressed as an ape and a monkey, respectively, in costumes the Goddess found online.

It started raining and we had a long drive ahead of us, so we skipped the costume contest. Granny S was a judge in the adult category, but the eleven-year-old decided it wasn't fair for him to enter since his was on the professional level.

We were meant to have a "lazy Sunday" as the eleven-year-old calls it, but at our house, that mostly means we stay in pajamas and don't do shit other people want us to do.

The eleven-year-old and I spent a good deal of the say in the basement, he (with his mother's help) re-creating the inside of the TARDIS for a fan film he is creating and me playing with synthesizers. The seven-year-old wrote some original songs and did origami. The babies focused their efforts on destroying our home.

Yesterday was Monday, so that meant choir practice for the seven-year-old, late work for me, and a musical rehearsal for the Goddess. I got home about 6:45 and she was out the door. The kids and I ate the dinner she made but didn't get to eat herself and talked about their day.

More questions from the eleven-year-old, who was dressed again as the eleventh Doctor, complete with bow tie:

"How big is a cell compared to a hair?"

"Is there anything smaller than an atom?"

"How many atoms are in the universe?"

"How long would it take to count to a million? What about a billion?"

"How many seconds have I been alive?"

We talked about sub-atomic particles and numbers so large they were expressed exponentially and calculated how long it would take to count to a million and a billion and how many seconds he'd been alive. Approximately.

I watched "MonkeyBoo" videos on YouTube with the younger kids -- "MonkeyBoo Castrated and Canines Removed." (That sounds much more graphic than it was.) The eleven-year-old worked on his TARDIS and fan film.

Finally, it was time for baths and bed, and after wrangling the Monkey (who has been unusually grumpy), I read to the seven-year-old and then went downstairs. The eleven-year-old was watching a Doctor Who episode from the early 70s. It was an episode where the third Doctor has to be aided by the first and second Doctors.

"What are you doing?" I asked. Technically, he's grounded and although we let him watch TV with us, we haven't been letting him watch it by himself.

"I dunno," he said.

"Turn that off. Let's look at your grades online."

He got his mom's laptop and started signing in.

"I'm really looking forward to school tomorrow. You wanna know why?"

"Sure."

"Because tomorrow is dress-up day. I'm going as the Doctor." He was disappointed he didn't have a fez, but figured he could make do.

We looked at his grades. All Ds. He had one small "homework" assignment last week that he missed in Science, but the rest were in-class grades.

"I'm not doing too well right now," he said.

We talked about strategies, but honestly, I have no fucking idea what to do at this point. There is literally no information about the assignments online, no communication from the teachers, no sense of why he is struggling or how to help him.

"Let me see your video," I finally say.

He tells me he only has the opening finished and goes to get his iPad.

The screen fades in on the TARDIS spinning through space, then cuts to a shot on our street. We hear it grind to a halt and then there is a slow fade in and we see the time machine in front of our neighbor's house. The scene cuts to the inside of the TARDIS and you hear the eleven-year-old in voice-over talking about the nature of time and space. It's original, but a variation on familiar Doctor Who scripts, talking about "timey whimey, wibbly wobbly bits." Then he walks on, right of screen, dressed in his tweed jacket and bow tie, continuing the narrative. "That's where I come in," he says. Fast cut to the blue police box spinning through space and the credits over the familiar theme music. He lists himself and his little girlfriend as the actors and credits his own production company.

It's really, really, really fucking cool.

71% in English. 66% in Math. 66% in Science. 71% in Social Studies.

This kid, who is writing original scripts, asking questions about exponential numbers, wanting to learn about subatomic particles and the nature of time and space, and use a time machine to travel to new places throughout all of history cannot manage better than Ds at school.

We watched the last five minutes of the episode I had interrupted and then I sent him off to bed. The Goddess came home excited about her new play and finally able to eat some of the dinner she made for everyone else. After a bit, I went and played with synthesizers in the TARDIS before retiring for the night.

Rayanna, Jayanna, Layanna, and Haile Selassie

On Tuesday, I picked up the seven-year-old from gymnastics. I hate gymnastics. Well, I hate all the other parents there. I was walking across the parking lot to enter the building when a white Escalade cut me off about twenty feet from the entrance. As in, pulled in front of me, stopped, and forced me to walk around the vehicle. The waiting area is on the perimeter of the gym and all the parents hover there. They all talk about who the best kids are. It's a competition, even for first graders.

She gets in the car and I ask her what the most interesting thing was that happened to her all day. She tells me that she started a club at school -- The Cheetah Club.

"Who's in it?" I ask.

"Moriah," she says (I know Moriah), "Rayanna, Jayanna, and Layanna."

"Are those sisters?" I ask.

"No. Why?" she says.

We walk through the front door of the house, and it's controlled chaos -- which is the normal state of things. The Monkey is running around in his diaper and a shirt. He's apparently been eating blue and green markers and is also super grumpy. The eleven-year-old is working on a homemade Doctor Who video. The Ape is crying.

After Dinner the Goddess gives baths to the younger kids. I talk to the eleven-year-old about his homework. It's stupid. Social Studies. It's this decoding worksheet with terms related to world events in the 1930s, before war breaks out. Basically, he just unscrambles a code and writes out the words and names. It's from some website called StudentHandouts.com or something.

"Have you talked about any of these words in class?" I ask.

"No," he says.

One of the names he unscrambles is "Haile Selassie." I talk to him about Rastafarianism, Bob Marley, and sacramental marijuana. I'm just doing my part to educate the kid.

I really want to play some music. I'm trying to record this electronic album at home over the next couple of months and I'm anxious to get to work. I sit down with the Goddess to talk to her about a project we're working on together -- this combination burlesque/revue/game show thing that we thought up. While we're talking, her phone rings. It's the director of a show she auditioned for. She crosses her fingers and answers.

Now, the Goddess doesn't get overly enthusiastic about a lot of things, but she was really excited about this show. She hasn't auditioned with this group before, but the part she wanted was perfect for her. She nailed the dance audition the night before and she felt really confident about getting it.

I watched her as she talked on the phone. Her face dropped. She hadn't gotten the part she wanted.

She was upset and it's the worst kind of upset to me, because I'm utterly powerless to do anything about it. We both know how this shit works. It's community theatre and she was the new person. You have to pay your dues with this sort of thing, prove that you aren't a flake, and put in your time playing the "townsperson" or in the chorus.

I just listened while she cried. I'm a terrible listener. It's taking all of my power to not go into problem-solving mode, which is where I normally say something stupid. "Don't talk, Jack. Just listen." I manage to listen for an hour without trying to fix anything or saying something insensitive or horrible. I secretly congratulate myself on acting the way any decent human being naturally would.

Then I play music till about 3:00 A.M.

Wednesday morning came early, but it wasn't hard to find the motivation to get up. We had a lot on our plate.

First off, it was Back to the Future day: October 21, 2015. (Go watch the second movie of the trilogy if you don't know what that is. Also, how have you not seen that movie?)

Also, President Obama was coming to our small city, speaking about two blocks from where I used to live before we moved to Crackerbox Palace.

And I was going to be on the radio that night.

The Obama thing was cool, but received with the typical bigotry I've come to expect living here. I could talk at length about why he was here and what it means, but I'll save that for another time.

My friend Rebecca had asked me to be on her radio show after work and I was really excited about that. It's a new, independent radio station, all volunteer deejays. She wanted to talk about my band and Halloween.

I headed there after work and had a really good time. Rebecca played music from both the band and my new electronic project. We also talked about Halloween candy, horror movies, and Chick tracts.

When I get home, I walk through the front door and I'm overjoyed by what I see: the Goddess has the Monkey (age 2) and the Ape (age 8 months) dressed as Doc Brown and Marty McFly. She's taking photos.

It's hard to explain how much this makes me love the Goddess. She's just perfect. She's a photographer, a dancer, an actress, and an amazing mother who makes life so much fun. Like a lot of creative people, she's very sensitive and is hurt easily. I don't know why she's with me. I'm essentially a bull in a china shop when it comes to emotions. It's not that I don't feel deeply, it's just that I have the empathy of a profoundly autistic child. It's a long-term project for me.

When the older kids get home from the movies, I talk to the eleven-year-old about grades for about the 573rd time in the past week. He's got something like a 58% in Science. One of the grades is "homework," that just consisted of signing on to the grade book online and making note of any missing assignments. We've checked his grades about forty times this week -- but he has somehow managed to not sign in on his own account once. And he has these low scores on tests and assignments about the scientific method, which is weird because when we talk about it, he volunteers all the steps and how he might conduct an experiment on a question he had around the house.

But he's distracted when we talk. He's thinking about Back to the Future and Doctor Who again.

"If you could go back in time, where do you think you would want to go?"

This is followed in quick succession by a series of questions about travel through time and, especially, space.

"Why haven't we sent anyone to Mars?"

"Why haven't we sent any robots to planets besides Mars?"

"How far away is Mars?"

"How fast do you travel through space?"

"How long would it take people to get to Mars?"

"How long would it take to get to Pluto?"

"Do you think they could discover other planets in our solar system?"

"Which is bigger, Pluto or the moon?"

"How many planets the size of Pluto could fit in the sun?"

"Are stars the hottest things there are?"

"Could scientists design a suit that allowed you to touch the sun?"

"Since the sun is gas, if you could stand the heat, could you go through it?"

He asked questions like this for about forty minutes.

This child is failing science right now.

Or maybe I should say, school is failing him.

My family is remarkable -- they are brilliant, funny, beautiful, talented, warm, sensitive, compassionate people, of whom this world is not worthy.

Doctors, Foxes, Cursed Dolls, and Weeping Angels

Sometimes I think I must have the coolest family around.

This past weekend, I played a lot of music. I'm in a horror punk band, where I play keyboards and saxophone. I also have this solo side project playing live electronic horror music. The band had two shows this weekend and I opened one of them with my solo project. It's lots of fun, too, because I get to play dress-up all the time. My alternate persona for the electronic project is named Doktor Steamly and he is a mad scientist. The Goddess dressed as the bride of Frankenstein for the Saturday show, so we had lots of fun together.

The kids play dress-up on a daily basis. It's normal for me to come home and see one of them dressed as Mario (from Mario Bros.), Spider Man, Foxy (from Five Nights at Freddy's), or Kitty Kat Girl (an original character created by the seven-year-old). When I got home from work on Friday, the seven-year-old was dressed as a "rock singer," complete with neon spandex, rhinestones, and fingerless gloves.

We crashed with the Goddess' mother on Saturday night, because my show was in her town. She is an artist and a really amazing costume designer. She did the Foxy costume for the eleven-year-old and an Annabelle (the cursed doll) dress for the seven-year-old. They've both won contests with them. Last year she designed a Chucky costume for the Monkey, who was just eleven-months-old at the time. (We're big on cursed dolls, apparently.) She did my mad scientist lab coat, too. Sunday morning, she was working on a Weeping Angel costume for the Goddess. (For the uninitiated, the Weeping Angels are one of the recurring monsters/villains on Doctor Who. They look like angel statues and only move when you aren't looking at them. If they touch you, they can send you back in time and they suck the life force from you. They're super creepy.) She'd made foam wings and gray dress; she still had to finish the gloves designed to look like stone arms. It's pretty effing spectacular.

The Goddess and I had a long talk on the drive back from her mom's. It was a beautiful autumn day and we talked -- like we do most of the time -- about the kids. We talked a lot about school. We were thinking about some of the things the teachers said to us last week.

One of the things they kept saying was that the eleven-year-old draws too much. He won't focus on his schoolwork -- all he wants to do is draw. He later told us that Mrs. T., his English teacher, won't even let him draw after he's completed all of his work.

The Goddess talked about how excited he was making videos. He'd just done one where he took a miniature of the TARDIS from Doctor Who and made it disappear, complete with sound effects. She said it was really good -- he got it to fade gradually and she didn't know how he had done it. When he is working on his art or his movies, he is so focused. You can barely even get him to eat.

The thing is, I know these teachers. Or I know ones like them. They're the type who'll say, "If I could get you to concentrate on your English assignment like you do drawing monsters, you'd be a successful student." They seem to miss an important part of the equation: school is really, really boring.

I mean, it doesn't have to be. There are teachers who bring learning to life. But these aren't them. They want to reward compliant children and punish non-compliant ones. They see a kid drawing and think it's a waste of time.

We got home and I started unloading gear in the basement when the eleven-year-old came running downstairs. He wanted to show me -- his mom had landed him a tweed jacket and bow tie at the Goodwill store and he was toting his sonic screwdriver. He was spot-on for the eleventh doctor. He started talking about the video he was going to make.

I don't want a different kid. I want this kid. I mean, yeah, I want him to be nice to others and learn that sometimes he has to complete work that he doesn't enjoy. But he's not lazy. He's not stupid. I don't want school to break his spirit and I get alternately saddened and angered when I imagine how they could completely crush him. Who are these adults who can't see how creative this kid is? Why can they only see failure where I see real brilliance?

We watched an episode with the eleventh doctor while we ate dinner. The eleven-year-old asked all kinds of questions about how I thought the TARDIS worked and what would really happen if you went back in time. It's easy to see the appeal of stories like these to kids like him. I can see the wheels turning in his mind, imagining what it would be like to have a TARDIS, to get away from everyone who is on his back, away from school, from English class, from Mrs. T., and maybe from parents who just don't understand -- all those Weeping Angels who just can't wait to get their hands on him to suck his life force -- and live a life of adventure and saving the world.

I wouldn't mind going with him, honestly.