NEWSPAPER!

My Father’s Day got off to an inauspicious start.

On Saturday evening, I had announced, in that charming, direct, borderline rude way that I do, that I would desire breakfast in bed on Sunday. Implied in that, I assumed, was that I would be getting a full course breakfast – eggs, bacon, toast, assorted fruit chunks – as well as slippers and a newspaper to read. Maybe a little Mrs. Nitmos in a delightful house dress with an apron? The children, with their hair perfectly coiffed, bounding around me eager to present gifts bearing World’s Greatest/Handsomest/Muscularest Dad slogans. You know, the whole Father Knows Best thing. Or, for folks more my age, the whole Brady Bunch thing (the pre-AIDS Mr. Brady, of course.)

Wrong.

They brought me breakfast alright. Orange juice and Frosted Mini-Wheats. I’m not really a ‘glass is half full’ kinda guy. In fact, I’m not really a ‘glass is half empty’ kinda guy either. Usually, I just see a filthy glass that needs to be cleaned never mind the level of the contents inside. (paging Dr. Freud!) No, no, no, this is all wrong. I like my Mini-Wheats laid out in the bowl in a particular order to maximize the wheat square per bowl ratio. I hand select each Mini-Wheat from the box and place four across the bottom in a neat row. One more along the top and bottom of the row. Then, one more layer of three across going the opposite direction of the four wheat sub layer. Fill in with broken partial chunks and add milk until it tickles the underbelly of the upper layer of wheats. Duhhh, everyone knows this. Instead, it appears that they just dumped the Mini-Wheats into the bowl straight from the box. They were all topsy-turvy and jutting out at every angle. How am I supposed to eat ‘em like that? There were wheatless air pockets everywhere inside that bowl.

And to top it off no newspaper. Oh, I shouted out a few times from the upstairs bedroom where I ate alone (from my non-World’s Greatest Dad mug. WTF?!). “NEWSPAPER!” I demanded. No newspaper. “NEWSPAPER!” I shouted again periodically. No newspaper ever came. Sonofa….This is the gratitude I get for being the World’s Greatest Dad? A man can’t even get a pre-Y2K news bearing relic like the newspaper? (I assume they still sell them locally? I get all my news from the interweb which is probably why I think the only news in the last five years is that people want to elongate my penis with pills from a Canadian pharmacy.)

Of course, doing as I do, I continually shouted “NEWSPAPER!” whenever I didn’t like something the rest of the day. My 8 mile “long run” turned into a sweat soaked, shirtless 6.5 mile “longish run” due to the heat and belly full of sloshing wheat. I returned home, showered, and carelessly tossed my stinking, soaked running clothes down the stairs to the basement. Mrs. Nitmos tells me that it would be nice if I walked them over to the washer so she didn’t have to handle the wet clothes. I looked at her and snapped “NEWSPAPER!”

Later, we went to the gym pool to swim and slide gleefully down the water slide a few times. Once again, I spotted an unidentifiable glob of something on the stairs up to the slide. It was deep purple and resembled a partially digested jelly bean that was hacked up onto the stairs. Honestly, people, can we all agree to keep this kinda shit out of a public area where people are walking around in bare feet? Is this too much to ask? What’s a purple jelly beanish glob doing on a water slide staircase? This isn’t a 365 Days of Easter gym and there wasn’t a jelly bean spittoon anywhere in sight. I shook my head, muttered “Newspaper!”, and stepped over it. At least it wasn’t a bloody Band-Aid.

By the end of a day, we had played a little wiffle baseball, knocked some golf balls around and went out to dinner.* They redeemed themselves from the huge faux pas that started the day. I didn’t get my newspaper but I got the love and companionship from my wife and kids.

So, I’d say it was about a draw.

Happy trails.

* At dinner, we overheard an amusing conspiracy theory from a dude wearing a “Been There…Fished That” t-shirt wherein – did you hear this yet? - the government is going to release the swine flu again this fall to trick people into spending money on flu shots. So, beware.
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I did a mile (or 1600m) time trial on Saturday. After a 1600m warm-up, I managed 4 laps (1600m) in 5:44. I was hoping for 5:40. Then, an 800m recovery and a hard 800m in 2:55 (hoping for 2:50!) Getting closer but still not at sub 18 5k speed yet. Newspaper! Next weekend, a 2 mile time trial (separated by 800m recovery.) The 5k’s are getting closer! No time to lose!