Monday, June 22, 2009

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.
__________________________________

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!

19 comments:

Anonymous said...

You could always trade your kids in for a dog. Not sure if it's leagal or not, but at least a dog will bring you a newspaper (regardless of the day!).

X-Country2 said...

I'm totally with Jamoosh on this one. It may contribute to your "stepping in random sh!t problem", but you'll get your NEWSPAPER at least.

Kristina said...

Would Mrs. N, the saint that she is, care to join me for a summer in PA? She can leave the kids with you.

That said, topsy-turvy cereal is the worst.

Lily on the Road said...

Newspaper

!


oh word ver is "cruel", go figure LOL

C said...

Well, I guess saying NEWSPAPER! is shorter than 'Serenity Now'.

Happy belated sperm donor day. :)

Unknown said...

LOLL... like to have your mini-wheat cereal in order to maximize the wheat square per bowl ration... LOLL... this is hilarious.

Newspaper.. hmmm.. who knew?

tfh said...

You really can't blame the kids...they probably don't even know what a newspaper is. They're probably afraid that if they repeat it you'll wash their mouths out with soap.

Vava said...

A couple of years ago when I took one of my boys to the Jays game there were a few teenagers heckling like crazy, mostly Gary Sheffield of the Yankees (at the time) shouting things like, "Alright BALCO!" and "Shouldn't you be on the golf course?!" and the like. One of their other favorites was yelling at Reed Johnson of then the Jays: "Alright Johnson! Use the rare start!" Towards the end of the game a middle-aged man, who'd been reading a newspaper throughout the entire game, finally got fed up and yelled at them to stop. For the rest of the game they heckled him, constantly yelling, "Alright Newspaper!!!" It was awesome! Without that Y2K relic this would never have happened, and so I thank you for bringing this fine memory back with your post.

Unknown said...

Spending the day with wife and kids gets them a break even when it comes to the newspaper.....what high standards you have. LOL

Razz said...

Let's see: OCD, tourettes, and bipolar.

The Nitmos puzzle is allll coming together.

nwgdc said...

You'll be very happy to know the majority of my Grandma's run was SHIRTLESS...but the nips are still feeling the first 12 miles :)

Anonymous said...

Mini Wheats suck - they're like little bales of nasty hay. Now Cocoa Pebbles - THERE'S a fine cereal right there. And one need not adhere to any sort of strict neatness policy with the ol' Cocoa Pebbles. They just fill the bowl nicely with no errant air pockets to muck up the place.

Nice speed work. You'll be breaking 18:00 soon, I'm sure.

Mike G said...

Anyone determined enough to run 800s surely can run a 17:59 5k. 800s arghhhh.

The Laminator said...

Glad you had a nice newspaper worthy kind of a day yesterday!

B. Kramer said...

Don't you know newspapers are going out of business? That's probably why you didn't get it.

Jessica said...

That time trial was pretty fast...probably could have been faster if you weren't dreaming about the upcoming mornings' newspaper!

Stuart said...

Damd that's a quick mile! Nice job, oh year and hold the front page!

Unknown said...

perhaps you should get a dog and train it to fetch the newspaper. then everyday can be father's day.

The Boring Runner said...

What is this "newspaper" you speak of? I guess I'm not familiar with why you would want something like that in the morning when you could easily flip on headline news and watch Robin Meade. Mmmmmm, Robin...

Ohh wait - I do remember those. I borrowed a bunch from my grandpa when I moved a few years back to wrap around my glasses and stuff. I assumed that he kept those from the Korean war or something.