Ten Days with Dad: Part I

 

At 4:15 on Sunday morning, Amy and I gently plucked the sleeping girls from their beds, placed them in the back seat of the car, and drove through the sleeping pre-dawn streets of Amarillo to Rick Husband Airport, where Amy was meeting a group of honor’s students to begin their ten day trip to Scotland.  A few minutes into the drive, a sleepy question came from the backseat.

“Dad, why are the stoplights flashing?”

“Because it’s early yet, and they’re sleeping too.  When they wake up, they’ll begin changing colors like normal.”

“Oh.”

We continued on in silence until we pulled up to the terminal.  Amy got out, gave the girls’ kisses, and was off with her roller bag.  We watched until she disappeared behind the automatic doors. 

And so began Ten Days with Dad.

 As we slowly pulled away, the girls were stirring in the backseat.  Shay began to whimper a little.  “I’m going to miss Mommy,” she said.

“I know, me too.  But we’re gonna have fun, I promise.  Don’t worry, she’ll be back before you know it.”

I think I was talking more to myself than to the girls.

After a few minutes, Mo said, “I’m hungry.”  I had promised the girls that we would go to breakfast that morning, but I hadn’t anticipated that they would want to go immediately.

“You sure you don’t want to go home first and take a nap?  Are you sure-sure?  I mean, not much is open yet.  Only fast food joints and IHOP, that kind of thing.”  I was hoping beyond all hopes that they would just want to go home and sleep for a while longer.  But no such luck.

“No, we want to go now.  I’m hungry.”

“Okay, okay, but we have to take you home first to get changed.  You can’t go in just your pajamas.”

“Why not?”

I thought about my answer for a minute.  I imagined what I would have thought if someone would have walked into an IHOP at 4:30 in the morning with two small, sleepy, pajama-clad kids, who obviously weren’t biologically related to that person.  I’m pretty sure I would have made a mental note to check the Amber Alerts that day.  I decided to be honest.

“Because people will think I stole you girls from your bed and am taking you across the country or something.”

A calculated risk to say such a thing, but I was tired and couldn’t think of a better lie.  It paid off though.

“Dad…you’re funny,” said Mo.

“Yeah,” Shay affirmed.

“Okay.  Glad you think so.  But we have to change.”

At IHOP, the girls were pretty much asleep in their breakfasts.  That is, until Mo spilled the entire contents of her hot chocolate (it was cool by the time, so no McDonalds-esque hot coffee lawsuits in my future) all over her breakfast.  She was trying to put the plastic top over the Styrofoam cup.  It wouldn’t snap down over the lip, so she stood up and leaned on it with all her might.  Before I could say, “don’t do that,” the cup crumpled beneath her weight, and brown sticky liquid shot out in all directions.

It was epic.

The commotion caught the attention of a few drunks still up from the previous night, who clapped.  Mo stared down at her drowned happy-faced pancake, its whipped-cream grin slowly melting away.

When we were walking in, I caught a bit of a worker dispute between who I suppose was the manager (Jillian) and a particularly animated and flamboyant server.

“I ain’t seating any more tables tonight, Jillian, not another one.  It’s Tony’s turn, I haven’t had me a break in like a million years, and he ain’t been doin’ shit tonight, Jillian, just callin’ his skanky girlfriend!  So no!”

I thought this was odd, but hadn’t thought much about it.  That is, until the monumental spill.  In that strange moment when everyone is motionless, just watching the spill progress to the ends of the table, arms out and off the surface, open mouthed, trying to comprehend what had just happened, I saw the angry server march toward our table.

Uh-oh.

But the guy saw the girls, smiled, and said, “Oh, baby, don’t you worry about it at all.  Terrell is here, and I’ll clean it up lickety-split, don’t you worry about it at all!  Now don’t cry, baby girl…anyone ever tell you how pretty you are?”

He got a mop, a crap load of napkins, and another hot chocolate for Mo.  Shay just kept eating her cheese omelet, completely un-phased by it all.

Needless to say, Terrell got a big tip.

 I have found a way to keep the girls in line.  At least, so far.  I keep an incredibly strict schedule and am constantly calling out time.  Maybe it’s from my Air Force Academy days.  Calling “minutes” in the hallway before formation.  But I found it works pretty damn well.  Each minute that lingers past a phase of the evening (dinner, bath time, etc) it cuts into desert time and reading time (I’m reading Harry Potter to them, which they are loving, even though I’m halfway through the book and Shay asked me tonight who Hagrid was, so I’m not sure they’re following it very well).  Anyway, it works.  I’m also shamelessly bribing them with a trip to the amusement park.  I told them they have to earn five points a day each in order to go to Wonderland when Amy gets home. 

Jackpot.

Three points a day for behavior, two points for chores.  Man, they are ON it.  I don’t know how long their preoccupation with points will last, but I’m loving it right now.  They’ve been GREAT.  So good, in fact, that they compliment me even when I don’t deserve it.

Case in point, two nights ago at dinner.

I decided to be Father of the Year and actually cook something new, what I supposed would be a welcome deviation from my four-meal repertoire.  A pasta dish with ham, onions, garlic, and peas in a cream sauce.  I served it up, pretty pleased with myself, and…

They didn’t touch it.

I asked them to give it a grade.

They looked at each other and Mo said, “Oh, Dad.  A+++!”

“But you don’t seem to like it.  You haven’t eaten any of it.”

“Well…but…it was a good try, and we like it because you made it.”

FIVE POINTS TO GRYFFINDOR!

That’s the way to suck up, kids.  Well done.  This point system thing is working!  And they even compliment me in the morning when I pull their hair up into haphazard pony tails (told them a week ago that when mom was gone, they were getting pony or pig tails, no exceptions) and they look nuts.  When I pick them up from school it’s sticking up and out and every which way but in the hair tie, which is usually just hanging off the side of their head for dear life.  Yesterday in the car, their hair in this unkempt state, Shay said, “A teacher asked me today if my mom was out of town.”

“What did you say?”

“I said yes, that my Dad was watching me.”

“And what did she say?”

“I don’t know.  Nothing.  She just said ‘I thought so.’”

“Oh.  Well, next time you see her, tell her that she’s welcome to come over in the morning and fix your hair herself if she wants.”

“Uh…okay.”

Looking back on that, I better tell her not to actually say that to the teacher.  She probably will.

Time to hit the sack.  The girls are asleep upstairs and I decided to take these few minutes to write a post.  Taking a little longer because the “e” on my keyboard doesn’t want to work, so if there are a bunch of missing “e”s, that’s why.  But one more little story I have to tell.

 We live in a pretty cool old house, but with an old house comes “character.”  One of these gems is the fact that most of the upstairs windows are in bad shape, and there are a lot of torn screens that I haven’t gotten around to fixing.  Because of this, in the spring the upstairs window sills become the ideal place for birds to wedge in between the torn screens and the storm windows to nest and lay eggs.  One such spot is the upstairs bathroom window.  A big fat mourning dove had decided to nest there and has been sitting on, what we supposed were, eggs.  But it had been sitting there for so long, we were wondering if any of the eggs were viable.  Well, turns out, one was, and yesterday we saw a hatchling lying at the bottom of the nest while the mom was out getting food.  The girls were watching the little bird, and I went downstairs to begin dinner.  After a little while, I heard panicked shrieks coming from upstairs, followed by thunderous footfalls coming down the steps.

“What’s going on up there?  What’s wrong?”

  What came next was an account of pure horror.

“We were watching the baby bird, and the momma was gone, and then, uh…and then another bird, a brown one, came flying in, and…and…”

“And what?”

“And ate the baby bird!!!!”

“WHAT?!?”

“Yeah,” said Shay.  “It was just sitting there, cheeping, and we were saying how cute it was, and then this thing came flying in and grabbed it and pecked at it and now there’s blood on the window and the mean bird is still there!”

“Good Lord, really?”

“Yeeees!”

So I run upstairs into the bathroom and sure enough, there’s blood smeared on the window, and this pissed off looking brown bird sitting in the nest, just staring at us. 

“That’s it!  That’s that bird!  Go away you meanie!”

Shay then began tapping at the window to try and scare it off.

But it wasn’t skert.

The goddamned thing started pecking back at the window and flapping its wings.

This sent the girls screaming from the room…and honestly, me too.  I mean, WHAT THE HELL?  And when it was pecking, it was leaving little blood smears on the window, I presume from its fresh kill.  So I told the girls to stay away from it, that it was protecting its new nest.

“DUH, Dad!”

Later Shay was talking about it to her sister, and reminding her of all the blood with an evil little smile on her face.

“Did you see the blood?  Did you?”

“Stop it, Shay!”

“It was all over!”

“Sissy, stop it!  Daaaad!”

Me running in:  “What?”

“Tell sissy to stop being so dark.”

“Dark?”

“Yes.  Dark.”

“Very apt word.  Where did you learn it?”

“You.”

“Oh.”

“Because mom says that you’re pretty dark sometimes.”

“I guess I am.  Shay, stop tormenting your sister.”

“But the blood!”

“Seriously, enough.”

“Okay.”

Shay is gonna write horror stories one day.