Discretionary Time, by Scott

Long ago, I went to grad school to be a writer. I wasn’t terribly serious about my writing career, but I did enjoy the program. One of the more interesting elements of writing is the expectation that you will read. A lot.Read read read read. Read. All the time.You need to know the classics, you should know your contemporaries. You should be able to evaluate the latest work by such-an-such who’s in the NY Times Book Review this week.- It was pretty good. Not as good as her last one.- I agree, I mean I’m just not moved by any books I’ve read this week.This is not to say that all authors (and writing school wanna-be’s) are annoying mucky-mucks, but you get the point.I never read as much as I should have, mostly because I didn’t have that big of an attention span, but I did read a lot more than I do now. Well, nearly everyone reads more than I do now, since outside of business books, magazine articles on technology or the occasional paperback novel that I read in 10 minutes stretches before falling asleep, I haven’t read a real book in ages.NOTE: I’m defining a real book as some accepted literary piece that would sit front and center at a [pre-bankrupt] Borders and wouldn’t include space aliens, magic lanterns, unicorns or fairies. See, the issue isn’t a sudden hatred of literature but rather “discretionary time”. See, we’re a busy family with two little girls, a dog, a cat, a house that needs constant cleaning/fixing/building, on top of which I own a business that needs constant oversight. There is no time to sit and read a book. Who would do that? We barely have enough time to go pee before there is another crisis to solve, dinner to make, pile of clothes to fold. To sit and read a book, unless lying helpless from some terrible disease or accident, would imply some momentary neglect of my numerous responsibilities.And so, at odd moments, I dream a tiny dream.In it, I am trapped in the remains of a fallen building with nothing but a candle, a dog-eared copy of Midnight’s Children by Salman Rushdie and a small basket of Twinkies. My family, safe and secure on the other side of the wall calls through a tiny gap and tell me that the earth-movers might not be able to free me for another day or so. But, not to worry, because all the extra baskets of laundry to be washed and dishes to be cleaned back home will still be there when I’m rescued.I nod stoically, sitting down on an overstuffed chair (which miraculously survived the catastrophe) and open to the first page. No rush, I say. I’ll be fine.  

Orphans (II), by Scott

I will state on the outset that this may be one of my more controversial posts. Even more controversial of my love of Lady Gaga’s first album or the fact that I’m the biggest fan of “Phineas and Ferb” in our house.In my parenting life, summers have always been synonymous with my wife and kids traveling to Cleveland, OH to visit my wife’s parents. Emigrants from Slovenia, the northern-most country of what used to be Yugoslavia, they and thousands of they’re fellow countrymen came to Cleveland in the 60’s and 70’s and never left.Every summer since my kids were born, K has taken them to Cleveland to see the “family” which is nothing like the largely dispersed family dynamic that exists with my relatives. The “family” in Cleveland is three generations of grandparents, aunts, uncles, cousins, second cousins, somehow-related friends, I-knew-your-family-from-the-Old-Country people, and the occasional non-ethnic Cleveland person (strange as that may seem) living within a 20 mile radius.When K was a full-time mom, she would bring the girls for a few weeks to her parents. What originally was 10 days when Alexa was a year old grew to be several months when I by the time Teja was four years old. During this time, I would stay in Los Angeles, slowly turning into some morose, emotionally unstable pariah (for more hilarious, in-depth stories of those days go “here” and “here”).That changed last year when K got a job with USC. The start of her new job coincided with moving into the Big House and we decided the smartest thing was to have the girls go to Cleveland with her family while we dealt with the multiple transitions that were happening in our life in LA. Interspersed with visits by the two of us, the girls ended up staying seven weeks in Cleveland.This summer, we’re not moving and we don’t have the same scenario as we did on last year. But, we’ve still sent our girls away for the summer. Not seven weeks this time, but still nearly five.I think what is interesting about our girls in Cleveland is the house in which their grandparents have lived for nearly 40 years. It is not a big house, and aside from a large renovation 30 years ago that expanded the second floor, it has essentially not changed. Every once in a long while things may be replaced, but the pictures and paintings on the wall have largely been there since the Reagan years. This is not a family that makes big changes or moves to Florida during the winter months. Experiences endure at that their grandparents house.The benefit of this is that there is a certain warm safety in what to expect when my kids go to Cleveland. Where our life in LA is chaotic with change, new experiences and lots of driving, the girls’ grandparents garden, go for walks, cook enormous amounts of food with lots of potatoes and spend time with the same people they have for decades.When the girls are there, they play with their cousins and “summer friends” they have made over the years, they swim, ride bikes, their grandfather patiently spend an hour a day working on their math tables.The downside is that I don’t see my kids for over a month.What is strange, of course, is how oddly liberating it is to be away from my children for a time. Please understand that I love them dearly. However, I think sometimes we have become a culture of Over-parenters (myself included). As former latch-key kids, we’re all helicopter moms that worry about our own kids’ health, safety, college application progress and first experiences for everything. We get caught in some circular thinking that our kids can’t survive without our constant involvement when, in reality, we can’t really live without their constant presence.I know every Dicken’s novel starts with some stiff adult sending a child to live with some creepy recluse in a giant castle in order to have their childhood marred by neglect and painful yearning. However, I think it can be healthy giving children experiences that they can do on their own.Teja, who will turn seven in August, is learning to swim something other than doggy-paddle this summer. And during the majority of that time, neither I or K will be there to see it. But, I feel Teja is owed the opportunity to surprise us with her progress, to show us something she’ll be able to do that didn’t come from us.During the rest of the year, I or K will be there for the school drop-offs and pick-ups, to watch shows together, to play, and arrange sleep-overs and the thousand other things that come from . But, I think it is liberating for them to be away from us too. They have the opportunity to see that other people love them and care for them and (hopefully) will develop the confidence that comes from a slightly larger worldview than what they see with us.In the meantime, however, I have a date with about 20 episodes of “Phineas and Ferb”. Rock on!

The Plane Trip, by Scott

I have always loved airports. I have always loved the drop-offs, the curbside baggage handlers, the people-watching from a terminal cafe with a ultra-high-priced 20oz beer by my side.These are people going SOMEWHERE, with their giant mismatched pieces of luggage. The businessman with his worn, but stylish carry-on; The tourists and their misplaced sense of beach fashion; the family from some faraway, exotic place that look like they are moving all their worldly possessions in 15 cardboard boxes wrapped in twine.I can’t say exactly why, but besides the obvious love of travel, I think it has been that it represented sophistication that you don’t get standing outside of a Greyhound bus terminal.All that’s different now, of course. There are the realities of current air travel, which from the TSA security screenings to cost-cutting features onboard flights takes what little joy there ever has been from being a canned sardine in the sky.But none of that was traveling with little kids. I have always considered traveling with little kids to be somewhere between transporting a rabid monkey with dysentery to  being caught in an interrogation room with a schizophrenic (Why is the wing moving like that? When can I have another cookie? It smells in here, I have to go pee. No, not yet, but I will have to go pee. Can you I have another cookie? Oh, hi Mr. Smelly Man.). And this is, of course, all reasonable unless you are changing time zones, in which your life will be absolute hell during your trip, since your child will be “adjusting” to their new sleep schedule, which is just another way of saying that they will be up-at-all-hours-driving-you-mad until two hours before you have to return home.My kids are older now (9 and 6), which makes for a profoundly different experience this last week when we traveled four hours from Los Angeles to Cleveland to visit their grandparents. They carried in their own luggage. They drank apple juice while watching “Spy Kids” on the family iPad.  We shared my Clif bars since I was too cheap to spring for the $18 snack pack (seriously, Continental Airlines? Not even pretzels anymore?).But then there was the family that ended up sitting directly behind us. Four kids ranging from eight years old to a few months and the parents spread between two seating groups trying to care for them. It was chaos the moment they came down the aisle. I think one of the strange things of being a parent is how little the noise, screaming and bodily fluids of other families on a plane really concern you after you have experienced being the source of all the hassle. I almost feel sorry for those poor, uninitiated youngsters without children who have to sit next to a colic-y baby.As the plane began it’s taxi to the runway, the little baby began crying again, this time in that seriously pissed-off “give me milk or you will all die” way that little children can do. The mother was getting frantic trying to soothe the baby while the two-year old began to asking where her favorite doll was. I turned back around, closed my eyes and smiled. Good times, good times.

Puppy Pictures, by Scott

 Tuesday afternoon. I’m driving in the car with Teja, who is in the back seat. -Oh, look.- I can’t Teja.-But, it’s SOOO CUUTE!-Honey, I’m driving. I can’t look at pictures of puppies right now.- But, oh daddy. They’re two of them and they’re playing.- I’m sure they are.-You wanna see? [Holding up picture to rear view mirror].-Honey, I can’t turn around and look at a puppy calendar right now.- But, they’re playing.- At least let me stop at a red light and then I’ll look.- What month is Alexa’s birthday?- September.- [pause] Oh, she’s a black and white one. See?- Nope, can’t see yet.- I’m going to tell her that she’s a black and white puppy.- Ok, I’m sure she’ll be excited.- Of course. She’s a little cutie-black-and-white-puppy-doggy. What are you?- Absolutely no idea.- Ooooh, Daddy! You’re a pink poodle puppy.- Blech. Ok.- But, Daddy, it’s your puppy.- Honey, it’s a calendar.  There is one for everyone.- But, you must see it. It’s so cute.- Ok, a red light is coming up. Stopping. Stopped. [looking] Very nice.- Yes, see you’re a poodle.- Mommy will be so happy [to know that].- [Flipping through the calendar] Look at March.- Driving again.- I love this calendar.- Best money I ever spent. I’m glad you like it.- Daddy?- Do you think we could go back to the store and get the kitten calendar for Alexa? And then we would have both puppies and kittens together.- um, no.