Tag: Late Week

Late Week: The Final Assessment

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Late Week was fun and all, but one of the reasons I picked the theme was to see the difference between focusing on posts at night and posts in the morning.

Things got interesting. I was literally falling asleep as I wrote this post: Saturday’s writing appearing finally on Sunday. It probably didn’t help that I was in bed. Here’s a line I went back and read after I woke up for a while, talking about writing at night vs. writing in the morning:

“While I’ve tended to do a little of both since launching this blog, I’ve found that I don’t so as well if my deadline for the day is actually that evening.”

It’s not overtly terrible, but it does produce a “huh?”

I’ll be going back to my regular method of posting this next week. Christmas might throw it off a bit, but in general, I’ll be back on track.

In Worry Wednesday news, I’m struggling to stay calm amid concern that my 6-year-old has appendicitis. She complained of pain, briefly, in the area where that would happen. I called an advice nurse and everything, but by the time I was dressed and ready to take her in for some tests, she said she felt fine. She never had a fever. She stopped complaining of any discomfort. She went on a bike ride.

We’ll see …

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Late Week: Freaky Friday

On By jesteramIn Late Week1 Comment

hungry

Freaky Friday on a Saturday? It’s Late Week! Anything goes!

Actually, I had most of this post prepared a full day in advance, and I still managed to fall asleep without finishing it Friday night. But this week’s theme is a forgiving one. So I’m declaring this a Late Week miracle!

Now, onto the actual content:

My wife was heading out to run some evening errands couple of days ago, and my 4-year-old was, for some reason, freaking out about the departure: clinging to her mom’s leg, crying, refusing to answer our questions as to why she was so upset. She’s only blubber that she didn’t want Mom to leave.

Before we just pried her off and let her scream—my wife had presents to buy, after all, probably for me!—we tried making my daughter laugh. Nope. She chuckled a bit at my attempts, and then went right back to her paranoid sobbing. We tried reasoning with her. And then I decided to throw her into the middle of a game. I figured that if she suddenly thought she could win—that elusive and undefinable yet desperately desirable state of success my daughters yearn for, whether they’re on their way up the stairs to brush their teeth for bed and decide to start racing or are comparing the juice I poured them into different-shaped glasses to see who got more—she’d forget whatever was bothering her.

“I bet you can’t catch me!” I said, and I darted a bit, as if I were about to run off.

My 6-year-old caught on immediately and tried to help, employing what sounded like some reverse psychology of her own:

“Dad’s a thief! He wants to catch you, kill you, and eat you!” she shouted. “Want to chase him?”

In retrospect, and looking at it actually written down, it seems fairly innocuous. I play all sorts of games where I’m a lion ready to pounce on the girls, or a monster coming to chomp them, or something similar. So I guess the death is implied.

But I never come right out and say it. There’s a difference between sending your kids scurrying by shouting “I’m going to get you!” and “I’m going to kill you!”

I do have a somewhat dark game I break out when the girls are pretending they’re asleep. Sometimes they’ll fake it in the backseat of the van, squeezing their eyes shut and keeping rigidly stoic faces as I unbuckle them and toss them over my shoulder to carry inside. At times like that, I’ll stage whisper to my wife: “Since the kids are asleep, I can tell you this: They seem to be getting to just about the perfect size for eating. Remember: Never let them know!” Then I act all surprised when they sit up and accuse me of wanting to cook them.

Anyway, my 4-year-old wasn’t terrified or anything by her sister’s shout, but it didn’t help either. My wife and I exchanged eyebrow raises, and then we did the prying.

My girl was fine for the rest of the night. Mostly.

Late Week: Wishes Come True

On By jesteramIn Late Week2 Comments

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Every year around Christmastime, one of the newspapers I edit runs a nonprofit wish list as a cover story. We invite local charities and similar organizations to submit their wants and needs, and we present those requests to the community. We tend to give each annual issue a unique theme: One year we featured photos of kids in elf costumes around the city; one year we illustrated it all with snowflake art; etc.

This year, our managing editor suggested focusing more on the “wish” idea and going with genies. I quickly doodled one, and the rest of the crew liked it and suggested I provide the art for the story.

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Our lead designer digitally colored my black-and-white drawings, which turned out well, I think, in an outsider art sort of way.

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As you can see from this final genie in the quartet, I still can’t draw hands. This guy’s making a really awkward pose, but at least he’s trying to look helpful.

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Late Week: Worry Wednesday

On By jesteramIn Late Week1 Comment

hasty

My goal to post each day—except maybe Sundays—on this blog was tested when I realized that starting a post at 11:47 p.m. is a bit late, even for a week themed on being less than punctual.

Fortunately, I have no shortage of stuff to worry about, so it’s easy for me to pull something off the top of my head. Let’s see … hmmm … yep: meningitis.

Several college students at a college in a nearby county came down with meningitis a few weeks back, and a college student in my town developed a case of it even more recently. I can’t remember which is worse, and which is communicable despite the vaccine—bacterial or viral—but none of that matters to a worrying mind such as mine. I’ve already established that I can quickly go to some dark and medically impossible scenarios with very little provocation, such as my kid sipping a soda she found.

I was recently struck by the realization that this health-based worrying came to me late in life. Late in my life, I mean. I’m 34, but the germaphobia started a little more than six years ago, which—coincidentally?—is when I was just getting to know our newborn daughter.

The world wasn’t so scary to me when I was a kid, a college student, a young working professional, even a newlywed.

Having kids, though, changed me into something new—something paranoid and freaked out by even trivial stuff. So when one of my kids gets a runny nose and a slight cough, forget that the others have been sick, too, for days, and are getting better. It must be meningitis.

Of course, somewhere deep inside, I know I’m overreacting. I wouldn’t be able to survive otherwise.

But the girls do have strep throat right now. So there’s that.

Late Week: White Christmas

On By jesteramIn Late Week10 Comments

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This whole season has felt … delayed. Here it is Dec. 17, and my wife and I only just had our annual White Christmas viewing last night.

That movie never gets old. I love it—though the song “Snow” has always been an odd one to me. The four main characters suddenly start singing about how much they love snow, and all the stuff they’re going to do with and in it. Betty Haynes (played by Rosemary Clooney) twice declares she wants to wash her hair with snow.

Is that a thing? I mean, do people really wash their hair with snow? And their faces and hands, as also indicated by the song? I’ve never lived somewhere that cold, so I don’t know if it’s common to see folks bathing in the frozen outdoors. Or carting buckets of snow inside for a soak?

If you’ve never seen White Christmas, I suggest giving it a try. It’s got its cheesy moments, sure, and it’s musical—which isn’t everyone’s cup of cocoa—but it’s clever and funny and ultimately has a happy ending, which is what Advent is all about, right?

What’s your favorite Christmas movie?