Alberty's Blah Blah Blog

Things are pretty much in stasis on the homecare front. Dad is now fourteen days in hospital. Mom is going into surgery Tuesday.

Gross Indecency, the play I directed for TCR, is now in mid-run. Monopoly, the SPT’s Writers’ Room show —that I wrote for and was slated to perform in— went off without me and without a hitch last weekend.

It was good that I could stay in Des Moines for nearly a full week without feeling like I needed to be home —other than the sometimes-crippling desire to see my wife and kids.

During that near-week I saw my father get better, get worse, get better, then fall back again. I saw my mother get stronger, in minute increments, but it was positive movement. But the climax of the homecare segment of my week was the discussion with a home nurse about the probable need of assisted living for both parents, “at least in the medium-term.”

So, I was in a bit of a dark place.

My wife couldn’t find coverage for the kids on Friday, so I left my mother to my brother and went back home for a spell.

This was now the second time that I “Went back home for a spell.” And it was the second time that, when I hit a specific street —one that was two turns from my driveway— that the control of emotion became a real struggle. Both times, now, seeing my wife and kids really revealed the stress that forced emotional detachment can cause.

What I mean is this: When I walk into my father’s hospital room and he looks up at me like a scared four year-old and says, “Why am I still here?” I have to explain why without my eyes welling up and spilling over. When my mother looks up at me with pride because she was finally able to finish a 4 ounce cup of yogurt for lunch, I can’t beg her to eat more because she’s wasting away. I have to happily show joy at this accomplishment.

I had absolutely no idea how tiring, how draining that can be.

Well, I had a bright, floating moment of forgetfulness on Saturday. As I was home, I was able to attend the children’s auditions for my first full-length stageplay. By “my first full-length stageplay,” I mean that I wrote it. And that I got paid for it.

I just realized that this February is the most concentrated month of work I have had in years. Irony, right? Writers love irony.

Anyway, I actually heard kids saying my words, in hopes that they could memorize and say my words on stage in front of people. And some of those kids really got the lines. And those watching the auditions laughed at the right lines. It was a surprising, though brief, validation of the months I spent writing that thing.

For a moment I felt like I was floating above worry, fluffy, weightless, free of serious responsibility.

And just tonight the director told me she has cast the show. And, more importantly for me, rehearsals won’t begin until the second week of March.

That means I can focus on the important uneven ground in front of me for the next few weeks. Focus on the parents; tend their gardens, as it were.

And I guess that’s as it should be.

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If you came back to the blog to read this, I surely do thank you for sticking with me. I have been quite the poor writer of late. As the old adage goes, “A writer writes.” And I have not been.

I’m guessing that most of you don’t know the craziness of last week.

My show, Gross Indecency: The Three Trials of Oscar Wilde opened on Friday. That means that last week was the most intensive of the six-week rehearsal process. It was the week that supported the last tweaking, the minutia of acting and tech to try and create the most powerful production from the resources we have.

Sunday is spent for five or six hours working the lights and sound into the show. Monday and Tuesday usually involve tweaking the lights, sound, and costumes, as well as the really nit-picky actor stuff. Wednesday is hopefully a full and furious run with everything finally together. Thursday is preview for friends and sponsors. Friday is opening. It’s a pretty stressful week.

Tuesday afternoon I got a call that my father was in the hospital due to massive blood loss. The doctor said nearly half his volume, which I didn’t think was possible.

Well, my mother had just finished a massive series of pre-op chemo for breast cancer. I knew that it put the zap on her, but I really didn’t know how much until I got home. I thought I came home for Dad. But it turns out it was for my mother.

I hadn’t seen her since Christmas. In that time she has lost probably sixty pounds. She has to use a walker. She’s lost almost all her hair. She has been sleeping nearly sixteen hours a day. And, most disturbingly, she’s eating —maybe— a quarter cup of food three times a day.

It absolutely crushed me.

Early Wednesday morning we got the news that Dad had colon cancer. They had set the operation for Thursday.

At this point it became my personal aim to hold myself together. I had to be back in Cedar Rapids for Thursday night preview and opening. I had to be home, if for nothing else, to get my mother to eat.

It’s been a long time since I have been this much of a wreck.

But my brother stepped and took care of Mom Thursday and Friday nights. I came back Saturday morning and will stay until Tuesday.

I have a school matinee of the Gross Indecency on Wednesday that I have to run, so I need to be back in Cedar Rapids for that.

At this point, it looks like I’ll need to be back here Wednesday night at least. That’s the earliest that Dad can get out of hospital and back home.

I’m hoping to tackle the emotions of this event for Wednesday’s blog. It’s been something else. Certainly a mix that I did not imagine. And it’s that surprising mix that brought the floor up so swiftly to my chin.

But I’m feeling a bit more in control. And that’s saying something from where I was on Thursday. Now I’m at least up on all fours and breathing.

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So, I eat a lot of meat. If you count morning bacon and lunchmeat, there are days I eat meat for three meals. That is simply too much.

So for the last few months I’ve been trying to remove meat from most of our meals — you know, trying to do only one or two dinners with meat. And that has actually been a bit refreshing.

So I’m working the lentils and garbanzos and beans, but also the soy and even the tempeh. The tempeh was not so yummy.

But last night I tried some seitan, which is essentially flour made into a meat-like substance. That’s never a phrase that makes me comfortable: meat-like substance. But, I have to tell you, this stuff was good.

I was pretty sure that I would file it away with tempeh in the tried-it-once file. But I could instantly see the possibilities of this stuff. It really has the mouth feel of meat. It’s totally shapeable. As you make the actual seitan you can add all kinds of flavor like liquid smoke, to give a meaty taste. You can marinade it. It was really, really good.

And I think it caused my kid a serious allergic reaction.

I haven’t seen anything like it for some time. He began scratching his arm, then began complaining about itching. Within a minute his face was flushed, his arm was red and welts started popping up.

My wife rushed to get some Benadryl and I got some topical stuff. He ended up being okay, but the only thing we could point to was the seitan.

This really surprised me because the kid eats bread with great abandon. Seitan is just essentially boiled bread on steroids.

We might try it again later. It’s so easy to make at home and cheap, cheap, cheap. I guess that makes it good to give it another shot. But it sure did scare us.

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Well, I don‘t have much to say today. Mostly because the tired just keeps getting tiredy-er.

I just wanted to mention a couple of things about my oldest kid. I don’t know much about what two-and-a-half year-olds are supposed to be like. But I’m pretty certain my kid doesn’t either.

Today at breakfast he began telling our six month-old, “Don’t look at me. Stop looking at me!”

Honestly, I don’t know where he gets it.

The other night it snowed. It’s the latest in the season that I’ve ever seen it. Remember that he’s two-and a half. He looked out of the window that next morning, put his hands on the window and said, “It looks like Christmas.”

Again, no idea where he gets it.

Tonight even, as my wife was putting him down for his night-night, she finished reading to him and turned the lights off. She sat down next to his bed to stroke his hair and looked up at her said, “Tonight you be quiet. You don’t cough. You don’t snore. I need quiet.”

On several occasions, as we are on the freeway, he’ll point to semi and say, “I drive that truck. That’s my truck.” Which I kind of get because “everything” is his right now.

But here’s a strange thing: sometimes, usually when things are pretty quiet, he’ll look at me and say sadly, “I’m sorry about the train. I’m sorry about the train, Daddy.”

I have no idea.

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Took my kid to his first “tumbling” class on Saturday. It was an absolute free-for-all.

I’m guessing there were about eight kids and twelve parents. All with our shoes off, walking on spongy mats, dodging happily rabid, joy-blind toddlers.

It was perhaps the most prolonged spate of fun I have ever had with my kid.

He jumped and ran and rolled and cartwheeled. I jumped and ran and rolled and…rolled.

And then they pulled out the gigantic inflatable caterpillar. It was awesome. It was twenty feet long. Big enough for two dads to stand up in. It was awesome. And it terrified my kid. He would not go into the horrific maw of the caterpillar. But he was concerned enough when I crawled through to move around it to meet me when I came out of the tail.

Then we ran again. It was hard not to push him to go in, but I didn’t and that felt good.

I went tumbling with great trepidation. “Hey, look at how quickly the fat guy broke the children’s trampoline.”

But, I am happy to say, I did not break the trampoline. And we both had the time of his life.

Tumble on!

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Now, this little post may come off as snarky, but please know that it is not.

I love my family, and the topic of this post is one of the great reasons for that love.

My family, myself included, is perhaps the worst gift giving family in the world. And we don’t do it on purpose, which is what makes it so endearing to me.

I know that on several occasions I have sweated the choice of gift for my lovely bride and it has ended up something she has hated. Let me also say that we have a relationship where we can say, “Honey, I really kind of hate that gift that you sweated and cogitated over. I love you very much, but I hate that gift.” And, generally, we are okay with that.

So this year was another stellar what-were-you-thinking Christmas. Naturally, we don’t ask my family what they were thinking, we just sort of discuss it spousally.

I received from my father a “leather concealment vest.” First off, it’s a leather vest.  Second … it’s me. I put it on and my wife asked me if she could accompany me to the gay bar. Nice one. The word “concealment” in the name of the vest means that it can easily carry my 9mm Glock with up to three full magazines. Again…it’s me. I do not own a 9mm Glock, nor do I have up to three magazines, full or empty.

I’m pretty sure he purchased it off some infomercial on Fox News. He bought three: one for me, one for my legally blind brother, and one for legally blind and autistic nephew. Go Neocons! Fuck yeah!

My grandmother —Banana Grandma if you’re paying attention— gave me roll-on antiperspirant. I shit you not. It’s Avon, so I guess that’s … something. And it’s a roll-on. I didn’t even think they made that anymore. So there’s that, too.

But the best gift was for my patient and forgiving wife. My father gave her a Keurig Rotating 30 cup Storage Carousel for one of those awesome Keurig Single shot coffee makers. She looked up at me with a gleam in her eye and said, “Omen of things to come?” I looked at the boxes under the tree, turned back to her and said, “I don’t think so.”

The beauty of this is that we don’t have a Keurig single shot coffee maker. And we did not receive one for Christmas. My father thought it was a spice rack, which is also funny because my wife does not like spices, nor does she cook.

Even funnier is that he got it off her Amazon wish list…except it’s not on her Amazon wish list. Some other woman out there with the same name as my wife was oh so very close to receiving the Keurig Rotating 30 cup Storage Carousel that dancing through her Christmas Eve dreams.

Just one of the many reasons that I love my family.

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Clichés are clichés for a reason. They are truisms pointed out long ago and their observations ultimately overused. So, sorry for this one, but it’s on my mind.

This year’s holiday season has been a bit of a to do for my family this. My mother was diagnosed with breast cancer and began chemotherapy. My brother was diagnosed with a couple of tumors on his kidney. My grandmother had a mild stroke four days before Christmas.

Now, if you know me, you know I am not religious. I am a deeply spiritual guy, but organized religion as lost its luster for me in my long-ago days of Baptist beatings. I have always felt that spirituality is a personal and joyous connection with a greater power, while religion is essentially a fear-based theology used to control large numbers of people. I’m sure that pisses some of you off, but there it is.

None-the less, religion, in its many forms, have given us great things: art, music, tradition, as well as focus, self-awareness, and community.

For me the thing is the Christmas holiday season. Not the increasingly freakish and frantic consumerist masturbation that rings in the season, and now slaps its hindquarters on the exit with the after Christmas sales. That just makes me angry and, quite honestly, a little depressed.

My thing for the season is the heightened nostalgia, the family, the almost electric recentering of my self-awareness on others and their importance to my now, my then, and my future. The Christmas season, the family dynamics of that season, the traditions have all played dominant roles in forming my character and personality.

And here’s to the cliché. I just want to keep these memories close, you know. I get so crazy busy with the kids, writing, directing, performing, that some family members unfortunately just become satellites orbiting the whirlwind of deadlines that is my world. I know that’s not right. But I’m not naïve enough to think that can or will change. I just need to embrace them when I can.

Which leads me to a sad understanding of my future in the life of my boys. There will come a time, probably sooner that I might wish it, that I will become a mere satellite orbiting their world.

Now, I remember the exact moment when my father realized this inevitable demotion. And, twenty-some years later it is still clear to me, it still holds some pain and little poison, I’m sure for both us. It created a rift for quite some time.

My hope is that I can be a bit more prepared for boys’ eventual DE tethering. This season makes me think of that.

Which leads me to a sad understanding of my mother’s future in the life of my boys. There will come a time, perhaps sooner than we imagined, that she will not be here for the holidays.

Now, I know that convention states that we should not say things like that out loud. But that is magical thinking, which although beautiful, sometimes allows reality to blindside us.

I still feel the slow chipping away of family that death has made. My grandfather, Dean; my grandmother, Opal, my grandfather, Alan. I’m sure if I had any aunts or uncles that list would be longer. But those are enough deaths to feel their loss, especially this time of year.

My mother gave my boys a copy of the book ‘Twas the Night before Christmas. It was the kind that you can record your voice reading the book, which she did. And when she showed me the book and we listened to it, she said that she wished we had her mother’s voice on something. It was the most self-aware moment that two of us have ever shared. It was clear to me that she was preparing for that Christmas with the empty chair. When my boys opened the present and my wife saw what it was she cried.

Now, I know these moments can and do occur every day of the year. But, for me, there is a heightened permanence to the image, because of the emotional closeness of the season. It makes the moment closer, more precious.

Those moments become ornaments that I remember to pull out each year and hang on my Christmas tree. I know they should hang throughout the year, but they don’t, mostly.

That is why this time of year becomes precious to me.

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So my son does not feel like a two year-old to us. He feels more four or five. I’m sure this comes from not living with a four or five year-old before, or a two year-old for that matter. But there is something about him — or perhaps us — that makes us expect him to act older than his years should demand.

I’m pretty sure that is a bad thing.

He’s got a pretty good vocabulary for a two year-old, at least we’ve been told. I think that creates part of the problem. Because my wife and I are always carrying on conversations with him — and he seems to discuss things with us — we assume he is cognitively following along.

Then he’ll throw food during dinner…for 7000^th time.

I’ll sit back and look utterly stunned. “Why did you do that?” I’ll say, utterly stunned.

My wife with her disappointed face will say, “We don’t throw food.”

“We don’t throw food,” I reiterate. “Do you see your mother or I throw food?” I ask perplexed.

He demurs and bats his eyelids. I shit you not, this kid.

“Look,” I say, “I would understand your seeming pathological impulse to throw food if your mother and I were continually flinging tandoori chicken or roasted broccoli everywhere, but we don’t.”

“We don’t throw food,” my wife punctuates the point.

It’s at this point I wish that my son had the wherewithal to blurt out, “I’m two!”

I’m pretty sure that would put everything into instant perspective.

When we’ve given him a time-out for …whatever his impulse of the day was, we’ll go into his room and I’ll say, “Okay, why are you in time-out?”

And he’ll tell me. “I didn’t stop when you said stop.” Or “I threw food.” Or “I kicked the dog.”

Then I’ll say, “That’s right. You kicked the dog. You know, we don’t kick dogs. Dogs are our friends and we don’t hurt friends. Dogs have been with us thousands of years. They trust us not to hurt them. They are our faithful companions and…”

“I’m two!”

Yeah, I’m pretty sure that would do the trick.

I thought briefly about teaching him to say that, “I’m two!” But then I rethought it. I don’t want him to use it later, you know.

“Son, why did you break the car axel on the curb?”

“But Dad, I’m sixteen!”

Or, “Son, why in God’s name did you decide to pee on that police officer’s car?”

“But Dad, I’m twenty-one!”

Or, “Son, why on earth do you need a 72-inch flat screen Wi-Fi television?”

“But Dad, I’m forty-two!”

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So, I got a little ink in our Sunday paper this weekend, which was kind of cool.

I got an email out of the blue from a Gazette reporter who said that she read on my blog that I was a stay-at-home dad. She was doing a story on the new census statistics about the proliferation of men who are taking on home child-care. And to be honest, the numbers she has stunned me.

In the Midwest 33.3% fathers of preschool children are noted as primary child-care providers. That’s a full third, which, even to my relatively progressive mind, seems rather high.

It’s a pretty good article. It actually caused some reflection about my position in the family and how I interact with my boys, as well as the near future and my place in it. I got some validation in the way I handle the boys. As silly as it sounds, sometimes I need that.

Here is the link if you want to read it.

http://thegazette.com/2011/12/18/number-of-stay-at-home-dads-surges-in-east-iowa/

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Every Christmas morning that I can remember I woke up to the smell of Danish Puff. Besides my kooky family and their odd shenanigans, eating and smelling Danish Puff is my favorite Christmas memory.

And, boys, I hope that I can work it so that Danish Puff is high on your list of happy Christmas memories. Even better, I would love it to be something that we make together because there is a moment of absolute chemical magic in the making of this bad boy.

You know, I didn’t make this until I was 42 years old. It took your grandmother getting cancer for me to make this one. That’s because she always told me it took two hours to make, which was only a little misinformation. I was always happy to sit back and let her do it. But this Thanksgiving (2011) to help out your grandmother I decided to make the food. And since we all were having two Thanksgiving dinners that night, I suggested we change one to a brunch. And what better to start out with than our favorite family breakfast item?

It isn’t the fasted thing to make. But the time served is certainly worth the end product. So, while I don’t normally spend much time thinking or pining about the future, I certainly see you guys in kitchen patting out the crusts for these tasty pastries.

Danish Puff

Ingredients:

Puff Base
1 cup flour
1/2 cup butter
2 tbsp water

Puff Custard
1/2 cup butter
1 cup water
1 tsp almond extract
1 cup flour
3 separate eggs, each slightly beaten

Puff Icing
3/4 cup confectioners’ sugar
some milk
some sliced almonds

Directions:

Heat oven to 350.

Put first cup of flour into bowl and cut in butter. Sprinkle with 2 tbs. water and mix with fork.

Round into ball and divide in half.

Put in fridge for a while to let it stiffen for about 20 minutes.

Remove from fridge and, on ungreased cookie sheet, pat into two strips about 12″ by 3″. Place 3″ apart.

*****

Bring water to a boil and add the stick of butter.

Once it melts remove pan from heat and add almond extract.

Slowly beat in flour, stirring quickly to prevent lumping.

When smooth, add one egg at a time, beating well after each egg until smooth.*

Divide in half and spread one half evenly on each pastry base.

Bake for 1 hour. Center should still be moist and custardy.

*****

Put a little milk into the bowl with the powdered sugar and mix until smooth, but not too liquidy.

Add just a hint of almond flavoring.

Drizzle over finished puffs.

Sprinkle with sliced almonds.

*NOTE: When you add the first egg to the warm flour/water/butter mixture, it may turn your stomach. It becomes the weirdest nauseating looking alien gloop you could imagine. But keep stirring. It will turn back. It will do this with each egg you add. It’s a little bit of magic.

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