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.

Anyway, I ran across this web site while sitting in the hospital the other day and it is simply genius.

It’s called “WTF Art History.” It is a thoroughly irreverent and tongue-in-cheek (sometimes your tongue but not your cheek (sometimes not that cheek either)) brief thought on some crazy and whacked piece of art. The writer is really quite insightful and  witty.

Here is a sampling:

WTF Art History: “Ovid is NOT for Kids”

Enjoy!

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.

The boys are pretty active these days — not a lot of naps going on around here. So there is no writing during the day. The wife gets home between 4:30 and 5:30, we eat, then I head out to rehearsal. I get home around 10:20. I put the youngest to bed, which entails giving him a bottle in his darkened room until about 11:30. Then to bed. And around 7:30 or 8:00 the next morning it starts again.

I guess this is a long way of saying that I don’t think I’m going to get much writing out this week.

I really am sorry for this, but my sanity is probably dependent on it.

I suppose it did some good, as last week was one of the worst, most stressful weeks in recent memory. It really took me out.

I have clearly overextended my creative powers. I thought that getting the United Way sketch out of the way would free me up. But it didn’t. I kind of reached the end of the wick last week. And it didn’t help that my oldest son was home sick, I got myself a cold, and my mother ended up in hospital. There were other stressors, but those were the three that really seemed to zap me.

As it was, I not only did not have time to write, but I had really nothing to say and no energy with which to say that nothing.

Friday, in the depths of that wick’s end, my wife sent me a text message about my oldest throwing toys at my seven month-old, with the suggestion that we “reboot.”

Well, I’m all for that, but I’m much more interested in trading last week’s software for some happy upgrades.

So, huzzah to a new week!

I’m taking this week off. I just need a little break.

Sorry. Write to you next week.

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.

But it snowed so badly there was no way.

So… and I am swamped. So…

Sorry that’s all I got.

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.

There was many things we discussed, but one the handful that always stayed with me was this: he said he had never been as tired as he was during the war. He said there is a tired that a combat infantryman feels that is deepest tired a human can fathom.

He and one of his buddies would take turns sleeping while walking. I still find that hard to believe, but I’ve talked with other veterans who have said the same thing. His buddy would march in front of him and fall asleep, and Grandfather would turn him when they turned, stop him when they stopped, and his buddy would sleep through it all. Then they would switch, and my grandfather would sleep march. It seems incredible.

I guess there is probably no more profound tired than the tired of a combat soldier. My grandfather said he was still tired and that was fifty years after the fighting stopped.

I discussed the soldier tired as a preface and to show that I understand the relativity of my state right now. But I have to imagine that “parent tired” is —although certainly not in the same league — the second most tired in the world.

I have been lumbering in a kind of sub-functioning stupor for the last few weeks. I’m sure my paltry writing of the last week might have been an indicator for you. It’s not that it’s gotten better, I’ve just gotten more used to the stupor.

My six month-old is cutting teeth. We have moved him from the bed to his own room, which for the first few nights was a godsend. He slept through the night. Then those little white buds of doom began scratching at the interior of his gums and they have unleashed hell on my circadian rhythm. The often-brief naps I get during the day are near to worthless. They are like bailing the Titanic with a thimble.

It doesn’t help that his last nighttime feeding is at 11:00. I really like to be in bed by 10:30, but lately it’s been hovering around 12:30. Then Chang (I think that’s what I call him in this blog) gets up at 3:00 sometimes, at 5:00 sometimes. The other times my oldest wakes at 7:30 or so and is up until his nap in late afternoon.

Honestly, I forgot how tired I was with my first kid. Until now.

When my wife had her leg removed and got skin grafts, when they bathed her, it was so excruciatingly painful that they gave her an amnesiac drug so, even though she felt it as it happened, she would not remember how painful it was. That way, when they needed to bath her again, she wouldn’t pull out her IV needle and plunge it through the nurse’s eye.

Something happens after the first child, some kind of natural amnesiac drug that makes us think, “You know, I wasn’t that tired. Squeezing that thing through my vagina wasn’t that painful. My wife really didn’t squeeze my hand that hard during labor.”

Well, let me tell you, I am so tired that…