Big Daddy Paul

Weddings are fun events where you get together with your friends and celebrate the fact that someone else will soon start arguing over who has to put away the laundry. We just got back from a super-fun wedding and I thought I would help you all out by giving you some practical guidelines to help maximize the entertainment value.

DO show up for the ceremony. I know it is tempting to just go to the reception site early and starting drinking all the free booze, but occasionally something bizarre happens at the ceremony, and, when it does, you surely don’t want to miss it. At Saturday’s wedding the priest asked the bride and groom if they had a ferret. Yes, a ferret. This was right after “Love is patient, love is blind…” and right before “I will love and honor you all the days of my life.” Totally random! The only way to appreciate the awkwardness of this moment was to sit through it, and that is why you always go to the ceremony. DO NOT go to the ceremony and confuse the sacraments with free booze. Trust me, you should not be asking for seconds at the head of the communion line.

DO have a few drinks at the cocktail reception. Drinking alcohol at this time is socially acceptable and will help you deal with the people staring at your tits (I am especially self-conscious about mine, and it is so much easier for me to shout, “Eyes up here, buddy!!!” with a drink in my hand.) DO NOT do shots at the cocktail reception. I repeat, DO NOT do shots at the cocktail reception. You may have a shot later in the evening if you suck at dancing and want to get better at it. You may also have a shot later if the stranger you have been randomly making out with has breath reminiscent of a sea otter. Both of those loopholes occur much later in the evening, though. If you do shots at the cocktail reception, you will most likely be the be the guy mistaking the groom for a waiter. Don’t be that guy.

No dirty dancing here!

DO have a fun time dancing. It doesn’t matter if you are any good at it (I’m awful) as long as you bring enthusiasm and keep your elbows down. DO NOT dirty dance with the bride. For that matter, DO NOT dirty dance with any parents of the bride. In fact, let’s just say, DO NOT dirty dance. When you dirty dance, you are really just telling the world how sad and lonely you are. I guess I should also say, DO NOT break dance, dolphin dance or humpty dance. Nothing good will come of it. By all means, if “Total Eclipse of the Heart” comes on, DO NOT stay on the dance floor. I learned this one the hard way, and wound up at the bottom of a huge dog pile with beer and dirt all over my suit. That song just packs to much raw emotion and should be avoided at all costs. When you hear Bonnie Tyler say, “Turn around,” DO so, and run for your life!

DO thank the hosts of the wedding, telling them how lovely the event was. DO NOT nod at them on your way out the door, holding every unopened bottle of alcohol that you can manage to get your hands on and singing “God Bless America” at the top of your lungs. That is tacky, and I shouldn’t have done that. DO make an exit. DO NOT make a stupid one.

DO attend a post wedding brunch, if you are so invited. It’s a good way to wrap up the weekend and tell silly stories about what happened the night before. DO NOT stalk the married couple, banging loudly on their door early in the morning and yelling, “WHERE THE DONUTS AT?”

That’s about it, I have to find a dry cleaner and some donuts now…

We just got back from 10 days in Hawaii, and we had a blast.  You may have noticed that my posts have left a little to be desired during that time, as I was more focused on reading shitty John Grisham books than fine tuning posts to ensure maximum entertainment value. Sorry about that, (especially the shitty books part. Seriously. If I ever pick up another Grisham book, please stick a spoon in my eye!) I am back now, and I promise you that things will promptly return to normal around here. More loving/loathing of Malcolm, more hand wringing over the future, and possibly even more pictures of my legs. (You love my legs, admit it. You do.)

One thing I noticed on vacation is that us stay at home parents get kind of a raw deal on the family vacation. Working folks go “on holiday,” as our friends in Europe quaintly say, and get to leave their daily routines behind. The holiday for a stay at home parent looks a lot like a regular week. Wake up, yell at kid. Eat breakfast, yell at kid. Motor through lunch to rapidly bring about nap time, and then hang on for dear life until the child’s bed time. Then, and only then, does the real holiday begin. Sure, vacation means that your significant other will be there to take some of the load, but watching your significant other try to operate as primary caregiver isn’t relaxing to watch, it’s more like the feeling a bull has while watching a cow get artificially inseminated. (First day back and I am already making metaphors that are both confusing AND disgusting. Still got it!)

As you might guess, I have some advice for how to maximize your time on vacation if your vacation involves the sad reality of traveling with your spouse and children. First, take mini vacations. Hide from your family and don’t tell them what is going on, they’ll make do. Take a walk, go golfing, or make a detour from the grocery store and hit a dive bar for happy hour. It doesn’t matter what you do, as long as your family isn’t there to ruin it. I once spent two hours locked in the bathroom claiming I had diarrhea, when in fact, I was just reading “The Client.” Carving out significant “Me” time is one of the best things you can do for yourself, and will make you a way better parent for it.

Second, travel with family friends. We went with some good friends who have a three-year-old, and the times that Malcolm and the boy Henry played together were actually quite nice. We got to actually talk to our friends and even snorkeled a bit. Bonus! Traveling with another family also means someone else will occasionally cook dinner, figure out where to go during the day, and may even help you sing karaoke in a tiki bar in Hanalei after midnight, if you find yourself in that sort of situation.

Don't get mad at me, his didn't have any rum in it...

Lastly, get good and drunk. Having too much to drink at home during the week is a pathetic way to go through life, and while I do it all the time, I don’t condone it. Drinking too much on vacation is just letting of a little steam, especially if you drink something wildly different. In Hawaii, we drank a lot of fuzzy frozen drinks, and even rationalized the large intake of fresh pineapples and coconut milk-based drinks as merely the healthy pursuit of anti-oxidants. I don’t think we’ll start drinking every day at 4 pm (which really means noon, except that we are too ashamed to admit it) but for a long week, it’s kind of fun. We were on holiday from sobriety!

Traveling without your kids is simply not going to be a reality for most people, but hiding in the bathroom, pawning your offspring off on your friends, and binge drinking are all excellent ways to ensure that you holiday is a success, even when your kids go with you. Now that I think of it, I can do all these things in may daily life here. Bring on the summer!

Some people like to sew. Others enjoy backpacking or tinkering around with dead bodies to find out a cause of death. There are tribes in Africa that chase around rodents in a bizarre hybrid of lunch and soccer. Me? I enjoy celebrating my birthday. Each year, when my birthday comes around, I plan weeklong festivities so that everyone gets a chance to appreciate my fabulousness and drink lots of booze. This year was no different. I went to Las Vegas for my birthday. Amy had a conference there, and instead of dealing with me guilting her about how she abandoned me on my birthday, she invited me to join her. I gladly accepted and here is what I did to treat myself on my day of days:

Amy had an 8 a.m. session at her conference, and instead of bemoaning the early wake up call and the sudden onset of “all-alone-ness,” I went large. I decided that I would treat myself to a breakfast of chicken wings, french fries and beer. I love chicken wings like librarians love comfortable shoes, so watching the world cup soccer match and scarfing down wings and beer was the perfect way to begin my day.

This is Las Vegas?

Fortified with liquid courage from the beer, I headed out to the golf course for a round of golf at a posh Las Vegas resort course. One of the more interesting things about golf is that you get to meet a variety of different of people when you play, and this is especially true in Las Vegas. While there, I played with some New York investment bankers, a 20 year golf phenom who plays for the UNLV golf team, and a couple of toothless Texans whose favorite word seemed to be, “Dangit!”

I finished up at the golf course and rushed home for a quick nap in the room, followed by a massage that Amy set up for me. I have had a recent glut of male masseuses recently, so I was very glad to walk in the massage room to find a woman, even if she appeared to be a long lost relative of the Texas Dangit brothers I met on the course. The massage was pure bliss, save my stress over almost getting an erection when the masseuse spent five minutes rubbing the inside of my thighs. Luckily, I was pretty gassy after eating chicken wings and drinking beer all day, so instead of playing out fantasies of shtooping the masseuse, I focused single-mindedly on not farting. Worked like a charm!

From there, Amy and I had dinner at a outrageously fancy restaurant, Joel Robuchon. Mr. Robuchon was voted chef of the century and has three Michelin, stars, which simply means dude can cook. Our dinner was a ten course food orgy. The highlights for me were a langoustine ravioli with black truffles and foie gras butter, roast lobster and caramelized sea urchin, and duck breast and seared foie gras with cherries and almonds. It’s the kind of food where you can taste how much work went into each dish and I cherished each and every bite.

We even decided to have the restaurant’s sommelier pair glasses of wine with each course of our meal. It was a good deal more expensive to go this route, but the results were fantastic. The wines were chosen to bring out the buttery-ness of a sauce, the soy in the rice, or the richness of a meat. The sommelier used words like “minerality” or “acidity” to describe the pairings, but I was so stuffed and drunk that I could only reflect that the food and wine went together like pigs and blankets, a comment which, like my gas in the massage room, I kept to myself.

One of the best things about the meal was the number of ridiculous choices the restaurant offered. The bread cart had 30 different kinds of bread, all fresh and warm. We each had an appetizer, soup, two entrees, dessert, a choice of 30 cheeses and a meringue cake (with two kinds of ice cream inside for my birthday!) Just when we thought we were done, they brought a confectionary cart around filled with over 30 chocolates, pastries, and pretty much every other high sugar treat in the world. I didn’t need to eat three truffles, a praline candy and an eclair, but, then again, I didn’t need a dozen wings for breakfast either. That’s the joy of my birthday, I got to do it all, and it was one perfect day.

Thanks to my special lady for inviting me to Las Vegas. Amy, I love you dearly!

I like my job. It is rewarding and fun most of the time. I couldn’t imagine doing anything else with my life right now. That being said, it will surprise some of you to learn that I am not, in fact, four years old. I can horse around with Malcolm and his friends for a long time, but eventually I get tired of it. I can only play Uno or whatever the heck he’s into so many times before I starting pining for the adult world. As the day wears on, this desire begins to grow. I stare longingly at my (shut down) computer while Malcolm is eating his dinner. I begin checking my email on my phone when he is in the bathtub. When I finally read him books and get him down for the night, I sprint out of his room, and get my grubby little hands on my reintroduction to the adult world.

Luckily, I don't have to choose

The chalice, for me, is a glass of wine. Or three. Whatever, the actual number doesn’t matter. It’s the symbolism that I love. The magical glass of wine transforms me  from being a big kid in a stained shirt to an adult (still in a stained shirt, mind you, but an adult nonetheless). I get to be like everyone else out there, relaxing on the couch with a glass of wine and some mindless TV. The chalice brings something totally mind-numbingly absent from a stay at home parent’s day. Relaxation. Even when you are doing something that you both really like, like bowling or hucking rocks at our neighbor’s cats, you still need to be mindful of dangerous hazards or creepy guys in vans. This tension, the stress of dealing with tantrums or potential pitfalls to everyone’s happiness wears on you. The chalice allows all that mess to fade away. At the end of the day, when the house is quiet, and you raise that chalice to your lips, all is right with the world. You recharge your batteries and get yourself ready to do it all again tomorrow.