It's Been Real

I'm not a sappy guy.  In fact most people who know me might tell you I can be an asshole a little rough around the edges.  I'm no thug.  I just get queasy around emotional people.  I crack jokes and poke fun.  It's not meant to be mean, I just need to do something to break the discomfort (my own).  No, I am not one of those "guys don't cry" type of guys, I've cried while watching Extreme Home Makeover...so no "man" card here, to be fair I think they pump estrogen through the air waves.  But this move back to the east coast is not met with the same "get me the fuck out of here" mentality as when we left Virginia nine years ago (think Guillermo Diaz in Half Baked).

I'm getting all choked up here.

San Diego has been great to us.  We moved 3000 miles away from family and friends.  It was just me and the Mrs (back then she was just Ms.).  We found a dump of an apartment in Mission Beach, but it had a view of the ocean.  We were sold.

Nine months later we woke up to a skylight full of termites scratching to get out.  We left with them.  We found a better place in Pacific Beach.

What followed were drunken nights, bar crawls, the best pizza in all SoCal (Hoboken), late night destruction of breakfast burritos from the local establishment (Roberto's), adopting a bitchy kooky Australian Shepherd mutt, I took up playing golf again, the Ms' graduated from law school and eight years after our first date  I finally made the Ms a Mrs (apparently dating does not age like a fine wine, you have to buy the proverbial cow...and I am in no way calling my wife a cow - if I were to call her any animal it would be a baby sloth and we all know how cute they are...they make people cry).

Thank you.

Then we bought a house, with the help of the Mrs' folks.  We left the beach for a land known only as "east of the 5".  We (and by we, I mean I) became foodies and beer snobs.  We got a Golden Retriever.  We adopted two cats.  We had the Big Guy.  I got involved in triathlons and running half marathons (not competitively, have you seen my picture?).  We lost a beautiful person, friend, sister, daughter, wife, mother and aunt when the Mrs' mom passed away.  I became a stay at home Dad.  We had the Taz.  And I started my photography business.

Things.  Happened.  Here.

And this only covers the tip of the iceberg.  We made amazing friends.  We had an assortment of people making our life better from pet sitters to house cleaners, that we got to know all very well.  We took some great vacations.  We saw most of our friends get married.  We ate some fantastic food.  We drank a lot of beer...etc.

I know we'll have it better in North Carolina, but I know we've had it good, in fact, really good here.

It's a hundred degrees plus humidity back east today.  It's 75 here.  When the weather was frigid or insanely hot back east, I used to send obnoxious emails of overturned lawn chairs to friends on the east coast to show them that, as Californians, we were in the thick of it with them.

It's weird doing things here for the last time: taking the kids to the doctor, getting my haircut, playing Torrey Pines at local rates, hiring a babysitter, eating at various restaurants, visiting playgrounds, hanging out with the crew of Stay At Home Dads, going to the beach, watching the Padres suck again, etc...

Right now, the Big Guy has Vans (the shoes).  He looks like a little surfer in training.  The Taz, is well...the Taz - a loud, quick crawling tank of a boy.  I doubt we'll be back here in the next two or three  years.  But I wonder if when we do make it back, will the boys have slight southern accents?  Will the Big Guy remember all the places he fell down and scraped his knees as we drive by them, as he does now?  Will we have an insatiable hunger for a breakfast burrito as soon as we get off the plane?  Will we admire the postings of friends visiting In'N'Out?

In ten days from now, the boys and I will walk into the airport and get our one-way tickets to head home for the first time.  And as much as I will always consider Philadelphia home, San Diego has wormed it's way into that coveted call tag of places I call "home".  I am familiar with the nooks and crannies here.  I know the short cuts to just about everywhere.  If you come to San Diego, I can show you a great time and one that will make you want to move here.

I'm glad we have friends here to come back to and I look forward to bringing the boys back to show them the hospital they were born at, the home we lived in, the parks we played at, the restaurants we ate at, and the life we lived however many years ago.

You are probably wondering why I would leave then, right?  I guess I am getting old.  It's no longer about what's fun or exciting for me anymore.  Now I think of where my kids will go to school and what the quality of education will be there.  I think of how close can I be to my family who can help with the kids as well as watch them grow up.  And I think of how much the Mrs is working and how that translates to less time that we spend together as a family.  Add it all up and San Diego, as nice as it is, just isn't for us anymore.  The square peg, round hole issue.

So yes, it's kind of sad, or as people keep saying - bitter sweet.

San Diego, we bid you farewell.  We leave the "Hola, dudes"  for the "Hey ya'lls."  We leave the fish tacos for shrimp and grits.  And we leave the sunshine tax for potential heat stroke.  But we leave it all knowing we can come back.  Stay good San Diego, it's been real.

 

Happy Birthday, Taz!

It only seemed fitting that with my 30th post, that it would be something monumental.  You know...cause 30 is a monumental number?

Well, quantity vs quality, monumental or not, this post is flipping awesome...the Little Man (AKA Taz) will turn 1 next Wednesday.  However, since the Mrs leaves for North Carolina tomorrow we thought we would celebrate as a family tonight.

Since we are using everything in our pantry, baking a cake was out of the question (we have about 2 tables spoons of sugar left right now and using packets of Splenda would take forever), so it was mini-cupcakes from a local bakery (Babycakes, if you're curious).

Unfortunately, the Taz has been a mess all day today: short nap this morning, screamed for the majority of our lunch and refused to nap this afternoon.  The Mrs was ready to put him to bed extremely early, but I thought that since she wouldn't be here and, let's face it, they were mini-cupcakes filled with sugary goodness that all children love that we could make it work for five more minutes...for her.

It went off without a hitch (well...except for the fact that the Big Man refused to sing with us to his brother...and since the Mrs asked that I not get into it with him and let it be as it was her last night...I let it be).  Taz loved the mini chocolate cake, we sang to him and got to spend it together as a family.

It was nice to spend one last real moment as a family (or at least until we are all back together three weeks from now).  The Taz will remember none of it, the Big Guy will doubtfully remember that he didn't sing to his little brother and I will forget that I wanted to wring the Big Guy's neck for not singing to his brother.

What I will remember is that the Mrs and I sang, that Taz loved to smash the cakes into his face, that we celebrated what has been a great first year for the Little Man.  He is crawling (fastest rug rat this side of the Mississippi), flirting (gonna be a heart breaker, he is), playing (soon to be body slamming the Big Guy), talking (said Dada first...so I'm good with that) and frankly getting goddamn heavy (and no it's not because of the chocolate cake!).  With our move to the east coast in only 12 days from now I have been doing a lot of reminiscing (post on that to be coming soon), but just thinking about this past year with the Taz is enough in and of itself.

I'm glad we celebrated tonight.  

Miss me? No, But I'm Happy To See You.

Scene:  Morning, at home in the kitchen.

The Mrs:  (walking over and kissing the boys and then me) Okay guys, I gotta go to work.  I love you.
The Big Guy:  Bye-bye Mama.  See you later.
The Little Man: ....
Me:  Adios.
The Mrs.:  It'd be nice if you just said: "I love you too."  It's like you don't miss me.
Me:  (smirking) Adios.

And...cue the hating.

I am well aware of how bad this sounds, I really am.  While I am not quite Kony, I am no where near Jesus either.  Some women, upon hearing these stories, have even remarked about how they could never be married to me; clearly their loss.  So am I in the middle?  Maybe.  I'd honestly like to think that I am a pretty good guy, a decent husband and a great dad.  But much like what the weather man says, you should probably take that with a grain of salt.

See, I grew up as a flight attendant's son (my mom, not my dad), my parents were divorced when I was 3 and I lived most of the year with my mom.  I'm not entirely sure how things worked early on, but I know when we left Connecticut after the divorce and moved to Massachusetts that I usually stayed with local neighborhood friends when my mom was away.  This was back in the day when being a flight attendant was still a pretty cool way to make a living.  When if you had seniority you got the interesting international flights while the more junior folks were stuck working the domestic routes.  So my mom would be away for several days at a time a few times a month.  This was before the days of iPhones,  FaceTime and Skype so when she was away, she was really away.

No matter where we moved to this was always the way it was.  I got used to my mom being away a lot.  It was no big deal, I'd see her in a few days and usually she'd bring me back a cool t-shirt from Turkey, Greece, Israel or sometimes even an autographed picture from a celebrity who had been on her flight that week (the two that stand out to me are Speech from Arrested Development and Mr. T...I think one of the guys from C+C Music Factory was one too, but I can't remember his name or even what songs they did). So hanging out with friends or after school sports was what I did, I really didn't have time to think about her being gone.  It was no big deal.

Which brings me to my point.  I don't miss my wife when she is at work.  I love it when she is around and I sometimes think it would be nice to have some help with the boys, but I don't miss her when she goes to work.  Much like my childhood, I am too busy with my day-to-day adventures with the boys to think about what she's up to or when she'll be home.  I know that to most of you that sounds like a terrible to thing to say, and when I told my mom about my idea for writing this post, she thought the same thing.  I told her that over the years I just got used to the person I lived with not being there all of the time, so missing people that I know will be home that afternoon or even in a few days seems unnatural to me.  Her words verbatim were "well, that's sad."  I don't think so though.  It's not like I had some pathetic childhood or anything.  Actually, my childhood was great.  It was just different from most people I know.  

Most people I know grew up in a two parent home where one or the other was always home for the them.  I know that was certainly the situation for the Mrs.  So I get it when she thinks I'm being rude or without emotion.  But it's like growing up eating a food that not a ton of people eat and when you try to share it with them they look at you like you're crazy or in some cases as if your face is covered in vomit.  At the end of the day, I don't expect the Mrs to understand where I am coming from.  I don't think she can, and similarly I don't understand why people miss each other when they're separated for a few hours of the day.  But to maintain my "decent" husband status I do send her flowers at the office occasionally with little notes from the boys and I.  See, I'm not all piss and vinegar.

So do you still hate me?

Don't answer that.