Tag: family time

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#blogeverythingnow HAPPINESS. Imagine that. parenting life

No idea what I’m doing with the kids other than grocery shopping.

Dry cereal for breakfast, completely uncommon.  Sounded nice.  Not sure why.  Henry hungry, demanding waffles, then another, and while the third one cooks insists on a graham cracker.  Just as he’s about to launch into one of his cutting protests that I haven’t seen in a while, I gave him one and he marches back to the loft to watch his Patrol Patrol show where parents move the toys, have a unique episode premise and do the voices of each character.  Henry prefers to the actual show, which I find interesting but completely obvious why.  To him, the toys are talking, which probably makes him wonder…

Okay… things to do in Sonoma County with kids.  Research…

I’ll figure it out, and ask them what sounds fun to them.  Armstrong Woods sounds fun, but to me.  Would they want to do that?  Dad and Mom took Emma and Jack for a vineyard walk at Katie’s winery yesterday….  Hmmm.

Sonoma Plaza, that could be fun.  Walk around, go to that historic corner by the Mission.  YES.  Decided… they’ll love that.  Maybe get lunch at Mary’s.  They love Mary’s, me not too much.

Run idea by Emma. Less than impressed.  Oh well.

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HAPPINESS. Imagine that.

“Daddy, why are colors so wonderful?” Emma asks me.  I tell her I don’t know, but I think the same.

Busy day, games and then home, lunch, got sandwiches for Dad and Sue and me.  Now on couch with Henry and Emma, thinking of what to get for dinner, already.  Clouds annex the sky, promise rain and weather change.  No wine tonight but a red blend, one of the Orin Swift characters would be perfect for a night like this.  Tomorrow it’s supposed to drop an inch my sister told me last night.  Didn’t know it’d be that much.

Single dad stall I feel like I’m in.  Number of reasons I could list, examples, but working past it.  I ask Henry if he’s feeling better he says “Yeh…” His new word.  And he uses it often, trying to sound like a big kids, like his brother and sister.

Wish I could cook. Maybe that should be some immersion project I should adopt.  Just throw myself into it… print recipes like my mom does and put them in a binder.  Cook for my kids … Kerri getting me that spice rack and I told her before bed the other night that I have to learn to cook now.  She of course urged I not be so hard on myself, but it’s my reaction.  What I’m doing.  Very little interests me lately other than my kids, and providing for them.  Whatever the want.

Start with quesadillas, melts, scrambled eggs, whatever I already know which is very little.—  Henry closes the laptop on my hands and I see it as a symbol, a metaphor propulsion and insistence to stop writing about shit and just DO.  Move, actuate, materialize, manifest as Ms. Kerri voices.

Kids tell me they’re hungry.  Obviously don’t have time or materials for an impromptu menu.  Henry closing laptop again.  Okay, I get it.  Get what, create then narrate.  No more to-do imbued.  Silent is the pursuit.  Sole vocal is the result focal.

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#blogeverythingnow

8:47

Earthquake earlier.  Actually two. 

One over 4 on scale.  Amazing dinner with Dan and Sue, now in Nook Office as I used to be when living here. Found a Pride Cab in cellar here that had a post-it with my name on it, “MIKEY”.  Letter obvious and attention-getting, note to future me meaning the tonight-Mike.

Sipping Roth Cab, AV, and thinking about Dad’s pilot store from earlier, the stormy approach in SFO, and other.  Can remember specifics right now, too wrapped in life’s brevity and how the writer only has tonight.

Mom and I talking about the quakes, first one with he reaction like “Oh is that an earthquake?” Then the second, “Oh fuck, that’s an earthquake.” The Cab helping, mentoring.

Long day of business and divorce shit… someone telling me my blog reads like a journal.  Yeah no shit.  Wildly genius assessment.  More wine, ‘nother of the Roth AV.  Reminds me of the beginning dates of this.  Writing late here in the Nook.  I’m here again, conversations til Mom and Dad, grateful.  Kerri messaging me that she’s having her daughters help her prep boards.

What is this blog, what am I – About EVERYTHING, a writer.  Learning.

Picture of my grandma above the fireplace in the room in front of me, guess you’d call that a family or ‘living’ room.  Time, times with Grandma and Grandpa, taking me one place or another when younger.  Need to think…

ME – 43, music, need more.  Of what, more music yes but more peace, more a Composition and story new.  Haven’t sipped the Cab yet, waiting.  Trading ideas from one character side to another persona tide.  I know where the new Mike Madigan goes, is going, what poems he’s throwing.

Free, freeness.. messaging old friend sad new ones.  Something different in life, the prime, earth, something – this table.  What a poet needs and upon feeds.  Nearly wishing for another quake but I’m sure I’ll regret that frag’ soon.

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HAPPINESS. Imagine that.

Morning 1 of 3 this weekend, off the ground. 

Relative peace except for some back and forth earlier between Jack and Henry.  Of course no stress of concern for Jack, he was just instigating whatever he could versos his nearly 2 year-old brother.

Emails, not checking them.  Not allowing distraction.  Just observing these little humans and their wishes and priorities, passions.  The humor in this, they hav all the answers.  In their simplicity acknowledgement of what’s present, in the room with them.

Slept relatively well this time with Henry.  Not as many headbutts or kicks to my back or left arm.  Moving slow, sipping espresso slow so the effect is amplified and magnified.  At least twelve hours of little human management ahead of me…. And 67 outside already.  Definitely heading to the beach, probably alongside all of Sonoma and Napa counties.  Doesn’t matter, ‘cause being trapped in the house won’t work, and it’s not fair to these small friends of mine, my babies and yes I still see even Jack as a little.

The gratitude grip, felt this morning.  This won’t be forever, and if I’m not fully placed in this stage I’ll never get it back.  Reading the comics to Emma yesterday morning, watching that anime show last night with all three…. lucky.

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parenting life

#MADIGANBABIEZ

The quarantine creativez.

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autre

Another cup

of coffee.  Writing fathers, or this one in this entry, this morning.. need coffee like fish need their gills, the water around them; like eagles need those gusts and aired currents between ranges.  My son, content on the couch, and me over here writing and just looking at him, remember what that guy in the tasting room yesterday said, about enjoying every minute, they grow so fast, his son now over 6’5 and the man recalling how his son used to crawl onto his chest and fall asleep.  I could tell the passed time bothered him, or just simply made him sad.  This man also told me that he used to write but let himself go, distracted in so many patterns destructive; weight, “sex drugs & rock ’n’ roll” as he said, and other avenues that brought him to the day he met me, with that regretful mask.

It chilled me.

That will NEVER be me.

Not the father of my babies, ever..

Cup 2 waits for me.. as does Jack, who a few minutes ago said he wanted to sit with me and I told him to wait a minute and no sooner or later did he spill the Cheerios all to the floor.  I looked over and he had what I thought was a barely-registering smirk.  I became upset, but remembered the man from yesterday.  Would rather he irk me by doing this than what teenagers do.  And he’ll be one, before I want him to be.  Time will make sure of it.

8:41—  Meliss and Emma, still asleep.  She, Em, woke last night, or early this morning, but I can’t remember when— time just blends together, oddly congeals and separates then puts itself back together when you’re a parent.  It’s rewarding and maddening.  And trying to capture it all in writing’s another intriguing agitation to itself…

But I do it anyway.

 

3/4/16