NOT SO FUNNY
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Goodbye Soy
Me: Do you want to stay in the room?
Liv and Max: No.
Lauren and I stayed in the room. Sawyer’s sick body laid there on the couch with a port sticking out of a bandage covering his little paw.
It was time to say goodbye. I fought through tears and kissed him on the head.
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Alfredo the Deer
Liv: Dad, come quick.
Me: What?
Max: Come, Dad, just come on, follow us.
It’s Memorial Day. I’m nervous. My kids are usually so immersed in their iPads on the weekends, that I’m not sure what could be so urgent outside of their iPads simultaneously imploding.
I put shorts on and follow them down the stairs. They open the front door and I follow them outside. We cross the driveway and pass our fence which separates our property from the next door neighbor’s. On the side of the fence, I spot something.
Liv: Dad, it’s a baby deer.
I walk over and bend down. There curled up in a fetal position is a baby deer with spots. He can’t be more than a few days old.
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Coldplay and Mongolian Food?
Lauren (my wife): My patient told me about this great restaurant where you eat with your hands. Would you want to go?
Me: Well, I eat with my hands anyway, so if there’s a place where that’s socially acceptable, of course.
Lauren: I think it’s Mongolian food.
Me: Mongolian food?
Lauren: Something like that.
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FINDING THE FUNNY AGAIN
NOTE: I was planning on posting this blog right after New Year’s, but that didn’t happen, and then the Capitol Riots occurred which made the timing of this feel wrong, and then… actually I’m not sure what happened these past 4 weeks. I just haven’t been able to get my act together, which is kind of part of the problem I explore in this piece.1 <———- CLICK ON RED BOXES
Then yesterday, Tom Brady, who is my exact age, finally caught up to me in career achievements. Tom and I have always pushed each other to reach greatness. So I had to step up my game and get this blog out.
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The Panacea
May is Mental Health Awareness Month, an issue that is personal to me as I’ve spent the second twenty years of my life battling anxiety and depression. Last year, I wrote a piece for The Good Men Project about The Anxiety and Depression Stigma. I hope we’ve made some progress since then to end the stigma.
One of the reasons for the unfair stigma is the misconception about what it’s like to live with anxiety and depression. There’s a perception that if you’re depressed, you can’t get out of bed or do your job.
For many who struggle, including me, that’s not usually how it manifests itself. It affects me in different ways, subtle ways, sometimes silly ways.
But ways nonetheless.
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The Procedure
If you’re not familiar with our son’s story, first check out this piece I wrote for Scary Mommy: The End of Innocence
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Monday afternoon – Boston Children’s Hospital – bathroom
I rub up against my wife, Lauren, while she washes her hands.
“What are you doing?” Lauren asks.
I shrug my shoulders.
“You want to have sex in the bathroom of a children’s hospital while our son is having an eight-hour surgery?”
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The Death Talk
Never thought these two would share a photo I find the timing of when people pass away to be endlessly interesting. Sometimes a celebrity dies at the wrong time and gets trumped by someone more famous’ death. (poor Mother Theresa never stood a chance against Princess Di) Then there are instances when two people with no previous connection pass away the same week and become inextricably linked in my mind. My wife Lauren’s grandmother and Luke Perry both died last week. The only similarity between them before last week was they both stood upright (and even that was questionable the last few years of her life).
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The End of Innocence
Kids deserve at least ten years of complete innocence. Sometimes they’re not afforded that.
Thursday morning, 4:00 A.M.
We tiptoe into our four-year-old son, Matt’s room. We need to pick him up and transfer him asleep into the car.
“You do it. You’re better,” my wife, Lauren, whispers. This is not true. She always wins at Yeti in My Spaghetti. She just wants to be able to blame me later when he’s freaking out in the car.
Why 4:00A.M.? I’m a morning person.2<—– CLICK ON THESE RED BOXES FOR MY TERRIBLE JOKES
I carry him down the stairs and out the garage.
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The Anxiety and Depression Stigma
“Why do you go all the way to Bergenfield to pick up your Xanax pills?” my wife Lauren asked me.
“Drive-thru window. I can avoid people.”
“I think they should up your dose.”
I was joking actually. I love going inside, grabbing a Snickers bar (or M&M’s if I’m on a diet) and eating it while I wait for my prescription. 2 <—– CLICK ON THESE RED BOXES FOR MY TERRIBLE JOKES
The real reason I travel to Bergenfield is the pharmacy clerk at the Walgreens near us always says the name of your prescription loudly to confirm the medication is correct. And, of course, half the store then hears what horse tranquilizer my doctor has prescribed to keep me upright.
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We’re All Deformed
“Your arms are different.”
My five-year-old daughter, Liz, said this to my three-year-old son, Matt, recently.
Matt put his arms up together, compared them, then gave me a quizzical look like, Dad, is she right?
I gave an answer straight from the textbook, “We’re all different. Everyone is beautiful in their own way.”
“But you’re not beautiful, Daddy,” Liz said.
Fair point. 2 <—– CLICK ON THESE RED BOXES FOR MY TERRIBLE JOKES
