Follow Up…

So I have 2 full days in the books of Dad flying solo with two toddler girls. Here’s a quick recap:

1. What did we do?
   Grocery Store, Target, started flower patch, eat, eat and eat some more, went to park/playground with friends, had friends over, snacked on various treats, SeaWorld, played card games, colored, bathed,, finger painted.
2. What did we accomplish that might be useful?
   What do you think the answer is? Not a damned thing!
3. How are the kids?
   Alive, sleeping, worn out.
4. How am I?
   Alive, almost sleeping, fucking whooped!

What’s next? The Mrs gets in tomorrow at 11, lunch plans are set and when we get home, I will be able to cut the grass and do some dishes. Peace out…

What Can I Say?

If you were not aware of my wife’s blog, see here and please comment how the heck you found me! Anyway as you know for this weekend I have been turned into a stay at home single Dad while my wife attends to our family tragedy. If only tragedy were a strong enough word…

To be honest I am quite sick of death in my family. I have had far more than my share lately and I’m losing my nerve for handling all the emotion. It started 2 years ago. Keep that in mind, 2 years. The day my second daughter was born after about 8 hours of elation and being awake for about 32 straight hours I got the call that my father had suddenly died from a heart attack. Talk about emotions. Since then, my family through blood and marriage have lost my wife’s uncle (father to the recent tragedy), her great grandmother, her grandfather, my aunt, my father’s aunt, my grandmother, and now her cousin of same age with child. Honestly I hope I didn’t forget anybody because that would be awful but it’s late and it’s a rather lengthy list for just 2 years. Or is it? Is this kind of wave normal? We all have the marriage and baby waves with friends, but death?

Anyway, I will do my best to post each day about what I feel like after raising two toddler girls by myself for a couple days. I am not afraid at all and I actually am excited about doing so. I love one-on-one time with the kiddos and plan to make the most of it. Today and tomorrow might be harder because I do have to worry about my other actual paying job as best I can. I do have people who work for me and some actual serious responsibility there. Scary, I know.

My first real link acquired by myself is out there! Go to Humor-Blogs and click on my name so I get credit for the link. Maybe someday soon I will get humorous. I think I will follow the lead of my wife and find embarassing family photos to entertain my few readers. Sorry sis…

Blaaaaah

What could be worse than being an insomniac and running out of Ambien? Throw a cold on top of it. So not only did I not fall asleep until sometime after 2 (hypothesizing) but I couldn’t breathe either. What that means is that tonight I will get some sleep as I only had about 4 hours last night…

On the bright side, my 3 year old did read 6 stories to me while I was taking a rest on the couch. No, she cannot read, she just makes up stuff based on the pictures. I was also not allowed to talk or make noise while she read. She made those rules VERY clear.

To leave you on some funnier notes, here are my favorite shirts of the day/week.

This one is specifically for Sarcastic Mom who almost picked a spam fight with me. Until I threatened her with the power of Basedow.

This is only as offensive as the words your brain substitutes for the pictures.

Weekend Fun

After work Friday I met the girls at a birthday party where for the first time in their life and mine, we flew a kite. Kinda cool but kinda boring at the same time…weird.

Saturday cancelled outdoor plans with rain so we went to the Florida mall. Almost bought a Mets jersey and t-shirt for the girls but showed some restraint and put them back on the rack. We hit the spots we had to hit, a tour of the Disney store, nothing purchased, the Apple store so they could sit on the kiddie bean bags and play the kiddie games on the iMacs setup for kids usage. Bought a cool Dr. Seuss ABC game. Went to the bookstore which is a favorite place for both kids. Sent the wife to the M&M’s store with the girls while I had my glasses fixed. Bought various candy from Dylan’s Candy Bar. Fun fun and not too expensive.

Saturday night I played hockey and we lost and played a shitty ugly game. The ending was marred by a teammate acting like an asshole and started fighting and other dirtyness to earn a 3 game suspension. Since we have 1 regular season game left before our 3 game playoffs my vote was for him not to come back at all. He acted like a jerk and hurt the rest of us by shortening our roster at a critical time. I hope it was worth it…

Sunday brought more rain, and our only venture out was to get some lunch. Dishes, laundry, finger-painting, baseball and Nascar on TV ensued. There was a funny popcorn incident where my girls and I split a bag of popcorn 80/20 and I sat them at the table. After about 15 minutes later they admitted to making a face in the popcorn with the table salt and pepper by emptying the entire shaker contents into their bowl. Obviously after a few more pieces they were suddenly done with their popcorn. Just some basic average middle america home time fir us suburbanites. Not to mention we are on round 57 of putting the kids back in bed.

The best commercial just came on. It was for a new pill for heartburn called ACIPHEX. That may not seem bad but if you say it aloud as it was pronounced on TV, you’ll hear yourself saying “ass effects.” Whose the braniac that thought of this? You get acid reflux, gerd or some heartburn and they prescribe ass effects with a straight face? HA! So I guess they take your stomach acid and heartburn and redirect it through your ass. Wonderful! The most common side effect possibly related to ACIPHEX is headache. Symptom relief does not rule out other serious stomach conditions. I’m guessing the headache is from squeezing all that heartburn out your ass and the other serious stomach conditions incude musical farting that could be studied in music theory classes at Carnegie.

Hilarious Muppet Bloopers — for your viewing pleasure

It’s Over & Other Crap

Tonight officially ended my NY Islanders season. We ended on a high note by beating those piece of shits sometimes called the Rangers in a shootout. I truly hate that team even though my uncle works for them. Perhaps I was bred that way, but so be it. I hate losing to them more than any other team in professional sports.

In case you missed it, look at this wicked wreck. This video is slowed down, but that first impact was at about 189 mph. Don’t worry, he survives. Kudos to the technology geniuses who designed the safer walls and safer race cars.

For a working Dad, Fridays are very exciting. Not only to I get to leave my work behind for a couple days but I get to spend 2 full days with my girls. Rain is in the forecast for both days, but I don’t care. We’ll make the most of it I’m sure. Go fish and Uno are certainly in my near future. Oh yeah, and Mrs Hockeyman will be there too.

I get to play hockey tomorrow night but not until 10:00 PM. That time may sound bad, but after a discussion with the league director today I learned it was either a 10:00 PM Saturday start or an 11:30 PM Wednesday night start. I’ll take Saturday…

Next Friday night I get to see Iron & Wine. If you don’t know him, I provided a link. The music is definately not for everyone and is severly on the mellow side. However, it is beautifully crafted acoustic art that I find highly entertaining.

Why can’t ALL kids movies be as good for adults as Pixar movies are? I know there are a couple but overall Pixar flicks beats them all. Hands down.

Videos online with my girls and sometimes myself and my wife now available for consumption.

Good news, the Office comes back this week. If you cannot relate to at least one character in this show, please tell me where you work and how I can apply…

On behalf of the anniversary of the official formation of Microsoft, I love Apple and the products they make. They simply work and work extremely well. Oh yeah, they look pretty nice and are sometimes thought of as innovative. Gates may have started the whole personal computer revolution, but Apple certainly made it better. Vista??? HA!

Off to bed, please oh please let my girls sleep in for me tomorrow as they did for their mother the past 2 days…that would be nice.

Friends and Cultures

Tonight I had the privilege of hosting one of my old friends who started as a co-worker. He hails from Milan, Italy so I do not get to spend much time with him except when his work brings him here. My current work does nothing in other countries so I no longer get to travel abroad as I did when I worked there. Financially I am much better at my current employer but I do miss speaking with people in England, Italy and occasionally France and Australia as well. I have never been to his home in Milan, actually cancelled 2 trips there, but I vow to one day get there for a visit. Thanks to the Internet, we are able to maintain our communications and it is always nice to discuss various cultural things with him.

What made tonight even more fun was my girls, usually shy, accepted him and had quite a bit of fun “showing off” as excited toddlers tend to do. He will one day become a father and he will be a fine one as he has a knack with kids. It was fun to watch him try to teach my girls to count to 10 in Italian. All I remember aside from ciao is how to say “spoon” and “cat” mostly thanks to Baby Einstein videos. He is going to be married in a month and I wish he and his bride the best of luck. They had the coolest invitation I have seen in a while, even though we could not fully read it he helped. As per traditional Italian culture with the invitation we were presented a gift of some chocolates with the invitation. It is a wonderful idea in my opinion as it helps to promote the happiness that is beaming from the couple by sharing a little sweetness with friends and family.

I certainly wish I could personally attend this wedding but plane tickets to Italy are hard to pay for with 2 young children and I actually have to travel for my current job at the same time. I will of course send my love and best wishes for them and offer a promise that we will come visit someday when it might be easier for us to travel. I will also like to visit when we can spend time with them at a time when they are not experiencing the craziness of a wedding! Although we share cultural differences here and there it is always reassuring to see and know that the core values and perspectives are the same no matter where you are from. Teaching your children the same will hopefully not create the elitist attitudes our governing officials like to portray. The European culture and lifestyle would do this nation good but as Americans we don’t know how to slow down long enough to soak it all in.

Is it Sunday already?

Sometimes I really hate Sunday evenings. They are worse than Mondays I think. However, I must complete my first full week of blogging. Today found us at a 4 year old birthday party and then oodles of fun at our own house hosting a sort of Wrestlemania party. We did not watch the event, but 2 of the 3 guests to our house had spouses/S.O.’s at the event here in Orlando. I know for sure we had more fun drinking some good wine, a few beers, grilling hot dogs and watching our kids all play together. We watched Big Brother, a little baseball, a little college basketball, and all of our sides hurt from laughing at our entertaining children. I wouldn’t want it any other way. My wife’s friends have become my friends and are like sisters to me. The kid in me wanted to go to Wrestlemania, but there will never be another event such as Hulk Hogan body-slamming Andre the Giant as I saw when I was 11 and into the whole wrestling TV drama.

What really sucks is tomorrow I have to go back to work. I like my job and enjoy what I have to do all day, but I much prefer playing with my girls all day. I am thankful I am able to support my wife and her stay at home lifestyle and business but sometimes I really wish the shoe was on the other foot.  I get stressed around them just as much as she does, but I want to have that stress every day. I know there isn’t much time before our girls don’t want to spend every minute with us any more in lieu of their friends. I never want to be as lame as I felt my parents were when I got to a certain age, but I know that will be more difficult than anything else we will tackle.

Before you think that party I mentioned earlier was had to do,  it was one of my oldest friends from my college hockey days daughter. Funny enough, we had all gone our separate ways after college and somehow came back together about 4 years ago at the ice hockey rink. While chatting it up before a game and talking about old times, we realized we all had pregnant wives at home. Each of us had our kids 3 months apart between each kid. Oddly enough, they were all girls. Since about the 4 month age of my daughter, the youngest in the group, we have roughly maintained a play group with all of them. Some of the pictures we have are priceless and if they remain friends through adolescence and adulthood, they will appreciate these pictures more than they could imagine. Seriously, how cool would it be if you had pictures of you with your closest friends from your first halloween through your entire life?

Ok, back to the grind…gots bills to pay.

Water Park

So today the hockey family ventured out to Sea World’s newest venture, Aquatica. We got to enjoy the place for about 2 hours after waiting what felt like 3 hours to collect our free passes to get in. It is a cool place with great fun looking slides and experiences, but the little ones just were not happy. We dunno if it was all the crowd or the fact that mom and dad took them to the pre-teen play area before we found the little kiddos area. Regardless, we will go back as it was a really cool place.

What generated most of the discussion afterwards was the people watching.  Let me say I love bikinis and ladies who look nice in them. I can even appreciate the usual dates with them that can clearly walk around with no shirt on. In total today we saw about 8 of said people. The rest were, um, disturbing. I can accept a little extra cushion here and there as I have some myslef. But I am not squeezing into something I wore when I was 16. My suit was not clinging to life or hiding under my body by Budweiser, it fit correctly. People please remember, a Speedo is never accepted in public unless it’s the Olympics or you have your Olympic medal hanging from your neck. Even then, if you are not in Olympic shape, leave it home. No one wants to see that and as guys know, swimming in a pool is never flattering.

Free passes, thanks sis in law, will always bring me back to the place and I just hope next time we bring a camera so we can share the many visual highlights we saw. To those hot looking bikini clad college age girls drinking the beers, next time you see my cute little girl and you want to squeeze her cute little face….go ahead, but after that it’s my turn! Mrs Hockeyman may want a turn as well.

The Meaning of Life

It’s not 42.

Tonight I sent out Mrs. Hockeyman to join some of her blog friends for dinner and drinks and a good time out alone. To make the most of my night of solo parenting I planned everything just right. We had breakfast for dinner consisting of mini pancakes and Barbie waffles. Kids love em’. After that we had some killer dad made ice cream sundaes with all the trimmings you could ask for. Magic shell, M&M’s, gummy bears, sprinkles and a cherry. Then we played about 5 games of go fish and Uno before getting the girls in their PJ’s for a nightcap of the Bee Movie on the couch. Little trouble didn’t last but 15 minutes on the couch but the older boss made it through. We watched some DVD special features and 10 minutes later, you have the picture below. Maybe now I’ll get to the dishes although the Wii is calling my name! Sorry honny, I’ll do them in the morning….tonight has just been too perfect!

Hockey Night in Orlando & Squibs

It’s hockey night for hockeyman but I had to share a new creature my 3 year old created. They’re called Squibs. They’re rond, soft and come in dark colors. You can’t see them because they live under the dirt. They survive on coffee and jellybeans, but they have no mouths, ears, noses, hands, or feet. They eat through a hole in their head. They don’t go to work, they only go to other squib houses. See below for pictures, and perhaps my Mrs. Hockeyman will share links to the video we took later.