I'm So Tired

It's that time of year.  Deadline fast approaching and I'm working seven days a week, 12 or more hours a day.  Sure, the reward is good, money rolls in but I have to make pension contributions and pay taxes for the current year and my wife spends money better than anyone so the reward is really short lived.  To make matters worse, I miss out on all the fun shit my kids do each weekend.  Yeah, sometimes their activities can be boring and a total chore to attend but the athletic stuff is a blast.  I'm not one of those dads who gets into fights on the sidelines but I don't sit quietly on the sidelines, politely clapping when the kids do something good.

I enjoy myself at these things.  I help with the coaching if needed and, if it isn't needed I'm giving the kids tips and advice when the coaches aren't.  Even at 8am, it's still something I look forward to.

So, this time of year, I miss that fun and the random things that happen afterward.




Yesterday was my son's first soccer game and I wasn't going to miss seeing him on the field, even if I only managed to catch a short glimpse before heading off to work.  So I woke up at my usual 6 am, got showered and dressed, drank my coffee, woke the kids, made them breakfast and headed off with my wife and the kids to the soccer field.  We live on the east side of the city, in the 50's.  My son's soccer field is on the west side, right next to the river, in the 70's.  We arrived, the kids started practicing and I'm hanging out with the coaches, who I'm friends with.  I managed to catch the whole practice and then, before the game began, I said my goodbyes and started walking out of the park, towards the street so I could hop into a cab and head to the office.

On the way, I'm stopped by two women who are sitting on a bench along the path.  They ask me what kind of bird they're looking at and I look down and sitting there, maybe ten feet from me, is a fucking hawk.  I looked it up later and I'm going with a Cooper's Hawk.  Stunning bird.  Big too.  It was just sitting there and I immediately started fumbling for the cell phone so I could snap a picture.  The women then asked what it was doing on the ground and I said it was, most likely, hungry and it probably spotted a small mouse and was planning on making a meal out of it.

Suddenly, the fucking thing takes off, moving away from us, about two feet off the ground.  I looked ahead of the hawk, trying to figure out how the fuck it would fly between the trees and that was when I saw it.  Squirrel.  The hawk grabbed the squirrel and kept right on flying.  I don't know where it went or if the squirrel was turned into lunch and I was so stunned by it all that I never even got the phone out of my pocket.

I kept on walking, right past what would, eventually, become a big party of some sort.  People were setting up a stage, tables and all kinds of shit for something big that was clearly taking place later in the day.  Seemed to be associated with some marathon because there was a start sign on the path and people were milling about with numbers on their chests.  I paid little attention to the party area, found the path to the road and headed to work.

I missed my son scoring two goals in the victory (they don't have goalies and, technically, they don't keep score but the parents and the kids clearly do).  I also missed the Nickelodeon concert.  Apparently, the kids' channel hosted events around the country and turned their channel off for a couple of hours to encourage kids to go outside and, hopefully, attend their events.

My wife and kids went and ran into friends who had press passes (on of our friends is a big time cover editor for vogue or some other chick mag) and they wound up hanging with them for the whole day, even if they kept getting booted from the press area.

My kids love shows like icarly, Victorious and whatnot and all their favorite stars were there.  they saw the icarly chick sing and my daughter spent a solid ten minutes chatting with Victoria Justice, the star of Victorious.  Now, I'm one of those guys that really feels old when he sees these pretty young girls on those kids show and I have reached a sad, bordering on pathetic, point in my life where I cannot even imagine how someone my age can be turned on by these 21 year old girls.  That being said, Victoria Justice is the exception to the rule.  She's fucking hot.  I'd have loved to have been there with my daughter so I could ogle her and be the lecherous old man with the half chub poking out of his pants.

My kids got autographs from a bunch of the celebs in attendance, all on a press pass that was being used by the father of their friends and they're fucking thrilled about it.  Apparently, those signatures are the coolest things in the world.

This morning I did the same thing, only it was my daughter's game and I managed to actually catch a few minutes of her playing and, at some point, she turned to me, while she was on the field, and told me it was cool, I could go now.

All this early waking, late crash time and running around has me exhausted.  To make matters worse, the last two nights, my wife and I watched movies, starting after 10:30.  First, Couples Retreat, then, last night, Date Night.

Why did we watch two movies that focus on older, married couples questioning their own relationships?  Fuck if I know but it wasn't a good idea.  Tonight I'm bound to get the questions about our relationship.

Maybe, for shits and giggles, I'll tell my wife I can totally relate to a few of the characters and I really feel like their problems are the same as mine.

Then I'll fall asleep, leaving her to guess which ones I'm talking about.

Boring post, I know, but I'm procrastinating and, to be honest, I don't feel like spending an hour trying to find a porn site that doesn't get blocked by the sonic wall.