Daddy's Fish BowlA Clear View Of A Father's Family Experiences

As I sit at my desk, typing up this blog post for your reading enjoyment, my fingers are crossed. Yes, you read that correctly, I am typing with the fingers of my right hand crossed. So don’t be alarmed if you come across a few typos, or entire words missing from a sentence, for that matter. Just know that it is a necessary evil that I must contend with if I want to provide you guys with these super intelligent and uber entertaining and informative blog posts. What could bring on such preposterous behavior? Why are you being forced to take such precautions? Should I have my fingers crossed as well? I know that these are the burning questions of desire on your mind at this very moment and I’m going to get straight to the point. YES, CROSS YOUR FINGERS, cross them now, go ahead. It is imperative for your future well-being. No, it won’t save you from some unforeseen impending natural disaster, and no, crossing your fingers won’t protect you from the next big pandemic that threatens to wipe humanity off the face of the Earth. But I’ll tell you what it will do; it’ll protect you from contracting the God awful CHEESE TOUCH!!!

When I was a kid people would ask me if I felt older on my birthday? I always responded with a resounding yes; during the teenage years you might have even gotten a HELL YEAH out of me. Obviously, it was a lie; I felt exactly the same, but was so happy to be a bit older that I had to express how great it felt. Today I’m 30 and if you ask me the same question the answer will undoubtedly be the same but for very different reasons. Now the answer is yes because that’s the freaking truth!

As parents, we all stretch the truth a tad bit from time to time when dealing with our children: magical storks delivering babies, a fat guy who never gets arrested for breaking and entering on Christmas Eve, if you tell the truth you won’t get in trouble, the dog (who is dead) ran away, the list goes on and on. Well, at least at our house it does. Most of these little white lies are well intentioned, and designed to produce better more productive members of society out of our kids. Ah, who am I kidding, these lies make our lives easier; could you imagine how difficult the month of December would be if your naughty list got revoked? But what happens when parents start lying to their kids just for the fun of it? I’ll tell you what happens, if backfires!!! Don’t do it folks, reserve your lies, resist the urge to utilize these precious little tools for entertainment purposes.

Up until the birth of Baby Guppy aka Gup, I was under the impression that my boys were monstrosities of evil based on their dealing with each other; wait, let me clarify, I thought that Tre was a monstrosity of evil. Ty was just an unfortunate bystander, forced to protect and defend himself (usually unsuccessfully) by matching evil with evil. The levels of scheming, deceitfulness, and downright mean behavior started climbing off the charts and I began to question if we needed to move to Philadelphia in hopes of getting any brotherly love in our home. Tre reached an all-time low a few mere weeks before Gup’s birth and I was terrified that the torture treatment of his brother would be transferred to her once she arrived.

Womb Service

Baby Guppy is now in her 29^th week of fetal development and sadly, I have to admit that sibling rivalry is already brewing.  How can this be, the baby hasn’t even got here yet, but somehow fighting, bickering, and jealousy has started to take form?  In my best Tre impression “WHAT THA!!!” Luckily for us, Tre hasn’t attempted to utilize his superb Ninja Turtle skills and karate chop Fefe’s belly yet, but I’m unsure of how many days we have left until it comes to that.  To be fair, he isn’t totally to blame; Baby Guppy antagonizes him ALL THE TIME!!!  She’s mischievous, resentful, stubborn, and downright mean (sound like anyone you know).  If womb Baby Guppy is any indication of what earth Baby Guppy is going to be like, we are in for a world of trouble.  Most people envision their unborn children as little angels, I foresee Baby Guppy as a little angel as well; one without the halo, wings, and heavenly glow.

Armed & Dangerous

I blame myself; all of the responsibility for what has happened to my sweet little boy can be placed squarely on my shoulders. I laid down the tracks for what he has become, can you blame him for driving the train to a predetermined destination? It’s my fault and I will someday make it up to him. Addiction is nothing new in our society, but seeing it pop up at the tender age of 4 is somewhat unheard of; the fact that the 4 year olds’ parent is actually the one who pumped the child full of the vice is both disturbing and appalling. I am not proud of what I’ve done, but I’m attempting to make amends for the monstrosities that have besieged my child due to my thoughtless and selfish behavior. This is my apology, not only to Tre, but also to the other members of our family that have been affected by his recent transformation.

Well lookie here, lookie here, you good ole blogger friend, Keith stayed true to his word.  I promised you guys a part 2 on Monday and by golly, here it is! Let’s just ignore the fact that Monday only has a few hours left in it, and focus on the fact that this post is up for your reading enjoyment, lol.  Thanks to my incredibly horrible internet connection, the previous statement is no longer valid, smh.  I swear I hate Century Link and their crappy service, so much so, that I just said screw it and paid the cancelation fee at this very moment! Really? 5 hours to upload 3 one min videos to YouTube? What is this, AOL dialup?  Sorry, my rant is complete now, let’s move on.

So last time, I made our time at Disney World seem pretty dreary; but I promise you that it was literally one of the most magical experiences that any parent could hope for.  The look on Tre’s face when he saw Mickey for the first time nearly brought a tear to my eye, and trust me that’s tough to do, I’m a super tough macho manly guy!  Okay, Fefe’s sitting over my shoulder and demanded that I refrain from lying in my posts; I’m not that tough and maybe, that statement about “nearly bringing a tear to my eye” should have been “cried a river”.  Seriously folks, I have never seen that child as happy and excited as he was during our time at Disney World, and for those of you that know Tre, that is a hell of a statement to make: the kid is constantly happy.

Does this look like a magical time???

So we all know that Disney World is a magical place where memories are made; a place where dreams come true, right?  Yup, that’s what they communicate and advertise on all of the brochures, commercials, and emails.  But what they fail to inform you of is the fact that along with those dreams also comes nightmares, blisters, and empty bank accounts.  I totally had every intention of writing this post on the plane ride back home from Disney, yet here we are a complete 2 weeks later and the post is just now going up.  Clearly, I was either delusional or naive to think that I would have the strength and mental capacity to write a blog post during a plane ride after spending 6 nights, 7 days (that’s travel agent speak) at Disney World.  But never in my wildest dreams (or nightmares) did I anticipate a 2 week turnaround time to get back to my normal self.  I know by now you must be wondering: was it all worth it?  Read on to find out.

I write this post with a heavy heart, as the 3rd week of the NFL season coming to a close, I find myself alone, confused, and without a team to call my own. Typically I reserve my internal struggles and issues for my therapist, but I thought that this conflict was worthy of discussion on Daddy’s Fish Bowl; mainly because my inability to choose an NFL team to back is negatively impacting my children. As a father, I owe it to them to crawl my way out of this self loathing NFL depression that I’ve slipped into and get my ducks in a row.

So here we are, Labor Day has passed, the first week of football is complete, the days are getting shorter and I’m struggling to get over a cold. It’s official, summer is gone and soon to be forgotten as we prepare for the many many many many many many many cold months that follow it. Sorry for so many “many’s”, but we do live in Minnesota now, so I feel that it’s totally acceptable. At any rate, the end of summer brings the beginning of a new school year, and even though Tre was too young to start Kindergarten this year, he is still most certainly gaining an education; however misguided it may be.