Author: Wil

A late afternoon mug of Yerba Mate tea, and the sugar from a glass (okay, two glasses) of chianti with dinner resulted in my favorite middle of the night activity: the 2:30 AM wide-awake-racing-brain.

I sat up in bed, reached over to my nightstand, and picked up my glass of water. In the soft glow of my alarm clock, I saw my kitty, Biko, stir in the laundry basket of clothes I’ve been meaning to put away for three days.

I gulped down about half the glass, and when I lay back down into bed, Biko jumped up, walked across the comforter, and snuggled into my chest, purring so loudly it was like a little massage on my mighty pectoral muscles.

I rubbed his little face for a few minutes, and tried to convince my brain to stop singing Sade and reciting Lewis Black jokes so I could fall back asleep. In that weird fuge state that often comes in the middle of the night, I’m not sure when I drifted back to sleep, but I woke again at 4:25 AM, my brain blasting "Slave Song," joined now by my stomach which really wanted to get rid of the sweet Italian sausage I had with dinner.

I sat back up, drained the remaining half of my water, and lay down onto my back. I let my brain sing at me while I tried to convince my stomach that it should do a lot of digesting, instead of throwing up.

"Throwing up is exactly what they’d expect," I reasoned, "if you throw up, they win."

I have no idea who "they" were, but it was the middle of the night, so it made perfect sense to me.

While my stomach formulated a response, which was something like, "Blarrghhh . . . . squarrrrrllooogeee . . .  fweeeennnn . . ." Biko jumped back up onto the bed, and walked back over to me. He was still purring, but this time he snuggled down into the comforter next to my shoulder, and pressed his little face against my cheek, just like his brother Sketch used to do.

I turned my attention away from my bitchy stomach, tuned out my singing brain, and focused on Biko’s little purrbox. I drifted quickly back to sleep, and woke up to Riley sniffing at my face, while Ferris sat at the foot of my bed, head cocked to one side while she waited for me to get out of bed.

My brain was silent, and though I had a little bit of a red wine headache, my stomach just felt hungry. I reached out and scratched Riley’s little monster face. Ferris thumped her tail against my dresser as I got out of bed and pulled on my robe. Biko was back in the laundry basket, happily sleeping on his back, as I walked out to the kitchen.

"Is there coffee?" I asked Anne. "I’m dead ’til I gets me coffee."

After dinner tonight, Nolan ran off to IM one of his friends, and left Anne, Ryan, and me in the dining room.

"Dude, you totally need to get me a shirt like that," Ryan said. He pointed to my "Choose your weapon" shirt from Jinx, that features six polyhedral dice.

"Like this?" I said. "What qualifies you for a shirt like this?"

"Dude!" He said, "I totally have a bag filled with those dice in my bedroom!"

"And you use them to actually play . . . when?"

"Well, I’d use them all the time, but someone never made a campaign for me!"

A little bit of me died inside.

"So, you see, I’m still qualified." He leaned back in his chair, and took a long, satisfied drink from his water glass.

"Dude, I’ve been playing D&D longer than you’ve been . . . well . . . anything." I said. "I think I’m a better judge of who is qualified and who is not."

We were playing nerd chicken and I could sense Ryan searching for his next play.

"Besides," I said, "It’s nerdtopia in there — " I pointed toward my office, "so if you really wanted to ‘choose your weapon,’ you could easily take care of business."

Now, here’s the thing: I can’t remember what Ryan said next, but it was a great burn. It was an awesome, classic, soundtrack-stopping burn.

I came back the only way I could: empty parental threats.

"I am such a huge geek," I said. "I will embarrass you so hardcore, you won’t know what hit you." I snorted, for effect.

"Oh yeah? What are you going to do to embarrass me?" He said.

"Anne," I said, "You should sleep in tomorrow. I’ll take the kids to school, and I’ll pick them up, too."

"Mom!" Nolan called from the living room, "I think I’m going to ride my bike to school tomorrow, okay?"

Ryan gulped. I went to the kitchen. As soon as I was around the corner, and he couldn’t see me, I smiled to myself. From the dining room, I head Ryan chuckle.

This is how we live. This is why I do, well, everything.

I‘m hellabusy this morning, so ten minutes is a limit for me today, rather than a goal.

I enjoyed the Superbowl this year, even if it was one of the worst halftime shows in history, and all but two of the commercials completely sucked. (The ones that I liked were the spinning refrigerator in the wall, which absolutely killed me, and the streaking sheep, which I found  moderately amusing. I can sum up the rest of the commecrials thusly: I wanted to pack an Escalade with Diet Pepsi, and crash it into Burger King.)

As far as the game goes, I thought there were some questionable calls, one terrible call, and a weird implosion by Seattle in the 4th. (I told Ryan that the holding penalty that took away what would have been 1st and goal was the turning point for them.) I didn’t really have a team in the game, though, and just wanted to be entertained by some good football, so I was mostly happy, especially because I got to watch the game with the kids. This was the first year in my thirty-three on the planet that I’ve regularly watched, and cared about football. I blame it entirely on HDTV, which for some reason made a game I used to find tedious and stupid exciting and compelling.

Yesterday, Anne and I did our first official training walk for the marathon: four miles. Today, we’ll do another four, and we should start jogging in ten days or so. I’m really excited for the marathon this year, and we’ll have our own special TK421 fundraising/training/happyfuntimes blog up real soon.

Last night, it was unseasonably warm, and we were able to put a fire in the outdoor fireplace Anne and the kids got me for Festivus, put some teriyaki chicken on the barbeque, and enjoy how cool it was that we could stand out on our patio in short-sleeves and eat dinner in February.

I’m really happy that so many of you enjoyed my post about Disneyland, and shared some of your own Disney experiences with me via e-mail or comments. It was one of those things, like writing Dancing Barefoot, where I got to relive the experience of being there as I recreated it, and that is my absolute favorite kind of work.

And speaking of work, I gotta go.

As many of you know, I love my Chuck Taylors. They’re comfy, simple, and allow me to maintain just a little bit of my former punk rock attitude as I take meetings with my kids’ teachers.

Recently, though, I’ve developed a bit of a conflict about my Chucks, seeing as how they are no longer made in the USA, and are, in fact, outsourced to one of the beautiful Nike sweatshops happy factories that are such an important part of the Chinese economy (especially among 10 year olds young go-getters.)

I just now came across a company which sells shoes that look almost exactly like Chuck Taylors, but are made by union workers in completely non-sweatshop conditions. And the best part? They cost just about the same as Chucks.

The company is called No Sweat Apparel. They sell their low tops for $40  and their high tops for $42. Shipping to Los Angeles cost me $6, so when all is said and done, I figure that I’m spending about $3 more than if I went to Shoe City or something, but I have the convenience of shopping in my underpants while drinking a Stone Pale Ale, easy shipping to my office, and the warm, fuzzy, happytown knowledge that no people were exploited in the production of my future footwear.

For the cynical among you: I’m not getting anything from No Sweat. I just think this is a really cool company, doing a really cool thing, and  any group of people who are supporting the concept of Trade, Not Aid are doing good stuff, as far as I am concerned. There’s a bunch of news stories about the company at their website, and you can learn more about truly fair trade (not the bullshit Republican kind) at Wikipedia.

My nifty new shoes should arrive in a few weeks. I’ll follow up and let you all know if they’re as swell as I hope they are.

(discovered via boingboing.)