Once again we find ourselves at the end of the shortest and sweetest season, the prime summer days for preschoolers in Moorhead.  Dylan has been attending his park program for a month now, which means we have another week to go, then back to the unstructured adventures about town.  Our routine has been to leave home in the morning with Dylan riding his bicycle and me pushing Julia in the jogger stroller.  We drop Dylan off to play with his friends and Julia and I either run errands, run about town to other parks, or head back to the house to work on our bathroom remodeling project.

After park program we head over to the local elementary school to eat the free lunch with the HeadStart and YMCA kids as well as other neighborhood friends who have been regulars with us at these chaotic and learning filled lunches.  Dylan is getting much better about trying new foods due to the positive peer pressure and alternates between choosing the chocolate and the white milk for his tray.  Julia continues to experiment with silverware and occasionally painting her clothes with food and is a hit with the older kids who are amused by her creative ways to eat.

My reputation as a juggler keeps me popular with the wild HeadStart kids, and I often put on a bit of a show  on the playground when we are done eating.  Next week I have been invited to put on a more formal juggling and storytelling show for them at their evening program for the parents and kids; it is nice have a paid gig once in while to motivate me to work on my material.  I find that my creative side emerges naturally when I am able to beat back the to-do lists and get ahead on the non-stop daily grind of housework and parenting.  I think I am sitting on two or three nearly finished songs and have placed a good half dozen potential Dispatches on the back burner while I wait to catch up on all of the things.

I hope the summer finds you well, dear reader, and I hope you find the time to do the things that matter most to you and your families in the time we are given.  Peace on the journey.

We were in a car crash last week.  Dylan (5), Julia (2), and I were buckled up and sustained no injuries.  The woman running the red light was alone so no one was sitting on the passenger side of her van, where my 1999 Chevy Lumina (rest in peace) T-boned the door at roughly 20 miles per hour.  The air bags went off, one smashing into my face and left forearm, the other popping the spiderwebbed windshield out into space leaving a gap between the broken but intact glass and the intact but fundamentally broken vehicle.  We wanted to go swimming, but have instead spent a week dealing with the fallout caused by another driver’s failure to obey.

If you can avoid being hit by another driver you would also avoid motor vehicle accident reports, spending more time on the phone in a day than in a typical month, and the animal brained frenzy of an adrenaline dump.  Not a burst, a dump.  An adrenaline burst is useful, allowing one to leap over wreckage, wrestle a bear, or fight the last ten seconds of a round as hard as the first.  An adrenaline dump has nowhere to go, leaving one with nothing but dumb fear.

Luckily for us, a witness stuck around to assure the police that the other driver had indeed run the red light, and the lady was cited for her failure to obey.  It took a day or so, but her insurance company eventually accepted liability for the collision, and assured me they would “make me whole”.  We rented a car (I cycled six miles to the airport for the first one, then switched companies a day later at their request) and started searching for a budget vehicle to put us back among the vehicular classes as a bona fide one car family.  Things were looking up for us as we had access to a car and insurance would take care of it, right?

The insurance company offered a lowball assessment of our car’s market value, then wanted to deduct $1100 off of their $2100 figure due to existing hail damage.  The car did indeed have light hail damage, at least since I bought it in 2004 or so, but you had to get pretty darn close at the right angle on a sunny day to notice it, and I was not happy with their offer.  The agent assured me the $1100 figure was fair, as it was only 25% of their estimate to fix the damage, which they pegged at $4400.  What a deal, right?

We have found a replacement car and have been “negotiating” with the insurance company, but they certainly seem to hold a lot of the cards as well as writing the rules of this particular game.  Should we accept their lowball figure and meekly go away?  Or should we fight to the last in small claims court and the public square with a dual pronged legal and social media attack?

They want us to yield, but we won’t stop

They have the money but we got the cops

I don’t just need the cash I need the sense that we’re ok

I feel like failing to obey,

I’m failing to obey.

Hey All!

Check out this link to my interview with local boxer Sergio Garcia, it is in the current issue of the High Plains Reader.

The clocks have been set and the snow is melting as we spring ahead into the next phase of family life here at the big house in Moorhead.  As you may know, I have considered myself a “stay at home” dad for nearly four years (though the census bureau does not believe this is possible) and was interviewed for a Fargo Forum article about the challenges and joy of it all this past fall.  Here is the news:  I have accepted a full time job.

My new gig is the same as my old part-time job working with my physically and developmentally disabled clients, but I am now taking care of people professionally for forty hours every week instead of twenty-six hours every other weekend.  So is this the end of my parenting?  Has The Daddy Dispatch reached the end of its run?  I think not.

For one thing, my roles and responsibilities are not changing dramatically, since my forty hour workweek occurs in a forty-one hour period (I do get to sleep a little bit at night, but it is still a marathon shift).  Janelle continues to be our primary breadwinner while I will continue to be the primary homemaker.  Even so, things will be changing for Dylan (5) and Julia (2) as they begin their first day of pre-school this week.  The seasons march relentlessly onward, as we seek to grow and change along with the times.  Wish us luck in our new phase and enjoy the coming spring!

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It snowed last night!  I woke up this morning wedged between both kids, and a sniffly Julia announced there was snow outside.  “No there isn’t, Juje,” I corrected, thinking of our imminent brown Christmas, then opened the blinds to find she was right.

We have been dealing with rounds of sickness and pain here at the big house in Moorhead, but with the dusting of snow and the bright sunshine we went ahead and had an adventure anyway.  Dylan’s health improved after a week of high fever and orneriness, then Janelle suffered a pinched nerve and was out for a few days (now hobbling and trying to stay limber), next Julia began to run a temperature and leak facial fluids.

After sled rides in the yard we loaded up in the bicycle trailer for a quick trip to Northeast Park and enjoyed an hour of sliding (and falling) on the rinks.  There were other families out enjoying the day, and we were able to make friends with another dad and his kids who were learning to skate.  Julia was looking red in the face and more than a bit snotty, so we went home for hot chocolate and bathtime.

Will the snow manage to stay on the ground for another day or two to make it a white Christmas?  I doubt it.  The previews have been nice but the real whitewash will soon arrive, turning our beautiful brown landscape into a fond memory.  Dylan asked Santa for a Wampa (an ice creature native to the planet Hoth doncha’ know) for Christmas, and I reckon we will be able to recreate the scenes from The Empire Strikes Back in bone chilling accuracy within a few short weeks.

I am preparing to face facts and have my front fangs pulled out of my mouth in several hours.  My talk’n teeth have reached the end of the line, and toothlessness followed by partial dentures is in my immediate future.

Early in June, my bridge dislodged from the lower front region of my mouth.  An apple was the proximate cause, but decay and time was the real culprit.  The original injury occurred roughly twenty-three years ago during a playground football game.  A teacher rang the handbell, signalling the end of recess, so I stopped.  The other players did not, and I ended up with a broken tooth, which led to multiple infections, root canals, an oral surgery, and all of the financial distress that accompanies dental work in the lower middle class.

Julia, who turned two recently, has been fascinated with my fangs.  I would occasionally place the broken bridge on top of the twisted remnants of my teeth when I felt self-conscious or to perform in public as a juggler or wedding officiant.  I called them my “talking teeth”, which the Juje translated as “talk’n teeth”.

“Did you have your talk’n teeth, Daddy?  Your talk’n teeth are broken,” she would recite while sticking her little fingers rudely into my mouth.  I told her a moment ago that my talk’n teeth were going to be pulled out, and that it made Daddy a little bit sad.

“No, Daddy,” she replied, “You’re not sad, you’re just a little bit sick.”

She is partly right.  I am a little bit sad, and a little bit sick.  There is something profoundly human and mortal about losing a piece of your body, even an artificial one like my bridge, even an imperfect one like my fangs.  My talk’n teeth were a part of my life for so long, went all of the places and said all of the things, and now they will be yanked from my jaw and exposed as the lifeless bits of enamel and pulp they are without the rest of me.