What’s the opposite of inept? Ept? Not according to my spell check, but I say we go for it anyway.

I am feeling so much more ept for all your comments. Not because I haven’t as well forgot to stick a diaper on my own toddler before bed, driven all the way home for something that was actually in the car with me (yes, twice), made a car reservation for my boss (and the 14 healthcare executives he was shuttling around) for the wrong day, had a long leisurely lunch at the wrong airport terminal and showed up to the wrong gate minutes before the international flight (that happened just this May, actually), gotten lost without actually knowing I was lost, or stashed things in such “safe” hiding places that I can never find them again. (I have not, I admit, turned on the dryer with the cat in it. Nor do I open the refrigerator door when the microwave dings, but that might be only because we don’t have a microwave.) Not because of all those reasons, but because you all took the time to write and make me feel a little less alone in my moments of flakiness. Feels like the extra book was less a mistake than a stroke of genius, you know?

(Another sort of inept thing is that I use voice dictation software because I have blown out my wrists from typing 23 hours a day for the past two decades. And so I send e-mails, often to clients, with bizarre and sometimes downright troubling errors. For example, the software just now read “stroke of genius” as “stripper genius.” Last time I tried to explain how voice dictation software garbles my words, said software heard “garbles” first as “carpools,” and then “Goebbels.” Ahem.

But I digress.)

We have a winner! Jennifer Mawhinney, you are the proud owner of my not at all superfluous copy of Jenny Lawson’s memoir, Let’s Pretend This Never Happened (the more I think about it, that title seems awfully appropriate to this whole situation). Message me with your mailing address — as soon as those signed bookplates arrive, I’ll slap one on your copy and mail it off to you. Congratulations! And thanks and welcome to all of you who took the time to comment — stick around, why don’t you?

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You may recall that Rob, our donor-dad extraordinaire, took care of the kids for us for a week in May while we lived it up in Denmark. Here, in what I think is my first guest post ever, are his reflections on that time. (Note: I was not the mother with the Word document.)

(Oh, also: today is your last day to enter to win a copy of Jenny Lawson’s — a.k.a. The Bloggess’s — memoir, Let’s Pretend This Never Happened. Brought to you by my ineptitude and Amazon’s sneakiness. Also also: the deal has become even sweeter: Mary, Jenny’s assistant (who signs off her e-mails with “Hugs!” and how sweet is that?) has very kindly offered to send along a signed (by Jenny, just in case that wasn’t clear) bookplate for the winning book. For a chance to win, leave a comment here and/or become a Facebook friend/liker of this blog. Good luck!) (Done with parenthetical comments, for now.)

* * *

I read somewhere that we are more likely to agree to a thing if it’s far in the future, when the details have not yet been sketched in, when the thing in question is at its most abstract. So, when the mothers asked me eight months ago if I could take care of the boys while they went to Denmark to celebrate Susan’s 40^th birthday, I agreed. It made me feel warm inside, like a good guy, when I said yes, absolutely. Besides, who even goes to Denmark? They’re probably joking, I thought to myself.

But then eight months passed. And here I am, sitting at their kitchen counter as one mother explains lunches and idiosyncratic eating habits with the same gravity she might use in a training video to explain how to defuse a bomb. I learned from the last time they went away that it’s important that I should nod, mirror her grave expression with my own. I also learned last time not to repeat back the instructions the way a logical training session might demand, because the slightest error or discrepancy in repeating the instructions will make her shoulders and face drop with a “you just blew up the children” admonishment.

The good feeling inside me is not there now. In its place is a growing Word document with detailed instructions for each day and a thin (but growing thicker) feeling of foreboding.

Day 1

The sun’s not yet up. The children are sleeping. The mothers scuttle around the house preparing for their departure. I’m about to be a single parent for a week. Praying for that village they’re always talking about. Or mastery of the Vulcan nerve pinch. And thinking with gratitude of my mom who was solo for five years. So glad she’s not on Facebook to revel in this.

The moms had suggested that small child might need a night light so as to more easily adjust to sleeping in his own bed, in his own room, while they are gone. Last week, in a fit of optimism, I agreed to help sleep train him.

What hangs as prophecy over tonight is the wailing I heard from upstairs last night; the thin, drawn faces of the mothers’ fatigue this morning as they shuffle luggage to the cab. If it was that bad for them, these first steps of sleep training, how awful will it be for me?

Nightlight becomes another word for hope. Tonight the child is getting a Led Zeppelin–style light show. Shock and awe, child. Shock and awe.

Day 2

Discover mothers have been raising sons wrong. Someone taught the small one that 5:30 am is morning.

There was something resembling sleep. The way butchered lamb chops resemble fluffy sheep.

At a low moment tried to convince the four-year-old to count the glow-in-the-dark stars on his ceiling. Few things less depressing at 1:00 am than a four-year-old glowering at you like you’re a dumbass. Think I even said “That’s all I got,” before backing out of the room apologetically.

Feel I have it marginally more together than the dad in sad pajama bottoms and leather coat at the school drop off. But did find myself yelling “Don’t put your toothbrush in the bird poo!” this morning as we played soccer and brushed our teeth in the backyard (I forgot about teeth brushing until we were already out the door).

After they are at school, I go to the gym. I discover that being the small one’s dad means showering and discovering a mysterious bump on your lat muscle, only to find a purple gem sequin stuck there. I am a little fancier for being his father. And this is how the week seems to be going: sleeplessness punctuated by panic and small shiny moments.

Day 3

Small one is collecting bugs in the backyard, big one is reading by himself upstairs, and I am making roast chicken with Greek salad and corn on the cob. All seems calm and normal. This is how horror films begin.

Day 4

Saturday morning. Vaguely recollecting my mother sticking us in front of cartoons for three hours with sugary cereal. Tempted. But take the boys to the playground to play instead. Also, they don’t have cable.

Afternoon. I yell at the big one for first time ever. I want to defend this, explain that he had been tantrum crying for 45 minutes, demanding I submit to his will in a loop that logic could not undo, both Dr. Spocks failing me at once. Every meditation class I ever took failed me. And I yelled. And I hate to admit it, but for a moment, the smallest moment it felt good, like rubbing sore eyes or scratching at poison ivy: a small relief already tinged with the regret to come.

At bedtime the small one presents me with the two books he wants to read before bed and one of them happens to be titled Sometimes I Get Angry. I apologize to him, both amused and irritated with his superior parenting ability.

I then apologize to the big one as I wash his hair in the tub, explaining how I didn’t know what to do with my frustration, but that yelling was not the answer.

When I am done my apology, big child looks up at me with his big eyes from where he is half submerged in the water: “What?” His ears have been under water the whole time. And he hasn’t heard a word. For a brief moment I wonder if I should repeat the apology. My Irish Italian upbringing tells me if you can apologize without being caught in an apology you have had a glorious win. But I inhale and repeat the apology. Because I want to be a good father. Whatever that means.

Day 5

Sunday. Small one wakes me at 5:30 a.m. again. I sort of lie and tell him it’s not morning yet and tell him to go back to bed. He does. I do not revel in this as I know this won’t last.

Am going to dry hump Monday’s leg.

In other news, it turns out it’s way more fun to make them pee their pants laughing when you don’t actually have to do the rank, sodden laundry.

And as for laundry, I know I should look in the pockets of this moist, miserable pile of clothes, but I can’t bring myself to. I wash the pile, secret contents and all. I feel both relief and foreboding. See a pattern?

Day 6

Monday. Both dropped at school. Relief. Followed by, you guessed it, foreboding. Slow dawning realization that the mothers might never return. Remember thinking that they took an awful lot of luggage. Imagine they will travel the world now like that gnome in the film Amelie, sending postcards:

“Wish you were here?”

“How about here?”

In the news, Maurice Sendak died. Even he has abandoned me.

Day 7

Beware the cuddles. This is how they will get you. Tantrums about tortellini, who said what to whom, the unfairness of the world that, it turns out, is not all about them … all falls away in a headlock of love at bedtime, a snuggle squirm. Drats, foiled again.

Day 8

Overwhelmed with the urge to say, “Every time you pee on the toilet seat, god kills a Pokemon.” I don’t believe in god but feel like I need to resort to the wrath of someone more convincing than me. “Just you wait until your mothers get home” also has a ring to it, but keeping that one in my back pocket for a real emergency. Consider this an advance apology. But not for the random deaths of Pokemon because they are so asking for it.

Day 8.5

A mother comes home tomorrow. Plan to pick her up and carry her out of airport a la Richard Gere in An Officer and a Gentleman. Strangers might think it’s romantic. It’s just my way of making sure she gets to the house and takes over parenting a.s.a.p.

Day 9

Not sure but think the mothers in the schoolyard have been watching me in a Gorillas in the Mist kind of way. With amused scrutiny. Not sure if they have been rooting for my success or failure. Or what this means for the future of menchildren everywhere.

Day 9.5

No more solo. Oh thank gods for moms.

On the plane to fly east and then west to see my own mother, I find myself looking back over the lost boy time we had. Somewhere in there I had the insane idea I could be at least pretend to be as good at it as the moms are. Somewhere in there I thought I could avoid making mistakes like my father(s) made. I couldn’t. I didn’t. But I did learn that I could keep the children alive. And when I stumbled I learned that I could apologize and explain what I did wrong.

And, yes, I will admit that the encyclopedia the one mother prepared saved my life. But the boys, when I would stop worrying and pay attention to the giggling joy of the monsters before me, ensured it wasn’t just an apocalyptic survival exercise.

Inevitably, I think this brought me and the boys closer. But I can’t honestly say it evolved me in the parenting department. Except that maybe next time I might panic less. Maybe next time I’ll trade it in for a glazed sort of nonchalance, a little like leather-coat-pajama dad.

Next time. I can say that because it’s probably a year away. And saying it gives me a warm feeling inside.

Big one sobbing at the airport pre Rob’s departure.

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Dear Isaac,

As I write this, I am staring at a Mason jar on my desk that is filled with … your hair.

Yes, actually it is a bit creepy. Thanks for asking. You agreed to let me give you a haircut in the bathtub on the condition that you could keep the hair, and I agreed, because you really needed a haircut. I confiscated the jar from your bedroom the way I have confiscated many such jars: after you are asleep or at school, I go into your room and remove the desiccated remains of crayfish, the dandelion heads, the bodies of bumblebees, the Play-Doh sculptures set afloat and mouldering in seas of coloured water, the hot pink feathers shed from a boa, assorted rocks and crystals (always the rocks and the crystals: ammonites, amethyst, fossils, and what you are convinced are diamonds and rubies and emeralds but are really just bits of broken glass and quartz), stinking seashells, the broken remains of costume jewelry, grass clippings and chicken bones, glass beads. You put all these things in Mason jars to keep — you think forever — in what you term your “gallery.” You paint a picture, and then keep the water in which you clean your brush, because it, too, is Art. And, because they are either gross or rotting or overwhelming or simply because I have run out of jars, eventually I go in and secretly (well, not so secretly, anymore) set your treasures free.

It’s not that I’m trying to stunt your creativity. Far from it. Not that I think I could if I tried. For you, everything is an art project. For you, every stick is potentially a good walking stick, to be carved and inlaid with beads. You colour in huge sheets of paper, create your own drawings, frame and reframe them, invite guests into your gallery to peruse your work. You have even affixed price tags to the framed pieces, and while no one has yet shelled out $800 for one of your drawings, I have no doubt that one day they will, baby.

(We’ve had some interesting discussions about the value and cachet of art, especially after visiting my friend Sarah’s ceramics studio. I tried, as tactfully as I could, to explain why she can charge which she charges for her work but why you might not be able to do that just yet. One day, I explained to you, you might too have been a practicing artist for more than four decades, with lots of international exposure and teaching credits, grants and awards. “Well, you know,” I said, trying to explain it in terms that you might understand. “It’s just that she’s a bit more famous than you right now.” You were suitably miffed. “Mama,” you said, “it hurts my feelings when you tell me that someone’s more famous than me.”

Well, my love, let me tell you that in my world you’re kind of a big deal.)

But the jars, Isaac: what gives? Why must you preserve everything? Perhaps it’s no coincidence that you are currently fascinated by Egyptian mummies, the whole mummification process, the various organs and their various canopic jars. Heart, lungs, liver, intestines, all squared away for eternity so neatly in their painted, jewel-encrusted containers. I’m not sure whether it’s the bling, the over-the-top excessiveness of the pharaohs in their funereal rites that has you hooked, or whether it’s the idea that you can keep and save everything in some kind of massive monument to the world, or some combination thereof, but it totally fits with you right now: embellishing and ordering and storing the various treasures of your world, for keeps.

I’m trying to remember to foster your creative urges, but I will admit to sometimes thwarting you as you quietly drag your stepstool over to the kitchen cupboard where we keep the jars. “No,” I’ll say, “no no no no no no no,”as you look at me all innocent and pleading, a fistful of crayon wrappers in your hand. “No more! No more jars in your gallery! It’s time for bed! Enough!” “Just one,” you’ll insist, as though it’s a compromise, as though it was understood that really you were going to take eight, and I guess you probably were.

We have signed you up for classes at the gallery, but really, you’d prefer to create on your own. Also, you don’t really care for organized activities. Music classes, gymnastics, soccer, art: you have more or less dropped out of all of these in favour of making your own music, dancing and twirling and climbing and somersaulting through your own world, kicking a ball around in the backyard with your brother, creating your own masterpieces. And as much as we sigh and suck up yet another registration fee, I can’t help but think that we’ve taken the position of sanity in our overscheduled world. After all, you’re five: you see magic and music and activity and art everywhere, in everything, so why should we contain all of that in weekly half-hour slots? That’s what you teaching me. That, and also not to sign you up for any new activities for a good long time. You’re cut off, buddy.

Isaac, you’re five! Look at you, graduating junior kindergarten, writing your name, picking words out of books, cracking the eggs seamlessly into your birthday cake batter this morning. Sleeping in your own bed (finally, praise be). You have sprouted in recent months, supplementing your all-oatmeal diet with a much wider array of foods (a few nights ago, I bribed you with M&Ms to try the chickpea curry I had just made, and you ate an entire bowlful, and watching you eat it made me ridiculously, inexplicably happy) that must have facilitated that extra couple of inches on your frame (you still haven’t broken 40 pounds yet, though, that magical mark when you will qualify for a booster seat instead of a car seat).

You’re five. I started this blog a week and a half before you were born, when Facebook was barely older than you are now and Twitter didn’t exist. You have grown up, almost literally, online, and perhaps it’s not such a mystery, your urged to preserve each treasure, bottle it up and keep it for all eternity. After all, isn’t that what I’m doing right now? Every time I take a photo; jot down a line to remind myself of the latest crazy thing you said; wish I could bottle the essence of your sweetness, still so strong, not yet peaked. Each time I post something here it’s a testament, giving in to the impulses we humans have had for millennia. What gives with the jars? Why must we preserve everything? Because it — and you, my love – are precious, priceless, treasure.

Happy birthday, Isaac, you adorable little sprite of a weirdo.

Love,

Mama

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And, perhaps, The Bloggess‘s. As in, the lovely and talented Jenny Lawson, author of the memoir Let’s Pretend This Never Happened, which I found so nice I bought it twice!

Twins!

Or, rather, like a dolt I forgot that I had already added the book to my Amazon.com cart and then I added it again later on and then I clicked “buy.” And you would think that the nice people at Amazon.com might want to alert people to the fact that they have two copies of the very same book in their carts, just a nice little pop-up window that says “Are you sure…?”, but on the other hand, you’d think that maybe they wouldn’t want to do so, so as to profit from our ineptitude. (Solution: buy stock in Amazon.com.)

I do stuff like this not so, so frequently. But filling in blanks on online applications does make me slightly nervous — one too many times walking up to the train departure counter or the airline check-in with a ticket for THE WRONG DAY has left me slightly suspicious of my own abilities. Fortunately, the last time this happened on an airline was during the pre-9/11 era, and they still let me on the plane. Probably they figured I was too stupid to do any real damage. (Today, though, I will say that I managed to book an airplane ticket for the correct date AND time. I know this because I cross checked several calendars and e-mail messages a few half-dozen times just to make sure. I even resisted yelling to Rachel, who was upstairs, to come down and check that I had everything right before I pressed “confirm.” Because I knew in my heart of hearts I had it down pat.) (And now God is going to punish me.) (More about said travel plans soon.)

But really, if anyone should have to profit from my ineptitude, I’m happy that it’s Lawson. And if books were like — I don’t know — cookies, or kittens or underwear or anything else where it made sense to have two of the exact same thing, then I would totally keep both copies because they are, individually and collectively, hilarious. Which may be why the book landed at the #1 NYT BestSeller spot its first week out. (Just above the also awesome Rachel Maddow, by the way.) The NYT one-sentence blurb is simply “A blogger recalls her unusual upbringing,” which is just about the driest understatement of the century. I especially enjoyed the chapter in which she recalls her career in human resources and all the whacked people she had to deal with, like the constant stream of men photocopying their junk, or the woman “who had misspelled or left blank almost all of her application”:

She came in again yesterday with almost the exact same application, but with a different name. I turned her down again. Today she came in again and turned in another application with another new name. I asked her whether she was the girl with the first name. She said that was her sister. I told her that I couldn’t hire her unless her name matched the name on her Social Security card, and she asked for the application she’d just given me, and changed the name back to the original one. I turned her down again and pointed out that everyone lies on applications but not usually about their names. When she left she said, “Okay. See you tomorrow.” I’m pretty sure she’s not being sarcastic.

The part about Harry Potter’s vagina is also highly amusing.

So. I’m going to give the book to you, dear readers. I will pack it all back up in the same box it came in and send it to you rather than back to the online retailer from whence it came. Because that would make me — and hopefully you — much happier. If you’d like a chance to win, simply leave a comment below. If you’d like a chance to win and also make me feel better, tell me about some particularly inept thing you’ve done. Or just write “I want it.” you can also enter by becoming a new Facebook “friend” of this blog (up there, to the right. Your right.). I’ll randomly select the winning name next week, say after midnight on June 26. Bonne chance!

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Greetings on this frigid morning — of course my kids wore mittens on their commute to school today. Didn’t yours?

I’m told by my telephone that it will warm up this afternoon, warm up and brighten up, too, just in time for tonight’s Pride Literary Event. Which is pathetic fallacy at its finest. If you’re in Thunder Bay, head on over to Westfort (I learned the phrase “Westfort tune-up” last night, by the way, and now will be tempted to work it into all manner of conversation just to see who knows what I’m talking about) and the Mary J.L. Black library for a night of fabulous storytelling with Rachel Mishenene, Ma-Nee Chacaby, Ray Moonias, a couple of young readers from The Other 10% youth group, headlined by Zoe Whittall. (I’m reading, too, a piece that involves me keeping all my clothes on and that doesn’t reference my mother and/or cancer. Even once. Branching out here, people.)

See you tonight!

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Can’t stay here for too long — gearing up to jump on my bike and pedal on over to City Hall for Thunder Pride’s flag raising and media launch. But there’s too much good going on not to share a few things with you:

First, continuing on in the Pride theme: once again, I will be reading at Pride’s Literary & Storytelling Night, on Tuesday, June 12, at 7 PM, at the Mary JL Black Library. I’m joining a stellar literary lineup that includes Rachel Mishenene, Ma-Nee Chacaby, Ray Moonias, and members of The Other 10% youth group. Headlining the event is my old friend Zoe Whittall (a.k.a. “ the cockiest, brashest, funniest, toughest, most life-affirming, elegant, scruffy, no-holds-barred writer to emerge from Montreal since Mordecai Richler…”).

Years ago, Zoe and I were part of a writing group in Toronto called The Stern Writing Mistresses, in which I got to hear some of the poetry and the work that eventually ended up being her first novel, Bottle Rocket Hearts. She’s done great things since, and I am thrilled that she’s coming to my new hometown to read. You should be, too — come see us!

(For the record, the “stern” in “Stern Writing Mistresses,” naughty as it sounds, was mostly an effort to remind us all to shape the F up and show up on time to our biweekly meetings, having written actual writing. As opposed to, say, wandering in half an hour late with a notebook and good intentions. And focusing only on the wine. And the gossip. And the drama. We had mixed success at the time, but that group of women has gone on to produce some amazing stuff.)

Second: winners! Winners are always good news. Erin, Nicola, and Brenda, you are now the proud owners of your very own copies of The Letter Q: Queer Writers’ Notes to Their Younger Selves. Message me your mailing addresses and I’ll get books that you ASAP. Thanks so much for your comments!

Third: I found out last week that I have been selected as one of the BlogHer Voices of the Year. On August 3, I will join 15 other fantastic writers in Manhattan at the BlogHer 2012 conference to (including my roomie, Vicki, at Up Popped a Fox!) read a post — the exact one will be kept secret until the reading itself — from this blog. Here’s a bit more about the event, as described by BlogHer’s Polly Pagenheart (a.k.a. Lesbian Dad, whom I will finally get to meet):

At the event where most of us women bloggers gather, annually, why not enable us to experience, as a face-to-face, shoulder-to-shoulder community, just what it is that moves us to invest so much of ourselves in this medium? The event’s scope grew exponentially over the years, along with the blogosphere itself, and women’s presence in it.

In 2008, over 200 entries were read by a committee of about seven people; this year, over 1,600 were read by 26 readers, and were filtered yet once more by another six readers (the math whizzes among you will notice that the reading load, and therefore the service these readers give to the community, has doubled over the years).

Over the past five years, over 50 people, comprising both past readers and BlogHer staff, have spent countless volunteer hours poring over their fellow bloggers’ posts. We have rendered this service because, at base, regardless of the wide range of interests and roles we bring to the blogosphere, we understand that what all of us are doing with our blogs matters a great deal — both to the community we form at the conferences, the community we form online — and the community that we influence offline. And it’s an honor to shine a light on some of the best of this work each year. Right after the first Community Keynote in 2008, I wrote at my blog, Lesbian Dad:

“Women sharing stories, on this scale, with this degree of public intimacy, feels utterly unprecedented. What we all go through in this life. Some of us live to tell the tale, and have the courage to tell it. And in the telling, essentially, perform mouth-to-ear resuscitation to more people than we will ever know.”

And here’s another early take, from Liz Gumbinner at Mom-101:

“It was … part poetry slam, part open mic night, part thousand-person group hug. Eden Kennedy needs a Nobel prize for putting it together….It was an essential reminder that we’re all doing something worthwhile here. Whether it’s cathartic, or healing or simply entertaining, it’s not ‘just blogging’. It’s good. It’s important. Even a post about pornographic Google hits, or so I’d like to think.”

Yeah, I know. It’s very exciting. I’m pretty thrilled, I have to say. You can add to that can news that I’ll also be on a BlogHer panel, on “Turning your blog posts into publishable essays.”

(Whoa, that’s a lot of links in one post.)

Okay, gotta run, or, rather, cycle across this small city that is still officially in the state of emergency but getting better, to watch the rainbow flag of the Sleeping Giant rise above City Hall. I wish you all much good news!

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