Many a weekend over the last two years have come to a labored, exhausting end, much like an over matched boxer who has been rope-a-doped for five or six solid rounds, then takes a right to the chin and gently slides down the ropes and into night-night land, unable to continue. As I look at myself in the mirror whilst getting ready for bed on any given Sunday night, I'm often in shock at what appears to be a weathered, homeless person looking back at me. After that moment of fright subsides, I then try to figure out why I smell like hot onions, why my clothes are crunchy and why my teeth taste furry. Then I remember...I haven't spent more than five consecutive minutes in a bathroom since Friday.
It isn't just me. At the culmination of a weekend, my wife normally staggers toward the bed and collapses in its general direction, hoping to actually hit the mattress. For lack of a better word, our daughter is high energy (also for lack of a better word, I am not). On any given Friday at around 5 p.m. (although in reality this happens almost every day), I will arrive at my daughter's day care to walk in and find half a dozen children sitting calmly at a little table playing with choo-choo trains or dolls or whatever human children play with at daycare, only to see my daughter running laps around the room like some kind of tweaked out greyhound chasing an imaginary rabbit and screaming "I'M RUNNNNNNIIINNNNNNNGGGG." I'll give her a few more laps as I mentally prepare myself, then after I've explained that it's time to go home (and I'm really not sure how long it takes for my words to catch up to her as she's running at nearly the speed of sound), I'll scoop her up as she makes another pass and even though she is no longer in contact with the ground, her legs will still be moving at the same speed for at least thirty seconds as she screams "NAAAAOOOOOOOOOO" and fights to break free like some wild, baby piglet who is certain that nothing but her doom awaits wherever she is being carried.
From the moment my daughter's eyes spring open on a Saturday or Sunday morning, she is moving at full speed and doesn't stop until she is put to bed. I liken the experience to attempting to avert a nuclear meltdown every single minute of every single day. My daughter wakes up before either of us do, and when we hear her in her room we know it's showtime, so we take a collective deep breath and go fetch her to start the day. We know that if she were to be left in her room alone for too long, she would probably pick up her bed, throw it through the wall, escape and wreak havoc on L.A. She would then subvert the local government and set up her own rule whilst gaining the trust of the general populous so that she could have millions upon millions of minions at her very command. As a responsible father, I just can't let that happen. In order to react expeditiously, I normally throw on whatever clothes I can see as I leap out of bed, which usually happen to be the clothes I was wearing the night before. Unshowered and unkempt, I move to the kitchen to start the breakfast proceedings which usually consists of my daughter telling me at least three different things she would like to eat, me preparing each of them and then her screaming "NAAOOO" at each plate whilst waving her arms like she's trying to knock circling biplanes out of the sky.
Next on the agenda is the park. If my daughter hasn't made it out the door for the park by 9:30, pieces of furniture start to levitate and my living room develops its own weather pattern. Trips to the park are made up of running through the grass, running through the sand, running back and forth across the play structure, running up and down the basketball court and running circles around the swing set, which is why I try to keep her in the swing as long as possible. All that running means sweat for me, and that is on top of the already day old clothes that I'm wearing. Not to mention that parks in L.A. are hot in the summertime. Hot because the people who planned the parks didn't think about placing trees anywhere near where children might play, and hot because the sun always feels like it's three feet away from your face.
A trip to the market usually follows the park since weekends are really the only time we have to do any shopping. And we all know who lives at the market...MUFFIN MAN. So, that's generally a fiasco. Amazingly, though, my daughter always takes the time to say "HI" and wave to random people wherever we happen to be, and the market is no exception, until we get close to the baked goods section. After the market, it's lunch and nap, which means a brief reprieve for Mommy and Daddy where Mommy usually passes out on the couch and I stare at the television in a semi-vegetative state while my body attempts to recuperate.
After nap, it's another trip to the park, more running and sweating, then playing at home, then dinner, which usually goes about as well as lunch, then more playing in the living room which usually involves me lying face down on the floor while my daughter uses my back as a trampoline. By this time, it's approaching 7 p.m. and it's time for bath and bed. By the time it's all said and done, it's around 8 p.m. and my wife and I usually try to keep from falling face first into whatever plate of food we've been able to scrape together.
Before I know it, it's the next day and the cycle starts all over again. The clothes I pick up on the way to start my futile breakfast endeavor are normally the ones closest to me and easiest to grab, which are generally the ones I had peeled off of myself the night before. By the time Sunday night offers respite from the weekend's perpetual activities, I am a haggard, beaten down version of myself who could easily be mistaken for someone living on a bench in Venice Beach.
But, my daughter tells me "Night-night, Daddy", so I don't really care how I look.
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