Monday, March 21, 2005

Only as a parent would I pick my ass up at 8 in the morning and go to the mall an hour later, which is two hours before the majority of the mall even opens.

My wife left for work at around 8:50am, and by 9:05am, Zoe had knocked her little melon twice on objects and Alex had fallen butt first into an open drawer on the ground, making him cry and flail his short little appendages in the air. So I decided that I wasn't about to be the caged rat, so off to the mall I went. I basically let Alex run around like a free man, which he exploited to the fullest. My abandonment experiment was inconclusive - he does start looking for me if I disappear, but the moment he strays from his toy/buttons/shiny thing and spots me, he'll wail "ahhhhh ahhhh!" and flee back to his toy/button/shiny thing. But we walked around the mall for about an hour and a half, and poor Zoe even fell asleep in the baby backpack while I was Alex wrangling.

But the best part of my day was when my wife came home. I had bought Alex some Playdoh from Target and we had made a blue, playdoh rose for my wife for when she returned from work. She thought it was sweet, but absentmindedly smelt it. Replused by the non-toxic funkiness of synthetic mold and palm sweat, she made a face and I've been giving her a hard time all day. She says that I tricked her and it was instinct - methinks that I should really get her some real flowers that don't smell funny.

The other cute thing today was that I was scanning through Year of the Horse, a silly little indie movie that I made a couple years back when nobody had babies and Dansen was stateside and not selling his body overseas, and Alex's interest was piqued when the credits rolled. He stopped eating his Cheetos and ran to the living room, at which time I was on "Orange Alert" - being that he had orange fingers and was only about a foot away from the white couch. Anyway, he watched the movie for about a minute; then he looked at me... and then I could just see the realization on his face when he smiled at gave me a hug. I don't really know how he's putting it into context, as to why I'm on TV, but it isn't necessarily a home video because a bunch of people who aren't family are in it. And I don't even look the same, what with my glasses and my pregnancy weight gain. And post-partum blues.

Fine, I just eat a lot.

But it was neat scanning through the video again. Saw all my filmmaking flaws again, but also got to see the spare room before it was converted to a blue and green baby room, the old T-bird in the driveway before the Kia, and even my haircut. I don't let my bangs get sexy like that anymore. I have the "Dad" haircut, which is just a little gel, and some finger tweaks. Not more than 2 minutes of work. It's generally short and practical now. Frills are for single people.

But generally a good day.

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