Edison Nuthouse

Sunday dawned bright and early. I know, because I was awake. I fell awake at about 4:30…watched tv for a bit–preseason football. Miami and Jacksonville. The Dolphins won going away, though Jacksonville’s run game looked impressive at times. They could move between the twenties but they couldn’t get the rock into the end zone.

The Bears rebroadcast was scheduled at 7. I set the dvr to record the thing, made a pot of coffee for my wife, took my morning meds and waited for the percocet to knock me out for a bit. Figured I could get a little rest that way.

It would have worked, except that the child woke up and decided to have a chat with the rabbits.

I’m a notoriously light sleeper, and that did the trick. I got up and started the pot running, got myself something to eat (wholegrain toast and a cup of yogurt), and made ready to deal with the teeny drama queen, our eight-year-old grandchild.

She would want to watch cartoons, I knew, and that wasn’t going to happen, because the Bears game supercedes cartoons. Televised sports are the reason why we have a tv. So if the Cubs, Bears, or BlackHawks are on, they are a priority item. The child knows this. But that won’t stop her from wanting cartoons, or netflix.

Because the electronic babysitter is what she knows.

And Triscuits is what she wanted for breakfast. I told her that she should have some yogurt with those, to make it a better meal. She had just the yogurt, not enough food…later she complained that she had a little stomach ache, and was sent up to bed to rest, since she was getting cranky about it.

The smell of frying bacon brought her back down an hour or so later. I made some pancakes to wrap around the bacon strips, and one of those fixed the tummyache. She was just hungry.

Still cranky though. The child has this weird habit of clamming up when asked almost any question. She makes the pouty face, goes all glassy-eyed and just stands there with her face hanging out.

You’d think it autism or something, but it’s deliberate. She controls when she does this. And we’re trying to fix it.

Not easy. I’ve ordered her a special surprise, something to make her trips to and from school easier. She knows she has a surprise coming, but not what it is.

That’s our lever. She’s been told that she has to behave properly, not be a smartass or have a sassy mouth, answer direct questions, do her schoolwork and chores. Nothing extraordinary. She’s eight. You can only expect so much.

Her impulse control is so weak that she’s really in danger of me sending the thing back. Instead we’re going to have a black mark/gold star thing. Every time she is disobedient or otherwise misbehaves, a black mark appears on the whiteboard, and she is sent to the corner for a while. Every time she does her chores or homework without being asked, a gold star appears and she gets positive attention.

Because it’s the attention she wants. She thinks that she should be the center of attention at all times. I mean she really thinks that. For no reason other than simple selfishness and narcissism. She’s said so.

My wife told her that two-year-olds think like that, and that it wasn’t a reasonable expectation.

That’s when the baby-show ban started. No more cartoons for the preschooler. She loves Dora and Max and Ruby.

On the other hand, she also loves those ridiculous Disney tween situation comedies. The problem with that is that the characters are all sophisticated and sassy, and she mimics the smartass comments and sarcastic attitudes.

So we’ve instituted a ban on those too.

Hell, I’d ban tv altogether if I thought it would help. This kid has spent so much time nodding mindlessly at the boob tube that she’s incapable of thinking things out.

She needs to be reading and reading and reading, and she hates reading. It’s too hard, we’re told. Same circus as usual.

It feels like we’re getting closer to cooperation, but there’s still a long way to go.

Unnecessary stress. I have this giant pain in my shoulder that no meds can dent, and my neck muscles are like rocks.

So I’m not stressing over it. The kid gets the message, or doesn’t. She doesn’t, she spends the rest of her life in the corner. There are rules everywhere. Nobody is going to give her 24/7 attention.

That’s it.

I left the writing forum. Left a kinda nasty flounce post, which was taken down within ten minutes of its posting, talking about some of the things detailed in the previous blogpost. I don’t need that kind of stress anymore either. One of my friends there remarked “…most of these people have spent maybe one or two years writing, and they haven’t even finished one story.” And they expect parades for the first paragraph. And they won’t listen to advice. They know everything.

Screw those people. I don’t have anything to say to them. I don’t need them to critique my writing, I don’t want to read theirs, I don’t care what song they’re listening to now or how they prepare to write their one ungrammatical paragraph a day.  I’m too busy writing my own things.

Even this thousand words or so a day of stream-of-conscious semirant is preferable.

I did work for a while on the Letters from Outside stuff. It’s almost done. I’ll unveil the archive in due time. And the new short story is in polishing now. Tomorrow I’ll finish the hospital portion of “abed”, and put it up somewhere on the website so folks can read it. Then I’ll edit the whole thing into readable shape…hopefully by the end of the week, so I can move into a new project as I begin moving my things from this office into the bedroom, clearing the way for the kid to have her own room. Maybe that’ll help. Couldn’t do it before because of the hernia surgery.

Yay.  I get to squeeze all of my stuff into a corner of the bedroom. I think my friend Scott is right–I’ll need to get vertical with it. At least as much as I can. Isn’t really possible to stack guitars.

The Bears lost, though the first string looked okay. Cubs lost but took the series against the Cardinals 3-1. The Disney Three Musketeers wasn’t as bad as I had feared, and I think I even chuckled once or twice. I was going to let the child watch Free Willy 2 after that, but she got mouthy and presumptuous and canceled that bit of goodwill. If her plan was to avoid reading by being an asshole, she succeeded admirably. Louis CK is right, you know.

More tomorrow. Gotta catch up on my correspondence. Related article

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Ready for some football

Much to my surprise, the Bears head into their rematch with the Lions with a winning record at 5-3-0, against the Lions’ only-sort-of-surprising 6-2.
I had thought that the Bears were gonna be less than mediocre this year, due to problems with the personnel on both lines. But young Henry Melton and Stephen Paea, waiver-wire pickup Amobi Okoye, and holdovers Anthony Adams and Matt Toeiana have done a decent job so far of creating point pressure, allowing Peppers to edge-rush, which he does so well.
The offensive line seems to have solidified since the second half against these same Lions, when a couple of changes were made. As long as the player known as “Gate 68” remains on the bench, I’m happy. Frank Omiyale hasn’t been effective for as much as a ten-minute stretch since joining the Bears, and it’s hard to understand why he remains.
It’s true that the Bears’ receiving corps doesn’t have anyone that is regarded as a top-shelf ballcatcher. But they do have a nice combination of speed and hands, and it’s good to see that veteran underachiever Roy Williams is catching a ball or two, though his drops are still problematical.
The return of Earl Bennett bodes well. Bennett is the best downfield blocker, has the best hands, and runs the best routes of any wideout on the team. That was evident in the dismantling of the Eagles, in a game that really shouldn’t have been close. Forte fumbled against Philly. He probably won’t fumble the rest of the year. Without those turnovers, the Bears had a good chance of points on both possessions.
I look for the Bears to avenge their earlier loss and to win over the Lions in a close one. Detroit will be coming after Cutler as in the previous meeting, but they’ll have to stay in their lanes to make that effective, and I wouldn’t be at all surprised to see a little play-action, a few more of the rollouts that Cutler does so effectively, and a tad more tight-end targeting, all from three-and-five step drops. May even favor the three, depending on how aggressive the Lion front four gets. If they overpursue, it’s going to be a long game for them.
Bears need to hold on to the ball, limit the big plays (three huge ones last time), and give Barber about a fifth of the carries to spell Forte a little. Barber has excelled on goal-line and short-yardage-he’s not likely to take the ball the length of the field to the house, but he isn’t asked to do that, either.
The other great thing about the win at Philly is that it dragged my fantasy team out of a mire. I’ve only had one misstep this year (had to lose Rob Gronkowski because of bad bye-week planning), and have had bad luck on my draws (I lead the league in scoring by 50 points but am like third from the bottom in points against, which I have no control over).
I was about to lose last week’s game when the Bears pulled out that win and Earl Bennett, Jay Cutler, Devin Hester, Matt Forte, and the Bears defense all had good games.
So thanks, and hey, let’s do it again.