On the couch, just after 5PM, black Friday. My latest CD mix is playing while T and N search for S, who is hiding behind the glider, about five feet to my right. He’s an enormously patient hider. I’ve been misdirecting his brothers. M just called me evil. Ha.

The last days have been active but exhausting. Wednesday night we did Thanksgiving dinner, shepherd’s pie, roasted vegetables, etc. I crashed not long afterwards. Thursday morning I worked out to some special on the White House and wasted the morning waiting to head up to the waterpark. We left near one, checked into the suite, and hit the waterpark. I ran up and down the stairs with the boys, repeating the largest two waterslides, until I found a table near the edge of the pool and tried to relax with a book. Two hours passed before we stumbled back to the suite, where the boys watched television and I called pizza places until I found a Papa Johns open a couple miles from the hotel. I drove through the overwhelming Sheboygan night, past the faded, lightless houses to the pizza place. That town may have been decent at one point but goddamn, you leave downtown and the ghosts of decade-dead industrial productivity and the nearby workers haunt the winter streets. The guy at the overlit Papa Johns told me the place had been dead and he had been getting paid for doing nothing all day. I sat on a plastic chair and looked at an apartment circular while I waited for the pizza. After taking a different route back to the hotel, I found the boys and we scarfed down the food before returning to the waterpark for a couple more hours. Later I slept on the lower bunk because N and S didn’t trust the bunk beds. I was ok. I read and listened to my mp3 player, mentally programming the disc to which I’m listening now, until falling asleep.

This morning I woke near five and hit the hotel workout room by 5:30AM. I ran five miles in about an hour, nothing too fast, but I didn’t want to push the knee. If my knee wasn’t injured I could do some serious time on the treadmill. Anyway, I needed the workout as I felt I had eaten like shit the two previous days and the pizza alone left me feeling blah. After I showered T, S and I sat in the hotel lobby. They drank rare (for them) sodas while I drank coffee. They’re old enough to run off on their own for a while so I read the papers while they explored the hotel. T threw quarters on the carpet and tried to predict on which design (anchor, wheel, compass) the quarter would land. We returned to the hotel room to find N in a very bad mood. He recovered within a few minutes and ate breakfast. We spent a couple more hours at the waterpark before T and I left at eleven (M and I drove separately, in case you’re confused). T and I have shorter attention spans for that type of experience. M, N and S stayed at the waterpark while T and I stopped at Kohls. The checkout line easily contained 150 people. Most of the line-waiters held what appeared to hold one or two items. I don’t understand why people would wait an hour to buy one shirt. Anyway, Target didn’t look much better so T and I drove home. He sat in the back seat, listening to the mp3 player, and I cleared my head. Later he watched The Hulk while I cleaned the kitchen and started the disc. M dropped off N and S and left for the stores.

I’m ready to stay inside for a couple days. My knee hurts. I love my family, but I’ll be hiding upstairs if you need anything. Good night.