I’m up late for a Sunday evening. My intramural basketball team played at 9PM tonight. We only had four guys show up, all thirty or older, and we played a team with eight guys twenty-five or younger. We came out gunning, figuring we didn’t have much to lose, and low and behold, after about ten minutes we were up by five points. Of course, then the other team started trying, and we lost by thirty. However, I had to keep moving through the entire forty minutes, leading to my best workout in recent memory. Oh, once, on defense, while backpedaling, I fell flat on my ass. Rock and roll!
N was up early this morning, I mean 3AM early, screaming about wanting to go downstairs. From where the hell did that come? I had to sit with him in the spare bedroom until he calmed down. He’s got to learn he can’t scream to get what he wants. He’s a good kid. I never know when I’m too hard or too easy on him. I suppose I’m like most fathers that way. As I’ve said before, I only want to make new and improved mistakes when compared to my own parents. I do need to lay off the “if you don’t do this, you can’t play the Wii” parenting strategy, though. T calls them “the threats”. I don’t use them often, usually only when the kids won’t get off the Wii when they’re supposed to do so, but I always pride myself on reinforcing good decision making in the sense of Aristotle rather than because I’m leaning on the kids. We’ll see. Last week I was a decent father, hopefully I’ll get back on a good parenting streak.
Anyway, after N fell back asleep I was too wired to sleep myself, so I watched tv until dawn or so. Apparently “Girls Gone Wild” commercials are on every third channel between 3AM and 6AM. There are advantages to parenting three boys. At least they won’t get drunk and flash GGW cameras. I think. T was sleeping in my bed, so I decided to sleep on the closet floor. I slept pretty well, actually, until 10AM. The closet is pretty big, walk-in, and there’s only a small window, so the light never woke me. M took the boys to church, so I watched a documentary on myths from Netflix before lunch. I was determined to avoid working on my dissertation, because I didn’t want to go work all day and feel drained entering work tomorrow, so I forced myself to sit on my ass and watch basketball. I’m still at the top of both pools, but Texas screwed me over. I need USC to beat North Carolina next week. We’ll see. I felt disconnected from the boys, though, because they had friends over all day yesterday and they were out with friends most of today. I suppose I could have walked out and hung out with them, but M and the neighbor moms were out, and I doubt I would have fit in very well. Oh well. After dinner I cleaned the kitchen (I love the smell of the bleach spray cleaner), living room, and dining room while downloading new music to my Mp3 player. T, S, and I sat on the couch and chatted for about thirty minutes before I had to leave for basketball. I also sat on the edge of the bed and provided running commentary while M read the boys a book on Greek myths. I drove down to basketball early so I could water the plants and print out ninety pages of my dissertation for my chair to review. I suppose I should get some sleep now. More tomorrow.