The girls have always behaved differently around me. There are things that transpire, depths of activity and imagination that are an antithetic wavelength from my wife’s. The girls connect to her viscerally, obsessively, an umbilical chord. They adore her and melt around her. They are magnetized by how she nurtures them.

I am their left brain, their directed adventure, their challenge to learn and improve themselves mentally and physically, their kick in the ass to quit being wussies and have fun.   They ask me questions, I give them answers. I tell G she is smarter than Kila, except Kila fights better. I tell her cursing is ok if she is ready for the consequences. I tell Alana she can take whatever she wants as long as she carries it, then quickly walk away from her. I let them paint in the kitchen.   My agenda and pain and structure get timeboxed, i love them wantonly, recklessly, as long as they don’t whine.

I try to balance who i am with my role. Two roles now. Beckie is traveling 4 days a week, and her void reminds me everywhere. I sink, willingly, sorta, into a gentle trudge, a pain cave with bursts of beatific light blowing through it. The edges are smoothed by lack of sleep, anejo, and weariness from a high-fat low-workout diet. The sitter got sick, I could not bare resetting them in the car for a trip to the gym and screwing Kila out of another walk. I keep fading, fogging over…I need to help G with a school art project, at 11:30 i finished my day job and started a half-assed beer-fueled workout.

I convinced\strong-armed them to walk Kila around the block with me. All of us a little too tired, G skyping Beckie I was being mean, shoving them away for 17 minutes to keep the house from crumbling down. Getting out fixes almost everything, smiles and jokes returned. It is beautiful, if I can keep my sisyphean conscious from rolling down on me.

G wanted me to take pictures of her climbing the Eagle. I did not have a camera, which made no difference, since really she just wanted to pose.   She quoted Phineas and Ferb about mental picutres. Hehe, she quotes shows…on her way to geekdom, pretty blonde popular geekdom.   Sure baby, i’m down with the fakey photos, saves me time cleaning the memory card, and i can be lazy while they run themselves retarded up and down a pile of rocks.

Except, ‘Say cheese‘ lasts for 3.5 pretend pictures, until they lose all interest and spell my doom.

Me: Maybe you haven’t been keeping up on current events, but we just got our asses kicked!
G: Daddy, take another picture, or I’ll start choking Alana
Me: I don’t wanna rain on your parade, but we’re not gonna last seventeen *hours* against them things!
G: Daddy!!!! i found a rusty knife, some acid, and this dead skunk!

Panic!

PANIC!

We still had the Despicable Me thing going on. giggle, laugh, cry, whine     And i do love this commercial

Soon it became eagle, cat, Kila, cow, jaguar, silly, chicken, frightened, pteranadon! G kept up. so did Alana. Hands, and feet and faces, standing on top of a rockpile posing in the dark.   And there we 3 were, in perfect harmony.

We rolled home, G enjoying a scooter so she could keep down with Alana, still on her dumb-ass-baby-trike that she insisted on taking. And pedaled the whole way. By the end she pushed, she carried, but she did not quit. Blew my mind, I was ready to carry it rather than be dickDad to whiny Podford — better place better time for correcting this behavior. But she made it! The next night she picked up and almost dropped a 15 lb dumbell on her foot. Really…15 lbs, who knew?!   The drop scared her, but for once she did not implode. I explained owies, and rock falls, and certainty. Then bumped knuckles and exploding knuckles and grabbed butts, and still she pouted, but did not quit. By now G at 3 would be laughing dropping the dumbell again.   I put her in bed at 12:41, after she finally passed out at 12:36. She stirred when i started to drop her, a nod to Inception, and rolled awake screaming that she wanted to stay up.