Parlez-vous Parfait?

As my kids continue to grow and thrive, I have noticed that some of that “me” time that I used to enjoy has become harder and harder to acquire.  You know, that twenty or thirty minutes of absolute solitude where you can accomplish one or two of those personal necessities for your sanity.  Really, I’m not complaining.  It is intentional that we try and keep our little spark plugs happily firing away and heavily involved in various activities.  Keeping them favorably occupied and off of each other’s nerves is step one towards retaining said sanity.  However, sometimes it seems that the calendar doesn’t let up.

Outside of the nightly homework routines and pinpointing a reasonable time to eat dinner together as a family, the recent school year samplings offer up a pretty compact schedule with overlapping obligations.  Obligations typically in completely opposite geographical locations from each other.  There is our son’s drum practice, swim team practices, and youth group, older daughter’s piano lessons, soccer practices, and youth group, younger daughter’s dance and ballet, wife’s bible study, and finally, my band rehearsals.  You get the idea and likely know the drill all-too-well.  Finding a half hour to get anything done for yourself in the evenings is an exercise in utter futility…that is, until the kids go to bed anyway.

Speaking of exercise and futility, as my age continues to barrel along and my waistline continues to resemble one, I have also found my personal workout opportunities dwindling as well.  Again, not pointing  fingers.  I know that I could easily get up at 5 am to do it or get in a good workout after 9:30 in the evenings.  Honestly, who am I kidding though?  A 5 am alarm setting would result in a broken iPhone and 10:00 pm is reserved for the sleep-deprived, ceremonial head-nodding ritual performed on the couch nearly every evening from an insanely busy work day.

One evening, however, I found myself with an empty calendar at 7:30.  My wife was out with our youngest and my two oldest were upstairs getting things ready for the next day’s festivities.

This was it!  My twenty minutes.  I could get in a quick workout in the basement and have the rest of the evening to do as I please.   With a few minor interruptions, I found myself getting in a much needed session of weights accompanied by a deafening dose of heavy metal music.  A formula rich in success and hearing loss! 

A feeling of accomplishment washed over me as I emerged from the basement that evening.  Dinner?  Kids’ homework?  Workout?  Check, check, and check.  Looking around the house with my fists still clinched in a fit of adrenaline and achievement, I decided to take the initiative to clean up the kitchen and knock out the dirty dishes as well.

Take note and respect.  This was “Overachieving Husband of the Year” criteria that I was flirting with here. 

However, as I opened my hands to wash those dishes, I felt a painful tug tear through my middle finger, followed by the spiny tingles of numbness settling in.  This was certainly an odd twist of events for a simple domestic routine!  I literally tried to shake off the numbness, but to no avail.  In a matter of seconds, I watched my finger swell up like those vintage, time-elapsed Pillsbury Pop-N-Fresh commercials…then turn a deep shade of purple right before my eyes.

The mind is a curious thing.  For me personally, when a medically-induced panic begins to set in, the mind goes from the epitome of democratic decorum to the streets of San Francisco after the Giants win the World Series.  I’m talking the whole flipping burning cars and Molotov-tossing type of rioting.  Complete cerebral anarchy.  My brain immediately fast-forwarded itself to me coming home from the hospital, less my middle finger.

Wrapping my hand in a cocoon of ice packs, I instructed my daughter to call her mother immediately.  Out of sheer dumb luck, she was on her way home at that point and was able to hijack a friend to come over and watch our kids while she took me to the ER.  Through all of the mayhem though, it was my kids’ consolidation of collected reactions to me leaving for the ER that left me questioning my dad-status and prominence as the home’s breadwinner.  Simply put, no sympathy or panic on display for their folliclely-challenged super hero.

With my hand still pulsating a shade of purple that would have made the artist-currently-known-as Prince blush, my son was insistent that I see the fort that he had constructed on Minecraft before we left.  I could have articulated my Minecraft enthusiasm at that particular moment, but privately, that particular finger was already swollen in the upright position.  Then, there was our oldest daughter sobbing.  Not fearful for the digitary well-being of her dear old pop, but because she insisted on knowing exactly when we would be home from the hospital.  Finally, there was our youngest.  Our dear little Pavlovian test subject busily picking out DVDs to watch…simply because she knew there was a “babysitter” coming over to mind them.

Condolences noted and appreciated.  Oh, and you’re all out of the will.  I will donate my priceless collection of zero balance ATM receipts to the Louvre.

Honestly, I didn’t fare much better at the ER.  The questions from the doctors persisted on detailing exactly how something like this could have possibly happened.  I stated “intense weight-lifting session” followed by “opening my hands up to wash dishes”.  They merely paraphrased “injury occurred while washing dishes”.

Wait.  No.  Stop.  You can’t put that shiny badge of ineptitude into my permanent medical files!  What would the other doctors and nurses think?  For that matter, how about the NSA moles after hacking in and data-mining that little gem from your electronic files?

I will admit, though, that I found a dark, self-loathing amusement in watching them try to locate an applicable “injury code” on their databases.  “Dishwashing injury”.  Good luck with that one, pal!  It’s likely located somewhere near the “Poked Self in Eye with Own Nose” code.  Eventually, they settled on employing  the same “none of the above” practice that I found eerily reminiscent to the answer election process used on my high school SATs.  “Unspecified”. 

Insult-to-injury, the dishes that I had started to wash were parfait glasses that my mom and youngest daughter had used to make Jell-O the day before.  Yes…parfait glasses.  The crooked old crone of European dishware.  The annoyingly elitist matriarch of the snooty dessert glass family.

From weightlifting and testosterone-fueled heavy metal music to gently scrubbing a couple of parfait glasses.  Could the scenario get any more unmanly than that?  I guess it could…if you threw in a few John Tesh songs.

Of course it couldn’t be something more primal and grunt-worthy like a giant beer stein stained with Guinness residue or a moon-sized grilling platter full of red steak juices.  I had to physically injure myself attempting to wash French dessert ware that most American men should not be able to pronounce correctly.

The only way that I could think to save face at that point was to macho it up and banter on about it like a failed American Ninja Warrior contestant.

“Mentally, I toughened it out and rallied through the quiche and soufflé portions, but the parfait glasses were just too physically demanding on my upper body.”

The following week, a locally renowned hand specialist was sought out and surmised that I had ruptured one of the smaller ligaments that helps hold the main middle finger ligament in place.  Although I received the same blank expressions when I explained how it occurred, there would thankfully be no surgery required. It would eventually heal itself with time. 

Although I found myself out of commission on the guitar for a couple of weeks, the injury did have its share of advantages.  For one, the swollen finger did come in particularly handy for those choice transportation situations.  No additional effort was required on my part to properly extend and maintain those non-verbal lines of communication while driving.  Hey, let’s not kid ourselves.  You can take the boy out of the city, but not the “city” out of the boy.

However, for every advantage, there was also a host of disadvantages as well.  With my entire hand covered in varietal hues of purple, green, and yellow, coupled with my wife’s timely development of a double pink-eye infection, I also found it a matter of cautionary necessity to hide all of my white tank tops from erroneous public perceptions.

Although my hand has since “healed”, further attempts to resume my workouts have been met with some intermittent, residual pain and discomfort.  There is always that “try, try again” mantra echoing throughout my head.  But, so are the images of my hand getting squirrelly during a bench press…only to have the barbell drop from my girly, lavender-colored mitts and severely dimple my empty cranium. 

As that waistline continues to expand, I am reminded of the lifestyle trifecta offered up and theorized by one Dean Wormer of “Animal House” fame.

“Fat, drunk, and stupid is no way to go through life, son.”

Ah…fat and stupid ain’t so bad.