Sunday, May 29, 2011

My name is Tulibo, and I'm an addict

I was at the bike shop the other day.  Surprise, surprise.  I break bikes like it's my job.  Oh, I should look into if anyone's hiring for that position.  Anyway, I was chatting with one of the salesmen while waiting for my latest broken bit to be fixed.  He was telling me that he hasn't been able to ride much lately (just 40 or 50 miles a week) because he's working at the bike shop, his girlfriend had her tonsils out, and things just get busy.  As I left I realized that I have a full time job, a wife, a 16 month old child, and I still bike 100-130 miles a week.  Granted, that's down from my average mileage PK (pre-Kiki) but only by 30 or 40 miles.  That's when I realized that either I'm a heartless bastard, a terrible husband, and a neglectful father OR I have a cycling addiction.  You can guess which explanation I'm going with.  I figure step one is identifying the problem.  Step two is, what, doing something about it?  I'll get around to that eventually.  I figure I should just take this one step at a time.  Man, these steps are exhausting, I think I need to go for a bike ride.  You know, just to clear my head.  What?  I have a disease, cut me some slack.  

Tuesday, May 17, 2011

Unexpected Problems

When you discover you're going to be a parent you worry about many things: what if the baby chokes, what if she won't eat, what if she never sleeps through the night.  


You read some books, which give you even more things to worry about: SIDS, ebola, alien abduction (I guess it depends what kinds of books you read).  


Maybe you even subscribe to a parenting magazine, which gives you a few more things to throw on the worry pile: mismatched outfits, bad haircuts, self-immolation.  


But then you have your child, and you realize that no matter what you've been worrying about and preparing for, you are still totally unprepared.  Like, for instance, when your dog begins humping your child.  Yeah, awesome.  


I mean, she doesn't seem to mind, and frankly, for the amount of grief she gives the poor animal, it's probably just fair turnabout.  But still, I feel like I need to step in, but so far my books and periodicals have been mute on the proper parenting solution to this particular conundrum.  


But then again, maybe I just missed that issue of Parenting with Pets magazine.