The Walking Dead

I got a promotion yesterday. A parenting promotion.

As you know, I’m new to all this parenting stuff. It’s confusing, daunting, and at times, terrifying. Like math. Or a proctology exam.

It’s been a tough week. I’ve been as sick as a dog. I dunno who gave me the cold, but I’m going to find them and take a big poo on their doorstep.

However, the Prettiest-girl-in-the-world has done stellar duty picking up the slack as I lay on the couch, my nose leaking like somehow had stuffed a hose up my bum and pumped the damn stuff in. I can’t believe how much goo my body can produce when sick (as my garbage bin full of Kleenex will attest), but can my body grow another arm so I could carry in groceries or juggle effectively? No, no it cannot.

It was the type of cold where if your glasses fall off your face and onto the floor, you leave them there and watch TV all blurry and stuff – It takes just too much effort and energy to pick them up.

But being a parent sometimes means you have to get off that couch, climb out of that bed, or haul yourself off the floor and get a job done.

My job on Wednesday was to take the Youngest to his first 6am hockey practice. Every part of me hurt, even my hair, which makes no sense to me at all since I didn’t think hair had feelings (unless you make fun of it, then I know it will feel all hurt and all.) But at 5am, the Prettiest-girl-in-the-world poked me to ask if I wanted to cancel taking the Youngest to hockey.

“Herm, bah, mggggg,” I said.

“Listen, you’re sick. Stay in bed.”

I got up. “Gurf, blurk, ah, ooogh.”

“What?”

It took a few seconds for my brain to tell my mouth how to work, again. “Me tabe colb mebs. Me bee fine.”

Ok so my brain still needed to work on the whole word thing, but I was up and I took some cold meds and zombied around looking for my pants while the Prettiest-girl-in-the-world got all the Youngest’s gear ready. By the time I slumped downstairs, he was good to go.

I managed to find the right arena, I managed to get him to the right dressing room and somehow, I even managed to put the right skates on the right feet. Had I been more alive, I would have been proud of myself. As it was, I told him to have fun out there, bought a coffee and huddled with the rest of the early morning parents, sniffing and snorting and holding my coffee like it was my lifeline to this universe.

I was glad I got him there, though. He worked his butt off. “I’m really going to try to learn to skate better,” he told me as I unlaced his skates afterwards. And he done just that. He skated side to side when he was in line, he never lay down on the ice once even though I knew he was tired, and even when he was given the opportunity to take a drink, he used that time to skate and shoot.

To me, that made it all worth the effort.

Then, when we got home, I saw on our Family Board, the message…”You take such good care of us, Joe. Flu + 6am hockey practice = step dad master level.”

It was the best promotion I’ve ever received..