I asked my kids what they wanted for Christmas this year and Parker said he wanted a skateboard and Aiden said he wanted a basketball.  Shirley and I had a discussion about gift giving this year and it was agreed that we would not purchase gifts for one another.  That led to a conversation with a buddy of mine about what he was getting his wife for Christmas.  After he told me what he purchased for her he also indicated that his wife had bought herself an UGGS robe telling him she was totally worth such an extravagant gift.  Knowing that I couldn’t show up Christmas morning empty handed or I’d have to t take things into my own hand for a considerable amount of time, I went on Amazon and searched UGGS robes (I had no idea they made robes and while I knew they would be expensive the sticker shock almost made me fall out of my chair).  Is Shirley worth an UGGS robe, well of course she is, but most of their robes are somewhat short and sexy, she prefers the long robes that are the robe equivalent of Granny panties, not sexy but very warm and comfortable.  So, with that in mind I purchased a robe that had many positive reviews as well as an affordable price tag.  While most of the reviews were positive, one reviewer, who I believed to be a women although she could have played middle linebacker for the Detroit Lions, was not happy with her robe.  She indicated in her review that she was 6’1′ and 190 lbs and the robe didn’t fit right around the middle.  No shit, the fact that you are a land monster probably precludes you from wearing robes that are meant for women.  I didn’t let that negative review dissuade me from purchasing the robe and Shirley was quite pleased with it.

 

I also made an impromptu shopping trip on Christmas Eve to Von Maur (I believe it is Dutch for overpriced).  I had one prior experience in the store when it first opened and when I saw the price of the first shirt I looked at I implored my kids to run and not look back.  However, my buddy told me his wife was in there and there was all kinds of stuff on sale. Sale?  There is only one other S word that I like better.  Merry Christmas to me I managed to find a couple things for myself as well as two sweaters for Shirley, one was marked at $200 all the way down to $50.  I found my self going from clearance rack to clearance rack avoiding the regular priced racks as if they were lepers from the Old Testament.  The problematic thing with shopping at such a high end store is that the sales “associates” are working on commission and there was a ratio of at least 6 sales people to every customer.  The first clue that I didn’t want any attention paid to me should have been my dedication to staying within 18 inches of the clearance racks the entire time I was in the store, I was actually tempted to drag a rack with me as I ventured to another part of the store.

On Monday night I was tasked with making lasagna for the Christmas Eve festivities with the Jansma’s at our house.  When I got home I was pleasantly surprised to find out the kids were at my in-laws.  Unfortunately, Shirley was in full present wrapping mode and had no time to give me the attention I deserved or required so after I made the lasagna (which was a hit by the way) I headed out to do some somewhat last minute Christmas shopping.  I decided that I should check out Play it again sports for a skateboard and stumbled upon a Santa Cruz longboard, I know almost as much about skateboards as I do women so I called my brother to see if I should purchase the Santa Cruz or the other model that was there.  He said go with the Santa Cruz.  After that I ended up at JT’s to watch Monday night football and made the mistake of staying for one last bourbon allowing Shirley to get to bed for I was able to get home (Or she saw me coming down the driveway and was able to shut the lights off and pretend to be asleep).  Regardless, I was as disappointed as a kid who only gets socks and underwear for Christmas.

My apologies for this having a Pulp Fiction feel to it but I didn’t really outline how I was going to configure this blog.  Anyhow, Christmas morning arrived and the dollar value of the gifts my kids received was more than my parents spent on me my entire life, even taking inflation into account.  Parker got a Nintendo Switch so that he and Aiden didn’t have to share the other one we already had.  When I brought up the long board form the basement for him he was disappointed because it was used.  He said to Shirley “mom, I didn’t get that much for Christmas”.  I should have duct taped him to the longboard and sent him down our driveway for that comment.  However, a big part of parenting is about having perspective and I am sure that while I never would have dared say anything like that to my parents, I probably thought it and may have moped a bit after an extremely disappointing Christmas (they were all disappointing to a degree).

Shirley purchased me a Michigan wolverines Champion zip up form Costco as well as some pajama pants.  Here is where I have to admit I am somewhat of a snob.  The current athletic company handling most of Michigans apparel is Nike, and I love Nike, I had some Adidas stuff from back in the day but got rid of it once Nike took over.  In my mind you can’t wear the old shit and you definitely can’t wear Champion.  Now, one of the reasons I don’t like people getting me things that I haven’t asked for for Christmas is that I have a hard time hiding disappointment.  Well, Shirley could tell I didn’t like the Michigan zip up and became upset with me.  I told Parker when he asked me why I didn’t like it, that he would understand someday.  Shirley claimed that if he ever acted like me when it came to clothing we just wouldn’t buy it for him.  Since he is following in my footsteps there is no way I can make him wear off brand outdated apparel, it just isn’t right.  In response to my reaction to her gift to me Shirley pretended that she didn’t like her sweater (the $200 one that I got for $50)  I called her bluff and told her I still have the receipt, she made no effort to get the receipt from me.

I hadn’t expected to bust out the Santa Cruz on Christmas thinking in-climate weather would get in the way, it was surprisingly nice and I was able to pry Parker away from his Switch and get him outside to take some test runs down the driveway.  Our driveway is fairly steep and long and I was getting higher and higher up as I got the hang of the Santa Cruz.  Parker stayed on the flat spots of the driveway during his initial runs.  Eventually I went a bit too high up gained a little too much speed and fell off the long board as if I had been shot by a sniper.  I landed on my side and ended up with a nice raspberry and was gimping around the rest of the day.  Parker came running up to me and asked “are you ok dad?”  Had incident occurred when I was growing up I probably would have laughed at my dad and thought it was hilarious.  Apparently Parker’s empathy comes from Shirley.

Last week I had an informal meeting with my client and the other party along with their attorney to attempt to settle a divorce.  The meeting took place at opposing counsel’s office in Allegan and when I walked in he shook my hand and asked “how are you doing Jim?”  I thought maybe I misheard him but when we ended up meeting with all of us to make sure we were on the same page with what the parties had agreed to he also called me Jim.  At that point there was no going back, if I corrected him it would be way more awkward than being called the wrong name in front of my client so I just let it slide.  The troubling thing is that this wasn’t the first time I had had a case with this particular attorney, nor was it the first time I had been called the wrong name and just let it go.  This week I was riding up the elevator from the basement of our building and I bumped into the guy in charge of maintenance for our building, he addressed me as Justin, not my favorite name but still much better than his name which was Stuart.

Being referred to as Justin brought up a range of emotions for me.  My therapist and I had made a lot of progress working through the trauma’s of my child hood, but all that progress was for not when Stuart called me Justin.  When I was in ninth grade I played football for South Christian’s ninth grade team.  At the time ninth graders were not part of the high school so I typically would get a ride home with my buddies cousin who was the assistant coach.  He had a Fu Manchu mustache, tore the sleeves off his dress shirts and chewed tobacco.  The entire season he called me Justin and I never once corrected him.  For some reason I decided to play football the next year and had a coach who was even more intimidating than my ninth grade coach.  We were doing some type of drill and he wanted me to be more aggressive so he had me do the drill with him, somehow my helmet caught him in the face and made him start bleeding.  It was the only memorable thing I did all season.

I suppose I have no problem being called Jim or Justin because I have been called a lot worse by a lot of people.  Would it be nice to be called other J names instead of Jim or Justin?  Of course it would, but if someone called me Julius I may have to correct them, as much as I like the sound of Julius Jansma, there’s no way I can allow someone to call me that name without me and that person looking like a fool.

Being called the wrong name is just one of the many odd things that I have had going on lately.  I misplaced my credit card, Y membership card, metal water bottle, and a Jordan tank top and another nike basketball tank top in the span of the past month.  On top of that I thought I lost my North Face gloves and Oakley hat last week but they were actually in my overcoat.  (Nike, North Face, and Oakley are not sponsors of my blog but if they were some day that would be truly amazing, probably need to push the readership into the double digits though if I want that to happen).  Am I losing my mind, it definitely seems like it, which sadly isn’t replaceable once you lose it.  The biggest problem about losing things is that I typically am so upset about it that I purchase the exact same thing to replace it, which is kind of waste of resources.  On my flight back from Phoenix in early November I left my water bottle on the plane. I bought a new one immediately and the only difference was that my new one had a rubber bottom so when I fill it with the water dispenser on our fridge it holds its place and the water dispenses automatically instead of me having to hold on to my water bottle as it fills  (it’s only overflowed once). Saturday I let Aiden use my water bottle for his basketball game and thought to myself, I’m probably going to leave it at the gym, and sure as shit, I did.  I plan on going back to the school where I left it to see if it is in the lost and found, but that water bottle was and is awesome so I am guessing someone took it home with them.

Another strange thing that happened to me occurred this morning.  When I got back from basketball both of my kids were in the shower singing a Spanish song.  Why are they taking a shower in our shower?  Why are they showering together?  Why are they singing in Spanish?  Those are all good questions and if you knew Shirley you would have the answer to those questions.  I had no idea what Dame Tu Cosita means until Shirley showed me this video as the kids were having a grand old time in our shower.

For those of you who don’t feel like Googling the translation, it means give it to me, and Aiden told Shirley he knew the song has something  to do with your weiner, even though the green guy in the video has no Weiner.  After the kids had gotten out of the shower and were getting ready I heard Aiden say “her Vagina looks like a weiner”.  Where does he get this stuff?  I’d like to say he is picking it up at school but the lion’s share of the blame goes on his parents.  However, using the proper term, vagina, in my mind points to solid parenting.  Are we saying vagina on a frequent basis?  I don’t think we are, although Vagina is such a great word that you can say it and not even realize it, it just rolls right off the tongue so easily.  The problem actually can be attributed to You Tube, my kids love You Tube even more than they love singing Spanish songs in the shower and they frequently watch other people playing video games on You Tube amongst other things.  I don’t understand this, I don’t like playing video games let alone watching other people play video games.  Shirley thinks them watching other people play video games is where they pick most of the inappropriate talk up from.

Shirley finally lowered the boom this past weekend and told them no more You Tube.  You would have thought she told them we weren’t celebrating Christmas the way they reacted (Super Dave who unfortunately is my brother in law actually is taking this stance based upon his belief that Christmas is a pagan holiday, I think my sister should ban him from the internet entirely).   The problem with the Shirley imposed ban is that my kids are like a couple of cat burglars when it comes to electronic devices.  All of a sudden my phone is gone and guess who has it, my fricken kids that’s who, and they jump right on You Tube when they have possession of my phone.  I’ll be honest, I haven’t heard a whole lot of objectionable material when they are watching youtube in my car and it is piped through blue tooth, but the people playing the games have even less likelihood of having sex with another human being than the people who work at the Apple Store.  If I want my kids to ever have any luck with the ladies I need to also enforce Shirely’s You Tube ban.  On top of that, the kids alternative is either Captain Underpants or Atomic Puppet, which are both highly entertaining Netflix shows.  If given the choice being subjected to a bunch of virgin dorks play video game or listening to George Beard and Harold Hutchins, I’m taking George and Harold all day.  Well, it looks like I gotta go, time to try and claim that water bottle out of the lost and found at Forest Hills Middle school on my way to the Kuyper old man basketball lunch run.