R.I.P. Tutu

Years ago, my brother and I were driving through central Illinois and decided to drop in on our Grandma Carol at her favorite lunch spot. When we walked through the door, she caught sight of us and got so excited she spit chunks of tuna salad sandwich all over her booth mates.

This was the reaction Tutu gave every time she smelled me walking into a room. She’d paw at the ground and wiggle her butt and sometimes moan these little happy sounds. 100% of the time I would scoop her up and nuzzle her and explain in great detail why she was the best baby in the world.

As COVID dipped, wine stores opened, doggy daycare accepted blockheads and schools went back to in person, Tutu and I spent an unhealthy amount of time together. I carried her everywhere. When she wasn’t charming people on video conference calls, we were sneaking naps together in between meetings. All the while explaining why she was the best baby in the world. 

I would wake up at all hours of the night (see my previous post) to feed, cuddle, administer eye goop and explain again why she was the best baby in the world. She would return the favor by curling up in the crook of my arm and lick clean all the evil from my skin.

We knew she wasn’t long for the world even when we picked her up from the pound 32 weeks ago. She was covered in tumors and was blind and deaf and had lived a rough, rough life. But it was our goal to spoil her rotten for whatever time she had. And spoil her we did. Little pink sweaters. Obnoxiously expensive food. Plus, a general agreement that her little feet need never touch the ground. And, of course, my continuous explanation why she was the best baby in the world.

When I was alone would I occasionally sing directly into her head so she could feel the vibrations? Yes. Yes I would. 

Tutu had gotten tired over the last few weeks. Less interested in food. Often shaking like a leaf for no reason. But she never lost her cuddly, sweet, “Grandma Werewolf” personality.

Friday morning, I was nudging her towards her uneaten food when she collapsed in my arms. She was so scared. She howled as I held her tight. It's okay. It's okay. Eventually she calmed down but couldn’t stop shaking. 

I dressed her up in her very best pink and white turtleneck sweater and wrapped her in the little blanket she slept on at the pound and we went to the emergency vet.

Diana met me there and the doctor explained that if our goal was to give her the best life we could, it was better for this to be her last day than to have her heart give out in the next 48 hours. 

They brought her in to say goodbye and she lit up. Her little tail wagging. It was the man! I held her and began to weep. I cried so hard I thought my eyeballs would pop out of my head. I blubbered my final explanation why she was the best baby in the world. She was the best baby. She was my special, special girl and she was my favorite baby. My baby. My itty bitty baby. My Tutu.

I'll miss you, gal.

We Broke Tutu

My old co-worker used to describe the blog as a detailed catalogue of one man’s failure at raising his children.  Sometimes we forget that I am also failing at raising two dogs. 

Dad’s who didn’t want dogs is an internet cliché, but I fit it to a t. I carry Tutu around like an infant all day every day. I speak to her like an insane person. She is my special baby. Does she know she is my special baby? Does she know how much I love my special baby? 

We also dress her like one of the “Golden Girls.” She has a sweater for every holiday. A little yellow one with “Boo” on the front. And the little red sweater with “Ho ho ho.” Diana’s favorite is a little black number that looks like a tutu. But my all time favorite is the pink and white turtleneck. She is the spitting image of my great aunt Verle whose apartment what also all pink and white except for the occasional splash of dark brown whisky in a glass.

Around Christmas something shifted. Tutu started waking up in the middle of the night to bark. That’s weird. She never barked before. We’d let her out and then she’d calm down. But it steadily got worse. 1am turned into 1am + 3am. And then 1am + 3am + 4am.

Bark bark bark! It was like someone pounding a drywall nail into my ear canal. The sound could penetrate Diana’s deafness and would drive her crazy. She escape to our guest room. Jerry would moan and cry in the corner of the bedroom. Why oh why did you bring this tiny bark machine into our home, Hoomans?

I began to just stare at the ceiling waiting for the barking to start every night. I was getting less and less sleep and was turning into a real a-hole during the day. Something had to be done. 

We began pumping her with enough drugs to drop a water buffalo. We would walk her around the house for an hour before bed to wear her out. I would roust her awake during the day to get her days and nights calibrated. 

And every night and 1, 3 and 4 she would bark. And I would cry.

A few Fridays ago, I was playing Simpsons trivia with my pals (it’s as cool as it sounds) and I got a text from Diana that simply read, “OMG.”

I immediately called her, fearing she had calculated how much I spent on Legos this year. 

Diana had been combing the internet for solutions to our geriatric canine insomniac. She stumbled across an article about dog sweaters. It turns out it’s really bad for dogs to be in sweaters for more than 3 hours at a time. It overheats their little bodies and is super uncomfortable. 

Tutu had been in a sweater non stop since we discovered humiliating sweaters.  We were boiling her every night and her barking was pleas to stop the torture. 

It couldn’t be that simple, could it? That night Diana took off Tutu’s sweater and the slept through the night. And every night since. 

Here endeth the failure. 

X Marks The Spot

Screams from the basement are nothing new. It’s where we keep our evil third son, Hugo. It’s also where the videogames are. Usually the screams are from shooting/killing games. We lost the violent videogame battle years ago. But lately the screams come from a new kind of genre: pirate games. 

The boys of Evanston are obsessing over an open world game where you assume the role of old timey pirate and sail the seas in search of gold, skeletons and megalodons. Yes, you can shoot other kids, but that’s not the point. Which makes my soul feel better given the whole WWIII situation happening in Ukraine. So now the screams are, “Argh! Ahoy! Blouse shirts!”

One day on vacation, Luca and I found ourselves strolling along the beach, talking about pirates. Did pirates ever visit this surf spot? Did they drink margaritas at Don Julio’s restaurant? Did they stab that guy who plays tuba in the town square until 2am every night?

Luca discovered an old, rotten coconut in the sand. We immediately started a game called, “Throw the coconut into the surf.” For a kid who usually has seven screen going at any given time, a simple game of toss/retrieve was so simple. So beautiful.

The coconut quickly gained value. The coconut was gold. We morphed our game into the classic “build sand walls to protect thing from a million years of surf.” Dig moat. Build sand wall. Waves crash. Start over. 

In other words, perfection.

I got a little too hot (old man alert) so we decided to call it a day. But what to do with the coconut? Chuck it? Burn it? Take it home? Luca got an idea: What if we buried it?

Yes! “X” marks the spot. We looked for a perfect location. I suggested burying it between two topless sunbathers, but Luca suggested I not be a creep. We decided to bury it near a little bar where the patrons didn’t look like coconut thieves. 

We placed the nut into a little hole and found two big sticks for our “X.”

A few days went by, filled with surf lessons and snorkeling and bad hat purchasing. We were at the beach and I had assumed my position under an umbrella with my Nick Offerman book. I had recently purchased some roasted crickets from a beach vendor, which tasted like roasted crickets. They served the purposed of maintaining my “idiot” status among our wonderful neighbor girls. 

Luca suddenly remembered the coconut. Oh! Let’s see if it’s there! I leapt from my chair and we headed off with the enthusiasm of Blackbeard just before he murdered a bunch of people. 

Almost immediately I wished I had brought sandals. The midday sand was scorching. We “ouch ouch-ed” our way and ended up needing to stand in the surf for a couple minutes to sooth our burning tootsies.

Then came the issue of remembering where we actually buried the nut. It was by a bar, but the beach was littered with roughly 42,000 bars. The topless sunbathers were gone, apparently warned there was a creep around. 

So we would race up the beach, realize were in the wrong spot and then race back to the cool surf. 

Eventually we spotted the bar! With the bored people! Luca and I searched for the “X.” But no luck. There were a few old firepits around that contained lots of X carcasses. Well, who wants an old rotten coconut anyway?

Oh wait! Look. We spotted a half “X.” A capital “I.” Or a minus sign. We dove into the sand and dug. There it was! The rotten old nut. The greatest, most valuable rotten old nut in the world! 

We shouted and celebrated and danced and sang, “Yo ho ho and a bottle of rum.”

Then we chucked the coconut and went home. 

Whales, Dolphins and Dorks

 My transformation to Dork Dad was almost complete. I already had a paunchy stomach. I recently purchased a man purse/fanny pack for my SPF 100, glasses cleaner and wallet. Now all I needed was an oversized floppy hat. The kind that acts as universal birth control. Elijah and I found one at a local surf shop that was a little too big for my pinhead. When asked via text for her opinion, Diana said, “I hope you don’t bring that back from vacation.” 

I was ready to go snorkeling.

Our great and lovely neighbors like to spruce up any sitting on your butt vacation with at least one adventure. Last time it was screaming across the Mexican canopy via zipline. This year, they wanted to head out on a boat and mingle among the jellyfish and stingray and sea urchin.

At 7am, we jumped into a van with the intention of catching a boat a few towns over. The driver mentioned his cousin was our captain and was actually just at the bottom of the hill, which he gladly drove us to for $20.

I had all my Dork Dad gear, plus a flannel shirt, because of my allergy to cold. As I age, I tolerate cold less and less. Especially water. Cold water on my skin feels like a million pins and needles. It’s so uncomfortable that I often wonder how far along the Autism spectrum I am. I’ve all but abandoned pools and oceans unless it’s so hot I will burst into flames.

So why did I agree to go snorkeling? My hatred of missing out on fun with Eli and Luca beats my hatred of cold.

After meeting our hilarious and charming crew (I have yet to meet a jerkface Mexican person), we set sail (vial outboard motor) to the middle of the ocean in search of whales.

I’ve been fooled before on the old whale hunt. “Oh, they were just here yesterday. Shoot. You should’ve seen ‘em. They were asking about you and everything.”

But these guys knew their stuff. We came face to face with six or seven massive beasts, who all did us the solid of splashing their giant tails or doing that thing where they shoot salt water out of their heads. We even saw some frisky dolphins who were hilariously curious about our boat. 

Luca spotted a cluster of Jellyfish and I said, “Awesome.” Our captain replied, “Not awesome.”

We then headed to a little beach for the main event. We were outfitted with the world’s oldest and ill fitting-est snorkels and flippers were told to walk the plank. The second I hit the water I strung together a set of swears that would make Andrew Dice Clay blush. My facemask decided to poop out and my sinuses got a thorough salt water treatment. 

I wondered if 45 seconds was enough snorkeling when I noticed Luca was also struggling. He was in near tears. I directed us to the beach, where we regrouped. I was plenty happy to just examine every grain of sand. Ooh look. Sand.

The captain had taken a liking to Luca and arrived with a little life preserver to help with the snorkeling. All Mexican captains, surf instructors and waiters love Luca. They love to shout, Luuuuca!” and then laugh.

Luca headed off with the captain and the rest of the group to look at Dori and Nemo and Marlin. I stayed safely on shore to continue my sand studies.

Chris, my bromance partner, arrived looking like Daniel Craig emerging from the sea. He asked how my snorkeling was going and I lamely said, “Oh. Yeah. My mask is broken. I’m fine here on shore.”

“Oh, take mine. I’ve seen enough eels.”

I tried to argue with him, but Chris has this way of convincing me to bomb down hills on skateboards or take expert level yoga classes or ziplining. 

I re-entered the ocean and after much swearing, got the hang of snorkeling and saw some fun little fishies and little eelies and some rockies. It was, dare I say, fun?

We were beaconed back to the boat for peanut butter sandwiches (courtesy of Lexa) and headed back home. I was glad for my flannel shirt and big, dorky hat, BOTH of which I am bringing home.