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. 

Baby’s First Hang Ten

Years ago, I took a surfing lesson in Australia on a commercial day off. I arrived out of shape, addicted to cigarettes and nursing a hangover. After twenty minutes of thrashing by Aussie waves and taking on more water than The Orca at the end of “Jaws,” my instructor gently recommended I do the rest of my lesson from the safety of my hotel room.

Since then, I’ve had an aversion to the surfing arts. To paraphrase Robert Duvall, “Hamann don’t surf.”

As with most hard and fast rules of my life, Diana had other plans. We are currently on our make-up vacation in Mexico with the lovely Murphy/Green family (See my New Year’s Eve post for the gory details). Diana could sense this was her opportunity to finally turn our kids into characters from “Point Break.”

In the past, the kids have been satisfied with kiddie activities. Your basic sandcastle building and minor splashing/salt water tasting. But now, as Testosterone and Estrogen surge through their bodies, they yearn for more danger and less clothes. 

When Diana suggested the kids take a surf lesson, I initially scoffed. Hamann don’t surf. But the kids were totally into it. So I did my best to ruin the fun by warning them that the chances they’d actually stand on the board was less than zero. Take it from my experience 16 years ago, kids. Surfing is brutal and you’ll hate it. Plus, don’t smoke.

Their instructor was a hilarious local who “pretended” to be tough, but no amount of order barking could hide the delight in his eyes. The kids participated in the on-land instructions with the appropriate teen sarcasm. Then it was off to the water. 

They lined up in the surf and the instructor found the most perfect wave in the history of waves. The shoved Luca, who popped up. The sun broke through the clouds and the heavens sang “Good Vibrations.” Diana burst into tears.

The girls quickly followed suit. Each riding a wave and splitting their faces with gigantic smiles. 

Then it was Eli’s turn. Surely, he’d prove me right. Hamann don’t surf. I was already preparing my Dad speech about the merits of quitting when he popped right up. His glorious mane floating in the Atlantic (Pacific?) air. 

The kids rode wave after wave and made Hang Loose gestures and Diana cried her eyes out, saying this was the greatest day of her life. 

I even emerged from the safety of my umbrella to shout and clap. I shouted and clapped so much that I got a bad sunburn. Which serves me right. 

p.s. As you can see from the Elijah photo, a bottom exposing interloper named “Prancy Nancy” seemed determined to be decapitated by rookie surfers. The professional photographer managed to include her in almost every shot. 

New Years Eve 2021

 I was sitting on the couch making out with Tutu. I was well on my way to the proper buzz to sleep the night before a big Mexico trip. Our bags were packed. My brother’s dog watching bribe was set out like Santa’s cookies. The boys were mainlining videogames in anticipation of 8 nights away. 

Life was, dare I say, perfect?

Diana walked in. “Did you happen to renew your passport this year?”

Rewhat? 

Apparently there is a little date on your passport that indicates when you have to get a new one. Something like every ten years. It’s easy to miss. Especially when you don’t leave your house for two years. 

I searched my brain for evidence that I had actually renewed my passport and simply forgot. All I could find was Simpsons trivia.

Diana burst into tears and the boys simply said, “What?” over and over. 

I began to repeat, “Go!” over and over. Go. Don’t let my stupidity keep you from the vacation you planned a year ago. Go. My fragile emotional state can’t handle ruining 2021. Go. Go. Go!

Diana and the boys and our neighbors (oh, did I forget to tell you I ruined our neighbors’ vacation too?) decided to postpone. It was a sign from God. 

God wasn’t done.

Diana and Lexa scrambled to book someplace in the US. They found outrageously expensive tickets and accommodations in Puerto Rico. Yes. This is still salvageable. Let’s do this.

Just to be double sure, I looked at the COVID numbers online. There was a 3,000% increase in COVID over the last 5 days. Three. Thousand. Thanks for checking Rick. 

Our neighbors decided to get as far away from us as possible and just started driving west. We opted to head to the cabin. Yeah. The cabin. That’s right. We own a cabin. With toilets and a fireplace and everything. We can salvage this vacation. No one can stop us from our own darned place.

The next morning I ran to Starbucks to get us travel coffee. As I drove home, snow started dumping. I looked up into the sky and heard a booming voice say, “I don’t think so.” By the time I got home the weather folks had issued a “Don’t leave the house ever again” warning.

That pretty much sums up the year for us Hamanns. But you know what? We’ve never been happier. We’re closer than ever. We love each other more than ever. We’ve made it through another scary year together. Together.

As is tradition on HamannEggs, I like to leave a little note for each member of the family.

Diana, you are the love of my life. You still amaze me with every eye shot, COVID scare, and ruined vacation. You manage to see the good in everyone and everything. You keep us together. You are everything. I love you.

Eli, I am so proud of you. You are a wonderful, hilarious caring teenager. You’re the coolest kid ever. I am zero percent surprised you are doing so well in high school. There is no one in the world like you. I will also destroy you in Magic The Gathering later today. You make me so happy. I love you.

Luca, you’ve grown leaps and bounds this year. You are an awesome little sport-o. Your enthusiasm is contagious and hilarious. You make me laugh every day. You make my heart break every day. You are my special guy. I love you.

Jerry, you are a good boy. Stop eating shoes.

Tutu, don’t die. 

The. Worst.

 

A week ago, Elijah got exposed to COVID. One of his pals breathed their evil funk breath on him at lunch. Better safe than sorry, we kept him home for a few days. His symptoms included videogame addiction and making a huge mess in the kitchen. 

It quickly morphed from safely quarantining to just skipping school. So we forced him kicking and screaming back to high school. 

We had a few hours of peace and quiet and then we got a text:

ELI: What is happening? We are on lockdown.

DIANA: I have no idea. Is it because of COVID?

ELI: I’m really scared.

DIANA: Are classes still going on?

ELI: No we are huddled in the corner…If anything happens, I love you.

What the ever loving FUCK??? The worst text exchange a parent can possibly have. A living nightmare. Is this the world we exist in now? Our beautiful, smart, funny, caring baby hiding in the corner of a geometry classroom because of a gun in the goddamn school? Sorry for the swears. But if there was ever a time to introduce swearing into HamannEggs this is it.

We quickly found out that Evanston police had swarmed the school. There was a gun “incident” but it didn’t look like an active shooter. Thank the lord. But neither we nor Eli could be 100% sure it wasn’t turning into hell on earth. 

We kept texting him. Telling him we loved him. Asking him if there was people in the room he could hold hands with. Yeah, is there someone you can hold hands with in case this is your last moment on earth? We told him to do whatever the police said and under no circumstances should he put himself in any danger. 

He kept his sense of humor in his personal nightmare, texting us about his feet falling asleep and making (in hindsight some not great 9/11) jokes. I assured him when he got home he could have his first glass of wine. 

Luca eventually joined the text exchange, as he was on a soft lockdown because of the mess. He showed us a picture of a robot he drew with rectangular nipples. We discussed the benefits of rectangular robot nipples for a while.

Things eventually calmed down and we got the details. Apparently some idiots were smoking weed in the boys’ bathroom and got busted. When searched, a few guns were found. Morons. Jackasses. Blockheads. Fuckwits. 

Can you imagine the avalanche of excrement that is going to rain down on those kids’ heads? Just because they wanted to be cool weed dealers? Not to mention the army of Karens who will descend on the school administration. 

They sent everyone home for the rest of the year. Our last text on the subject was:

ELI: I think we should go see the new Spider-Man movie tonight.

You bet your ass we went.