Minivan Death March

Dear Mars,

I wrote letters to your sisters the whole time they were in-utero. They were mostly just panicked whining, so I'm not really sure you're missing anything. Anyway, it felt appropriate to finally drop you a line. What up?

Your mom thinks that you will need a place to live and a way to be carried between different destinations so we're trying to buy a house with more rooms and car with more seats. The house is out of our price range and there's virtually no hope that we'll be able to sell the one that we're in. And the car is a minivan. So, you know, thanks.

When you mom got a job after decades of schooling she got to page through hundreds of brochures and drive all kinds of fancy things before choosing exactly the car she wanted. Now that my chance to buy my first new car ever has come I was simply told that we were going to need something 'buslike' and that I could pick the color. It will be black, a vehicle dressed for the funeral of my youth that its purchase will represent. I can't tell you how many times I've said that I'd rather be hit by a minivan than drive one. And if we ever have another trip like the one to Colorado I might just lay down in front of this one.

Apparently your house will sell faster if prospective buyers don't step on cat shit and legos the second they come inside so we're hiding our real life in boxes and trying to make it look like an Ikea catalog in here. We also had a backyard installed. Your sisters we let play in dirt. For buyers we spring for sod.

And we're less than a month away from shooting on the movie, which is a whole other story that we'll get into when you get here. The important thing to remember will be that no matter how it turns out and no matter what people say or spray paint on our house, it will be the reason you have a room to sleep in.

And a minivan.

Yea.

Even The Furniture Is Talented

We had a table read for The Beaver. If you, like me, are new to movie making you might have expected this to involve a talking table. You, like me, would have been disappointed. Why call it a 'table read' you'd say. That's false advertising you'd say. And then someone would politely ask you to try not to speak for the next two hours.

But wait! Hard as it is to believe, there are better things than talking furniture. Turns out you can put people, not people, Actors!, around the table and let them read the script. If you've read anything about The Beaver then you're aware who some of the non furniture 'table read' participants were, but the people they got to round out the cast, to just come in off the street and like, read a stupid script by some moron about a talking beaver... well, it boggles the mind. I kept smiling at them and shaking their hands and asking how they could possibly be there since in my mind they actually lived in the clouds and only materialized to appear in movies and television.

And then they would ask me to get them another cup of coffee and I would say, no, no, see, I'm the writer, and then they would say, two sugars, and I would get their coffee. But still!

Anyway, at some point in this process I've begun to wrap my mind around the idea that a group of people were actually going to film the things I had written on a page, were going to say those lines, and record it, and put it together, and show it to people. And they were going to do all this on purpose!

But hearing them do it all at once, together, around a non speaking table, well, it would have given me chills had I not been sweating profusely and wondering how many people had noticed my sweating and wondering if the fact that everyone immediately went and got a paper towel after shaking my hand had anything to do with my sweating. Long story short, it was fantastic, thrilling, and I dropped like ten pounds of water weight.

As I've stressed countless times nothing's guaranteed and these things can and do fall apart, so rather than wait for the red carpet to enjoy myself, I'm pretty much breaking out the steak dinners for every step in the process. You received my W2! Steak! The woman reading Worker #1 was in three episodes of Mad Men! Medium rare! You've never seen anyone sweat through a jacket! Which way to Morton's? At this rate I will need a bypass before principal photography. If you, like me, were just an untalented hack whose idea for a beaver driven Teen Wolf spinoff had gotten you this far, you wouldn't have it any other way.

Vacation!

Amy and the girls flew home. The ride up was so indescribably awful for everyone that driving five hours in the wrong direction to drop them off at the airport seemed beyond reasonable. Sadly, their flight was delayed so much I almost beat them back to the house and 138 innocent individuals got a solid taste of Nipples lung capacity. But....

Totally worth it.

We were not only able to carry the twins up their first peak, but my mom, a woman who gets scared of heights on her tiptoes, somehow braved actual hand and foot scrambling at more than 12,000 feet and made her first summit. That picture alone justified the ride in our rolling scream machine.

We also hiked and biked and rafted and ate and did other things that brochures advised us to do. Nixie headbanged to old time bluegrass, Ripples touched fingers with anyone who came within ten feet. Both of them realized that everywhere we went the rocks were all out of order and spent hours carefully rearranging riverbeds and trailsides.

Now we're home, where you have to work and lock your doors and everything melts by noon. For summer they should change the sign at the border as you cross into Texas so instead of 'Welcome' it just says 'Are You Sure About This?'

Vacation?

I'm trying to figure out how old my children will have to be before I'll get back in the car with them. Settling on a specific number is really moot. The point is that I don't expect to live that long.

It took us 27 hours to go 800 miles. One or the other was screaming for 21 of those 27 hours. Around hour 17 Amy was already suggesting we just fly back and leave our car to be consumed by Colorado wildlife. Around hour 25 Stacey decided that she was never having children of her own. And in every single hour our carefully prepared arsenal of Pixar dvd's, Raffi cd's, and bought and borrowed toys hit the girls with all the effect of creme pies thrown at a brigade oncoming tanks. I will do this again when they perfect teleportation.

But I digress. What I meant to say was, we've arrived. And that for literally no reason that I can currently remember, other than that we already had a name picked out, we've gone and gotten Amy pregnant again. Mars should arrive January 8th, which you of course know is also my birthday, along with my father's. And Elvis'. So... feel free to plan your visit or escape accordingly. Should this development leave you lying awake worried that my brood might come to your house and waterboard your ears with their cries in triplicate, rest assured that unless you live within walking distance or someone invents a cattle trailer for children, you are safe.

Beard Power

Oh hai. I know, it’s been a while. I was trying to grow a beard, which required all my concentration. Here’s the things that happened while small hairs were growing out of patchy areas of my face:

Ripley does not like you. Nixon loves you. It really doesn’t matter who you are, I’m confident this will hold up. Unless you’re Amy, in which case they both love you so much they will cry unless at least three of their limbs are wrapped around you at all times.

When people ask what I will remember about my second father’s day I will say it was the day the girls started leaning into each other, touching their foreheads, and laughing about it like maniacs. It is gut wrenchingly adorable. As you know, “What do you remember about your second father’s day?” is a question people get all the time.

I have completed the snail project. Will he win the big race? I’m sure we’ll find out around 2025. Animation takes a long time. By that time he will probably be a cat instead of a snail and the race will take place on another planet and all my brilliant words will have been changed by a screenwriting supercomputer. Until then, please don’t bring up snails. Or racing. Or my soul crushing battles with procrastination. Ask me about my second father’s day.

Did you know that talking beavers are really expensive? Like, they cost more than your house. I mean, your house might cost more than a talking beaver, but if it did I doubt you’d be reading this. You’d be skiing with a celebrity on imported snow and then rubbing your aching muscles with wads of cash. The point is, I think an inanimate object is going to make more money on this movie than me. On the upside, it seems as though there’s a good chance we’re actually going to make the movie in the near future. I mean, things can certainly still go horribly wrong, but, like I said, we’ve hired a beaver. And everyone knows the old Hollywood saying - ‘It’s all just speculation until someone hires a beaver.’

But before we make any beaver movies, we’re taking the girls on vacation. We’re driving. 18 hours. Which, if you’ve driven as far as the supermarket with our whole gang you’ll know is something that none of us is likely to survive. If you have brilliant suggestions for occupying children in the car or are willing to write an Ambien prescription for kids under two, please contact me ASAP.

Until then, I promise my days of intensely focusing on my facial hair to the exclusion of all else are behind me and I will post again before you can say sock puppet. Meanwhile, may I suggest touching foreheads with someone and laughing hysterically? It looks super fun.

How I'm Pretty Sure The Conversation Went

Nixie: Hey Ripples

Ripples: Yeah Nixie

Nixie: These diapers totally come off.

Ripples: The hell you say.

Nixie: Yeah. Just pulled those tabs and bingo.

Ripples: Well, I'll be.

Nixie: And look. There's this stuff inside. Like play-doh. Brown play-doh.

Ripples: Really spreading that around aren't you.

Nixie: Well, I was just kind of smearing it all over the bed, kind of an abstract art sort of thing, but then I thought, hey, if I smear it all over myself, then I'm the art! Sweet, eh?

Ripples: Uh... yeah.

Nixie: You want to be art? Lean over here.

Ripples: I'm good thanks.

Nixie: You know the sad part? When dad sees this I bet he's totally not going to appreciate either the ingenuity or the subtlety that went into it.

Ripples: Nixie-

Nixie: That guy wouldn't know art if it crapped on his bed.

Ripples: Nix-

Nixie: He's such a moron. And you know what? Frankly, I find him smelly. Just plain smelly.

Ripples:....

Nixie: Ripples? Don't you think dad smells?

Ripples....

(Long beat)

Nixie: He's right behind me isn't he?

(Ripples nodding)

Nixie: Well, Dad, I guess it's out now. I'm dropping out of pre-pre-pre school to be an artist, and I think you smell. Now pick me up. I want you to experience my work.

Happy 8760 Hours

Nipples,

8760 hours ago you cried incessantly, had dark splotchy hair, and pooped tar. Everyone said you reminded them of me. Now you are smiley blonds who poop rainbows. Everyone says you remind them of your mother.

8761 hours ago I was afraid that my track record with fish, turtles, and frogs meant that you would die in my care. Most likely in a jar or box with no air holes. You have successfully outlived Fins, Hoppy, Pokey, and FinsII. You're hot on the trail of Snowball. Kudos.

8762 hours ago I thought bringing you home would instantly make me incredibly lame, irrelevant, and exactly like everyone else. It turns out I have always been incredibly lame and that's what makes me special.

During your first 744 hours I strongly considered joining the military and requesting immediate deployment. The recruiter said, A) that wasn't how it worked and B) your mother had already been in asking these questions. He did give me some brochures to keep handy for when you turn two. Semper fi.

4 hours ago I woke up and tried to think of things to say to and about two girls who had endured a year with me as their father. Things no one had ever said or thought to say. Things I could have told the me from those 8760 hours ago that would have prepared him for everything in between. Then I realized how stupid it was to waste precious sleeping time thinking about blog entries and dozed off.

All those hours ago my least favorite thing in the world was people with kids who talked about how it changed their lives, how it completed them, thus implying that those of us without were not yet whole. I had studies and data about how people with kids were overall less happy, poorer, and more likely to know the words to Hannah Montana songs.

The truth is I was neither unhappy nor incomplete before you got here. But a mere 8760 hours later, if you tried to leave I don't how much of me would be left. A year ago that sentence would have disgusted me. I guess that means I'm a changed person, though I'm sure those who know me would assure you I'm no better.

What I can say is that I remain an incredibly impatient person, and I yet I can't ever remember so consciously wishing I could slow time down, savor ever second and squeeze every minute. There's still plenty of occasions when I look up and wonder, how is it not bedtime yet?, but if you told me that the next 8760 hours would take forever I'd be just fine with that.

So when you read this years from now, perhaps while wrestling with decisions of your own, accept the following not as a prescription but simply a fact, and take it for what you think it's worth: I am insanely in love with both of you and will be until there stops being such a thing.