Up until that point, I was certain I was going to become a mathematician, physicist, astronomer or aerospace engineer. I was on the honor roll and in the honor society at a very well respected technical school in Boston. I had studied calculus on my own while in high school. All my friends were planning the next phase of their journey and applying to MIT, Harvard or Blaine’s Hair School. I, on the other hand, just had the rug pulled out from under me. But I persevered anyway and attended Northeastern University for Electronic Engineering (these were in the days when computers were as big as refrigerators and programming involved punch cards…bajillions of them).

But forever in the back of my head I kept remembering “Forest Ranger.” (yes, you are supposed to be laughing hysterically right now). A couple of years later and I learned the concept of the self-fulfilling prophecy. I dropped out of school as I was beginning to FLUNK, yes FLUNK some of my math and physics classes (if only they had classes on how to light a campfire using only a grub). Thus began my downward spiral in life that I will share with you in future posts (after all, I am up to two posts this year!).

So when my 11 year old comes home with math homework, I am thrilled to be able to offer some assistance. I am confident in my math abilities. A couple of nights ago, his homework consisted of making up 4 pages of math worksheets that he did not do back in November for various reasons. The topic was called Order of Operations, also known as Order of Precedence. It is a simple set of rules that determine the order in which a series of operations should happen in math. For example:

2 + 3 x 2 = ?

Well, if you simply go from left to right, then you would get 10 (2+3=5. 5×2=10). The reality is that the Order of Operations mandate the hierarchy that supersedes simply moving from left to right. The correct answer is 8. It is 2 + (3 x 2) or 2 + 6.  A quick Google search shows that this order has been the standard since at least the 1500′s. The “kids these days” have a mnemonic called PEMDAS. Which stands for:

Parenthesis
Exponents
Multiplication
Division
Addition
Subtraction

So, no matter how complex the problem, this is the algorithm used to solve it. I learned this in junior high and had it reinforced every year and even into college while learning programming.

Now, if the problem is:

3 x (2+5) x 6(4+8) + 20/(5-1) = whatever the hell it equals

…then everyone in the world will has an opportunity to get it correct and know with confidence the rest of the planet got the same answer.

Back to my son, since no one is reading about Order or Operations anyway. He was working, rather diligently I might add, on his homework. I was very proud of his focus, at least his definition of focus. Then, when he was halfway through the homework, he asked me a simple question. I showed him my answer using the process above. He looked at me and said “What are you doing? You can’t just add parenthesis wherever you want. It will change the answer!” I told him you can add parenthesis wherever it made sense to keep things together. I quickly glanced through all his answers and realized he had done each and everyone of them incorrectly. I told him that. This was the beginning of the end for him. At this point, he proceeded to justify his answers, screechingly, by stating this is the way he learned it. He then proceeded to tell me that I had learned it the “old fashioned way,” screechingly. He then continued on his screeching rampage and suggested that A. How could I have allowed him to do it the wrong way and B. Why do I always have to criticize him.

We are no longer on the topic of math. We are no longer interested in “getting over it” and correcting the errors. We have devolved into a screechfest. I say “we” on purpose. At this point in time, I literally dropped to his level and joined in, as if we were caught in a whirlpool and I was wearing a lead life vest. He continued along this course for well over 20 minutes. Never once accepting responsibility.

We were no longer being productive and in fact had downgraded to destructive, so I sent him to bed; literally the only thing I could have done that would not have been the equivalent of a lion eating their young. He stormed off, disgusted by me while I stormed off disgusted by me too. “Can you believe that kid?!”, I went on for the next 20 minutes.

After the house quieted down, I remembered the importance of this homework and how much effort he put into despite getting each and every answer wrong. I decided to try something I have never done before. I am usually an early riser. Mike has to be up by 6 in order to get to school on time-ish. I woke up at 4 and grabbed his homework, strewn about all over the living room and I found one of those big, pink and trapezoidal erasers and began erasing each and every one of his answers. For some reason, my baby goats have never learned to erase with finesse. They often leave the paper in worse condition than if they had just left it alone.

I erased each answer and calmly put parenthesis around a few of the problems in order to organize Mike. I then tip-toed upstairs at 5AM and whispered calmly in his ear. I told him that I had put on some water for tea, heated the kitchen (a common excuse for not wanting to get out of bed) and that no one else was awake. “Michael, please get up now and we can get this done together. I promise; no fighting.”

He rolled over and looked at me and said “Not now Dad. You should have told me you were going to do this last night. It is too early” and he turned away. I walked back downstairs and nearly cried. It was not anger this time. It simply was a stunned feeling that my 11 year old has not only bested me…he has bested himself.

I sat down at the kitchen table staring at his homework; confident that he could do it….equally confident that I could do it for him without anyone being the wiser. The internal debate raged on in my head until 5:30. Michael came downstairs, shaggy doggedly and said “Dad, I am ready now.”

I sat next to him and watched him write each number down and finally complete his work in time for school.

This, the longest post ever written, served only a single purpose: simply, to tell you how proud I am of that boy.

Now, if I can just get him to brush his teeth with toothpaste.

You see, the 3D Dan has usurped time and energy from the Virtual Dan. Therein lies my biggest problem: Life gets in the way of living.

I am not so selfish as to assume my life is any more stressful than yours. But I am bold enough to tell you that I am not doing a good job of managing that stress. I have always prided myself on how well I can handle stress. I was an EMT for a while and I even took the Air Traffic Controllers exam ( a million years ago) when I realized that being a pilot would take a LOT of money. I loved stress and crisises crisiums crises.

Things are different now. The stress is no longer an adrenaline rush. This stress is a pervasive thread that weaves itself into each cell in my body. This stress has now been so internalized that I know there is a physiological price to pay.

Here is a brief rundown of some of the things on my plate.

My health: My leg has healed leaving yet another scar the size of a saucer on my thigh.  I need to receive Remicade infusions every 6 weeks. Each infusion takes at least 5 hours. Very draining.  Everything is fine but I fear a flare up at any time.  One result of my previous flare-up is that I stopped running as it is completely impossible to run with this disease. Starting back up again has been a challenge. I did go for a 3.1 mile run the other day though….now it is all about consistency (for those who follow my blog, I bet you can see how challenging “consistency” is for me).

My Baby Goats: Insanity is the rule at the Leone Estates. Each baby goat brings their own set of challenges to the table. I’ll stop here, before saying something I might regret.

My Dad: ALS (Amyotropic Lateral Sclerosis) is a shitty disease. I am watching day by day as my dad progresses through the symptoms. He is virtually unable to speak now and his swallowing is severely affected. We all know what is happening to him and what will happen, but he prefers to work through this one day at a time. This is completely opposite of the “big picture” approach I would take if faced with the same prognosis, but I totally respect his perspective.

My parents live upstairs from me and we bear witness to the merciless, tomorrow-will-be-worse-than- today, progression of this disease. This puts an intense amount of pressure on the kids and I feel this leads to some of the problems that I alluded too above.

I know my dad is suffering and will suffer and that kills me.

Last Sunday was my niece’s First Communion in the Catholic Church. My parents have always considered themselves Christians but I have never in my life seen them practice it.  Last Sunday, we were all sitting in the same row and at one point, I looked over and saw my father on his knees praying. I may be an atheist, but this tore at my heart and I had to leave the church weeping like a child.

My work: INSANE! A pending deadline on a major, highly-visible project is stressful enough without the added stress of my normal day-to-day duties. But, truly, I love my job.

So, that is it in a nutshell…utterly uninteresting. The only purpose for blogging about it is to give me something to blog about.

Thanks to both of you for listening!

Daddy: How was your day at school, Coco (my 4 year old daughter; aka Coca Cola, CooCoo for Cocoa Puffs, Cocarena Nicoco, Coconut, Satana)?

Coco: Samuel kissed me.

Daddy: What?!

Coco: He kissed me on the lips.

Daddy: What?!

Coco:  He’s my boyfriend.

Daddy: What?!

Coco: We are going to get married.

Daddy: What?!

Coco: He kissed my lunch box and I kissed his.

Daddy: What?!

I am on my way to Samuel’s house so I can punch him in the neck. Film at 11.

Once in high school, I fully expected to purchase one of these for Mr Manos’ physics class. But when we showed up on the first day, he wrote on the board “Texas Instruments TI-30.” He told us that was the name of the calculator we were expected to purchase. Apparently, this was one of the first years that calculators would be allowed. I remember going home and telling my father that we needed to buy one. Imagine the look on his face when I told him that! He just assumed that a calculator was a form of cheating.

We went to the department store; I wish I could remember which one, and purchased the TI-30 calculator. I brought it home and opened the box and there was a 100 page manual, a blue plastic zippered case and the calculator. What a beautiful thing this was in all its LED goodness. The buttons held an electronic world of numbers, not unlike the slide rule. I can remember the square root and cubed functions as well as parenthesis and memory recall. But what I remember the most was the button that had a solitary symbol on it, pi.

I had no idea what pi stood for, but I remember being fascinated by the symbol, the Greek letter pi. All I knew is that when I pushed the button, the same numbers appeared; 3.14159267. I was so fascinated by this number, that I actually remember going to the library to research what it meant. The librarian happily helped. She soon left me amidst a stack of geometry books. I read with fervor as much as I could and remember being dumbfounded when I found out that the number pi never ends. To this day, I still don’t understand how a number never ends.

Over the years, this number never left my brain. I could recite pi to 8 decimal places since 1978. In the big cosmic picture, so effing what?!

But fast forward this story to 6 months ago. Despite the fact that my oldest is in an advanced work program because of his academic abilities, he was struggling in the fifth grade. Every single night was a disaster of tantrums (his), rage (mine) and even some not-so-nice words (ours). I was completely disgusted at Michael’s apparent lack of enthusiasm or even his inability to simply get his homework over with as quickly as possible. Various techniques to motivate him failed miserably. I even (stupidly) said to Michael: “hey, buddy, if you finish this homework in the next hour, I will give you 5 dollars.” He looked me in the eyes and said: “No thanks.”

Then I had a brainstorm  I just wanted to see if ANYTHING would motivate him. So this is what I did: I wanted to offer him a challenge that was an academic challenge, but not tied to any of his current schoolwork. So, what I took out a dry erase marker and began writing out the first 30 digits to the number pi. I the copied it onto index cards and stuck them everywhere; from his school bag, to the bathroom wall.  I told him that he would have 2 weeks from that day to learn those 30 digits. Simply memorize them. He could try as many times as he wanted. If he made a mistake, just try again later. The reward at the end of this exercise would be the Nintendo Wii (this was before I realized that these consoles were something like a million dollars and impossible to find). The reality was that all I wanted him to do was get close enough and to just show a sincere effort. I actually PLANNED on buying the Wii anyway.

Two weeks to the day and I went to Michael and asked if he wanted to take a shot at it. His answer: “I didn’t memorize ALL of it.” I told him that was OK and asked him what he had already memorized. He said: “3 point something?”

I know full well that bribery really does not have a lot of staying power, but I would have thought if I simply presented this as challenge outside of school, he would look at it the right way. BUT HE MADE NO EFFORT WHATSOEVER! Why is that?

Christmas Card Attempt – FINAL

This was the best picture of the bunch!

Rule 1: Don’t have kids!

Rule 2: If you ever find yourself thinking that YOUR kids will be different than everyone else’s, then refer to Rule 1.

Rule 3: If you have to have kids, then don’t have 3!

Rule 4: If you have to have kids, then DON’T have a 10 year old!

Let me preface this story by telling you that we live in a shoe box. We are on top of each other when we sleep; literally due to the fact that we are ALL IN THE SAME EFFING BED! OK, maybe it is not that bad. But it is bad. Another important point to remember is that I am not a drunk! I enjoy a drink here and there but nights out are far and few between.

So, when I got home last night around midnight after a dinner party with some coworkers at a local sushi restaurant, I needed to tip-toe. My Baby Goats will manage to wake up at a blink so it is important to be quiet. I was also just a little bit inebriated, and I definitely did wantwant them to see me stumbling in. The Goats are still young enough to believe that I am a hero. They will learn soon enough that I am merely a mortal who fails more often than I suceed at this parenting thing.

I showered the night’s events off my body and sat at the laptop to type some wonderful Japanese sake-induced account of my evening to share with Both of My Readers (BoMR).

But before my fingers hit the keyboard, my head hit the pillow.

Imagine the dreams I had. Imagine the wasabi-based dreams that floated prettily in an out of my head. Now imagine the sound of Winnie the Pooh emanating from the Goats’ toybox at 2AM. As parents, we are way too familiar with toys that talk only in the middle of the night. We all know that the only people that would ever buy a toy without an OFF button are our single, childless friends.

Now imagine, my sashimi-induced rage as I launched myself from the couch and proceeded to disassemble the toy box all the while Winnie laughing maniacally; taunting me with his honey pot sweetness.

I finally found the sucker and removed him from the box, leaving the remaining toys on the floor. The Baby Goats hardly stirred. It was a Winnie the Pooh key chain that somehow managed to escape my cleaning rampage when we no longer had 6 month olds in the house. I flipped this Winnie key chain around in my hand trying to find an OFF/ON switch. Nothing. I then looked for the battery and proceeded to stick a steak knife into the miniature screw that so securely holds the 400 AAA batteries. The knife tip broke. Meanwhile, Winnie seemed to be getting louder and my eardrums felt like they were going to bleed.

I pride myself on having good judgment and remaining calm. Apparently, Calm Dan went out the window, which is where Winnie should have gone and left for the raccoons to tear into him. Instead I decided… on second thought, it actually wasn’t all that logical, it was more like I “reacted”, by filling the bucket in the sink with water and throwing Pooh into it. I told you I wasn’t being rational! At 2AM, this made a whole lot of sense to me! I thought the best thing to do to stop the blaring was to drown Pooh!

I almost felt sorry for this bear as the gurgling sounds diminished. Except for the fact that the gurgling sounds never ended! Pooh was caught in a loop of final agonal breaths and all I could do was my best to ignore it. This was my digitized version of the Tell Tale Heart, written by Edgar Allen Pooh!

Ignore it, I did; until my 6 year old woke up at 5:00 and heard the sound coming from the bucket. He looked inside and you can imagine what went through this kid’s brain. He began wailing. I woke up and I tried to comfort him as he held the waterlogged key chain in his hands. I told him that this was an infant’s toy and we had no infants in the house. He said this was his “FAVORITE” infant’s toy. I then told him it was an accident, despite the CSI-inspired crime scene sans the blood and yellow tape. He keeps looking at me like I am the very definition of evil..perhaps I am.

Clearly, the rule of thumb here, is stay away from Sushi Night Out with coworkers!

It usually goes something like this:

• Dad: “Will you stop picking your nose and just write your name on the effing piece of paper?!”
• Michael: “YOU HATE ME!”

He storms out in tears. Welcome to my every day.

This homework is actually make-up homework from the night before. He had a list of words related to early explorers. Each word was on a separate sheet of paper with the following questions to fill out:

• Word:
• Definition:
• Where did you learn this definition:
• Synonym:
• Antonym:

Because the pages were sort of generic, we didn’t worry when it asked for antonyms for some of the words. “Just tell the teacher that there isn’t one.” I told Michael.

It turned out that he was marked incorrect by his teacher and he needs to complete it tonight. I just threw my hands in the air and said something like: “How am I ever going to do your homework for you, when the teacher (all of 21 years old) is asking you for the impossible.” Now my son hates me because his VERY short-lived dream that his father is a genius is shattered in a second and none of the pleading I do is changing his opinion…actually making it worse as I tell him “I am not an idiot son. There really is no way to do this homework. Trust me!”

“Sure Dad, whatever you say.” As he hangs his head in shame.

So, with my tail between my legs, I turn to you, BoMR, to guide me. You have helped me get through some pretty tough times and turn to you once again.

Question for BoMR (Both of My Readers):

Can you tell me a synonym and antonym for these words?

Compass

Age of Exploration

Explorer

Astrolabe

Here is what I have come up with:

Compass:

• synonym = That directional device that really doesn’t do anything especially when they put one in your car (“Everyone in the car, we are driving NNE today!).
• antonym = The biological gene that allows me to get lost…and NOT ask for directions (Yes, I went there, ladies and gentlemen. I am edgy like that! Pushing-the-envelope Leone, at your service. Stay tuned for my White Guys Can’t Dance routine!)

Age of Exploration:

• synonym = Age of Self-Stimulation
• antonym = Age of Having Your Mother Walk In While Self-Stimulating And The Subsequent Years Of Therapy

Explorer:

• synonym = “2nd Base” when the world is your oyster
• antonym = Marriage when you can’t even get up to bat

Astrolabe:

• synonym = Whattheeffisanastrolabe
• antonym = shoelace

I am turning to both of you now. You are my only hope.

I traded my level 1 Charmander, caught in a Pokeball, for a Garchomp, caught in a Master Ball. It was awesome! Now I have all of the evolutions: Gibble, Gabite and Garchomp. It knew strength, hyperbeam and whilrwind attack.

When did this boy learn a new language? What the hell is a Charmander? But since my head latched on to some of the words so I thought perhaps this was a version of Esperanto that only 10 year olds understand…Pre-teeneranto?

So to help with the translation, I had a little fun and “babel-ized” it. I took the original quote and plugged it into here. From here, the text is translated from English to French then back to English, then to another language and so on for 5 different languages and finally ending up at English again. This can be funny because after each translation it gets imperfecter and imperfecter. The end result was this:

I interested my level 1 Charmander, intercepted in Pokeball, for Garchomp, intercepted in an arsenal of the sphere. It was impressive! Hour I has all the progresses: Gibble, Gabite and Garchomp.It had known the attack of the resistance, of them hyperbeam he and whilrwind.

“Arsenal of the Sphere.” I have no idea what that is, but I want to have one.