Daddy: "Isobel?"
Isobel: "Yeah?"
Daddy: "Isobel why is it do you think, that there is so much evil in your heart?"
Isobel: "What?'
Daddy: "What is it that makes you so...evil? Is it that you just can't do good?"
Isobel: "..."
Daddy: "Is it the Jungian thing?"
Isobel: "The what?'
Daddy: " The Jungian thing , that there is a duality in all of us."
Isobel: "..."
Daddy: "Or are you the Freudian seething cauldron?"
Isobel : "What's a cauldron?"
Daddy: "A big pot."
Isobel: "..."
Daddy: "Well? What makes you such a Princess of Darkness?"
Isobel: "I have allergies."
This past week, Mrs. Narrator took full advantage of my unemployment and put me to work on the living room. A more wicked task master I have not met. O.K really the living room was due for an overhaul. I hate the doing but always enjoy the end result and looking around it ain't half bad.
I can't take full credit for the living room's current state however. Mrs. Narrator picked virtually everything in here. From the floor to the colour on the walls. Floor boards to window dressings it was all her design. I am very much the type of person who, unless I am vehemently opposed to something I am fine with leaving the decor decisions to someone else. BUT if you want me to do the installing of said decor, then let me alone to do it. Don't micro manage me. If I want your help I'll ask. Unless you're six and your name is Isobel. When she found out that we were going to re-do the living room, I thought she might burst.
I re-did the upstairs bathroom a while ago. So long ago that I remember The Boy seeming so small in the empty bathroom, let alone Isobel. She loved the paint...and it loved her. I told her to put on old clothes she didn't care about which didn't work out so well. She came in dressed in clothes she actually quite liked and naturally had paint on most of it by the time she finished painting. I think we hid some of it from Mrs. Narrator but she eventually discovered the paint stained clothes. Luckily Izzy had since outgrown them.
So when she found out there was to be a new colour for the living room, she began to pick out the old clothes. This time they were clothes nobody cared about...I think. I don't remember any issues when the kids helped me paint the upstairs bathroom but maybe it was because they didn't really help. In retrospect, I think Izzy painted with a tooth brush and The Boy painted with a brush that you might use for detailing model cars. She slathered on the paint in giant globs with a brush and Mrs. Narrator and I did our best to smooth them out with a roller. She had a ball. Ah well, strategically placed furniture can hide almost anything, right?
Next came the floor. I hate doing floors. I mean I love them because I can do them and relatively well but I hate doing them just the same. It's a pain and a pain in the ass. I get grouchy when things don't work as simply as I think they're going to and things NEVER go as simply as I think they're going to. Ever. They seem to take forever but are finished before you know it. The bulk of it anyway. The details like base boards and shoe molding can drag on forever if you don't stay on top of it.
To her credit, Mrs. Narrator gave me breathing room and only came into the room if I asked. Past experiences with flooring have taught us both that we do not work well together. Two completely different personality types that do not mesh when home improvement is involved. Isobel meshes with everybody.
"What're you doing?" she asked.
"I'm putting in the floor." I said in a 'did you really just ask that?' tone.
It's a laminate floor, decent stuff and looks very much like hardwood flooring. It's tongue and groove and so it involves sliding pieces and clicking them together. I had begun to slide a piece into place and stopped for a minute to get the tape measure.
"Daddy?" Isobel asked.
"Yes Monkey face banana Popsicle?"
"Daddy, what goes in this spot?"
She was referring to the space between the last board and the one I was currently moving but hadn't slid completely into place yet.
"This board goes there. I haven't moved it into place yet. It attaches to that board and then I keep moving."
"Whew," she said. "That's good. I was worried we would have a hole in the new floor and that would be bad looking."
She took a keen interest in the whole renovation process, the further along we got the more interesting the questions got."Daddy?"
"Yes Pickle?"
"When we bought this house, did we paint it or did the instruction man do it for us?" she asked.
"Who?" I asked. "Did who paint it?"
"The instruction man, the man who builds house."
"No, actually Mummy painted the living room."
The whole process of doing the floor took three days and the more floor she had to play on, the better the games got. The first three courses of floor and she was playing Pirate ship. That didn't last long and went into cheerleader practice. Two more rows and she was taking the lead in the school play.
I was nearing the end, most of the swearing was finished ( it was the last couple of rows so in fact the swearing was really starting to ramp up) and Isobel had transformed the living room into her very own dance school. I was kneeling over trying to fit one of the last pieces. She walked in front of me and asked;
"Are you the new janitor?"
I didn't have the chance to answer.
"Boys and girls this is the new janitor, Gus. You can call him Janitor Jenkins and he put in this wonderful floor that we will all be dancing on."
I'm still not sure if it was a back handed compliment for the floor or that she felt it necessary to remind me of my social standing-firmly below hers.
I have been a step father longer than I have been a father. Being a step father is more difficult that being a father I think. You don't have to prove anything to your own kid. Your kid is more or less programmed to like you so long as you stick around. But step children often come with their own ideas about who you are and what you are going to do to them and for them and with them. Often they would prefer you didn't do anything. With anyone ever, at all.
For seven years I have been with The Boy and it has had many ups and man...many downs. I don't mean that to sound as though there have been problems with The Boy. There haven't The Boy is who he is. It takes a long time to figure out that it is you that needs to change. Not the child. It can be a tough pill to swallow. (it was for me) It is still an ongoing thing but something has changed...for the better.
I loved wrestling when I was a kid. Rowdy Roddy Piper (um duh!?!) and his ilk we part of Saturday TV watching right up into my early twenties. I knew it wasn't real but neither was Star Wars or any of the other good vs evil movies and stories I enjoyed and still enjoy but I'm wandering.
Since the kids are home for the summer and I am not working, I am the wake up man. The Boy, approaching the teenage years, is already sleeping like the dead. Ergo, I needed to come up with a way to wake him up that wasn't just hollering and threatening to take stuff away.
I still don't know what possessed me to do it but I did it and the results speak for themselves. He has a stuffed sheep, Bobo the Hobo( the sheep has a corduroy vest and a bindle stick) that has been his trusted companion since he was very small. I don't know if he still uses him for comfort or that he has just been there for so long that to get rid of Bobo would interrupt the Feng Shui of his room.
Anyway, one morning I went to wake him up.
"Wakey- wakey, eggs and bakey." I said to the silence of a sleeping Boy.I saw Bobo on the floor and picked him up and suddenly I was consumed with the machismo of Macho Man Randy Savage. I let out a whoop and dropped the flying elbow (Bobo's elbow, mind) on The Boy.
I have never heard the kind of laughter come out of The Boy that I heard after I assaulted him with the sheep. I was a little taken aback by it. Two days later he told his mother that I wake him up better than she does. We will no doubt have our ups and downs the older he gets and the older I get but the sheep changed something in the relationship. He grew up a bunch and I remembered what it's like to be a kid and laugh because you were enjoying something, not because you thought it was you were supposed to do to be a good parent. Oooooh Yeah!!!!
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