Greatest Hits of 2008

One of the great things about writing a blog is that you can check the archive to figure out what you’ve done with the past year. From my greatest hits list below, it looks like I spent the bulk of my time attending youth sports, sitting in doctors’ offices, and embarrassing myself in the workplace. Thank god the ball has dropped.* Welcome 2009!

January - The brothers that wheeze together
Currently, smallpox is in apartment 2B, scarlet fever is in 7D, and consumption is about to get evicted for playing its music too loud.

February - I get the feeling we’ve been here before.
Keeping Paolo from the grave during his first winter yielded a considerable store of experience, which appears to be paying off.

March - Six-month checkup
AND THEN, just to lay down the buttercream frosting on the Screw-Your-Parental-Confidence Cake, the doctor pointed out that Gianluca's teeth are coming in wrong.

April - T-Ball or Die
One vice president would be inadequate to administer the complexities of five-year-old T-ball. Case in point, poor Paolo who was on two teams and is now on none. We need PEOPLE on this, for crying out loud.

May - Five’s been a little bit hard on me.
Paolo lectured me slowly, enunciating each word of the bungled lyrics like he was explaining 'sit' to a mildly retarded puppy.

June - Nobody told me there’d be a trophy.
At first I thought he was having a heart attack, but it turned out he was weeping…from the emotion…of T-ball.

July - The longest three minutes of my life
It’s incredibly rude to stare at someone, ESPECIALLY if you’re trying to sort out whether they have a prosthetic body part, but damn it, YOU try to look away from a glass eye. It can’t be done.

August - House of louse
Still, it was an uncomfortable paradox to declare that my boys are too good for the place while removing them before they gave other kids bugs.

September - I also jumped up and motioned for a handball foul. There are no referees.
In what world do the Mexican kid and the semi-Italian kid suck the most at soccer? It’s my own personal hell.

October - The longest three minutes of her life
I do have some people skills, and I can work a room without seeing glass eyes in every new face.

November - Rejoicing from a red state
All my life I have argued, out of hope rather than certitude, that racism in America was shrinking steadily, and that soon it would be powerless to squash the dreams or halt the achievements of great Americans of every color.

December - Post postscript
I’m the parent that walks him all the way to the classroom. You just drop him off at the front door like a stray dog.

*Am I the only person who had nightmares after seeing the Crypt Keeper, I mean Dick Clark, rockin’ in the new year? Clearly, the man died in 1998, and watching his corpse twitch every December 31 since is not my idea of celebration.