Dad Is Fat (26 page)

When we finally arrived back in New York City and settled into our cramped apartment, I did a head count. We were all alive. A little poorer, but alive. All in all, the ski trip was worth it. We can go a year without groceries, but I can’t go a day without a wife.

During summer and spring vacations, I take my kids camping. Well, actually I take my kids on a giant tour bus so Jeannie and I can work and the kids can pretend they are camping.

I wish I liked camping. Then again, I also wish I liked running marathons and eating vegetables. I know my children would love to camp, and I’m also sure my children would love a dog, but given the size of our apartment and the fact that Jeannie is supposedly allergic, that’s not going to happen either. I think she’s just allergic to the fact she would be the only one taking care of the dog.

I guess you could say I’m allergic to camping. Jeannie loves camping because she says camping was a tradition in her family. I always point out that prior to the invention of the house, camping was a tradition in everyone’s family. I don’t get camping. “Hey, want to burn a couple of vacation days sleeping on the ground outside? Chances are you’ll wake up freezing and covered in a rash?” No, thanks. If camping is so great, why
are the bugs always trying to get in your house? My parents never took me camping, and I think it was because they loved me. Has anyone ever been a happy camper? Whenever we use that term “happy camper,” we’re being sarcastic. “He is NOT a happy camper.” Why don’t we just call the person a camper? He’s miserable. You know who’s a happy camper? The guy leaving the campsite. He gets to take a shower. I’ve tried to explain to my children that we do a different type of camping that includes a tour bus, hotels, and best of all, no camping.

So why a tour bus? Although I complain about my children, I really do hate being away from them. I learned quickly that being gone for a weekend doing shows can easily turn into being gone for a week doing shows. Our initial solution was to bring our children for long weekends whenever we could. As our clan grew, this quickly became cost-prohibitive. Our solution was a tour bus.

Yes, a tour bus. People often think we mean a Winnebago or a large van but we’re talking about an actual tour bus like
rock stars use, but there’s no stripper pole. This may seem like overkill, but it makes perfect sense. The bus is roughly the same size as our apartment but it gets better. The tour bus means no airports. No security lines. No taking little kids through security lines at airports. Our bus picks us up at our apartment building, we load everyone and all the stuff on, and we are off doing shows. The bus is expensive to rent, so we do a show a night as we dart across North America for usually two weeks. Some kids go to Florida or a have a summerhouse. Our children will have “bus camping” memories.

There are six bunks and a large bed on the tour bus. Perfect for me, Jeannie, our five children, and a babysitter who always seems to quit whenever we get back from our camping bus tour. We also bring a portable crib or “travel cage.” We drive mostly at night because children don’t really understand the concept of “no walking” while the bus is moving.

On a typical day, we wake up on the bus in a new city and head into a hotel to check in. We don’t really need the hotel because we have the bus, but we need the hotel pool and the
breakfast. They are usually nonfancy hotels that provide a “complimentary” breakfast. I should point out that this “complimentary” breakfast is neither complimentary of the hotel or of the meal of breakfast. We are always grateful to have it, but it often feels like a breakfast garage sale.

Happy Camper

We loved the ducks at the Peabody Hotel. They were delicious!

After breakfast, we try to see a local tourist attraction. I’ve taken my children to parks, fairs, and zoos all across the U.S. and Canada. I’ve taken my children to see Mount Rushmore. It wasn’t a big decision. We were in Rapid City, and it really came down to either seeing Mount Rushmore or doing nothing. Mount Rushmore is beautiful, even though my children were disappointed at the absence of rides. “Is that a slide?” “No, that’s Thomas Jefferson’s nose.” The Black Hills of South Dakota are breathtaking. They are sacred to the Lakota Indians, and out of respect, our government had someone carve four white guys’ faces into one of their mountains.

After seeing a local sight, we usually head to the hotel pool. Every hotel we stay at must have a pool. For us, staying at a hotel with a pool is probably more important than staying at a hotel with beds. The hotel pools are really my kids’ favorite part of our bus trips. This is because young children love any kind of pool. Indoor, outdoor, aboveground, cesspool, it doesn’t matter. They may hate taking a bath, but they love a pool. It could be March, and a pool could be freezing, covered in leaves and bugs, and one of my children will beg, “Daddy, can we go in? Oh, please? Please!” I always tell them to ask their mother to put on her swimsuit.

You can usually tell a hotel has an indoor pool because the
lobby will smell like a bucket of bleach. I’m always tempted to ask someone at the front desk, “Do you have an indoor pool, or did someone just clean up a murder scene? ’Cause my eyes are bleeding.” Swimming with my kids is really fun. It’s not really great for the unlucky business traveler at the pool who wanted to have a relaxing swim. When we have our five kids in the hotel pool, strangers always look at us like we are overzealous dog walkers. On more than one occasion, I’ve witnessed a business traveler enter the hotel swimming pool area, see our screaming, swimming children, and immediately turn around and walk out. They probably think there really is no difference
between swimming in a pool with five little kids and swimming in a toilet. Swimming is really the first time a little kid can multitask. “I can play AND pee? This is amazing.” Let it be known I have no proof that any of my kids have peed in a pool, but other kids with worse parents probably do.

Whole family at Mt. Rushmore
.
Our babysitter quit the day we got back to NYC
.

For some reason the water is much warmer in this area
.

After my children have ruined the pool, we all head back to the soon-to-be-ruined hotel room. I’ll head to the bus to get ready for that night’s show. Jeannie and the babysitter will bathe and feed the kids before putting them to sleep on the bus. Jeannie will then meet me at the show. I’ll do the show, and then Jeannie and I will head back to the bus to depart.

Why are we putting the kids to bed on the bus when we have a hotel room that we’ve already paid for? Actually in order to make these trips work, we often pay for two nights at a hotel and don’t sleep at that hotel. When you are driving overnight and arrive at a hotel at 8 a.m., you can’t check in until at least 3 p.m. So we have to pay for the hotel room the night before. To
make matters more interesting, the hotel room that we’ve paid for the night before at which we’ve arrived at 8 a.m. requires that we check out at 3 p.m. But we have a show that night at 8 p.m., and at 11 p.m., we leave that city on the bus to get to the next city. Therefore, even though we are still not sleeping overnight at the hotel after the show, we must also pay for
that
night at the hotel. And that’s how you pay for two nights at a hotel and never sleep there. This word problem will continue until I can figure out a way to get a tour bus with a pool.

So after the show, we leave the hotel parking lot and drive off to the next campsite. A campsite without a tent, a fire, or bug spray. My favorite kind of campsite. One with Internet access and a shower.

Every night before I get my one hour of sleep, I have the same thought: “Well, that’s a wrap on another day of acting like I know what I’m doing.” I wish I were exaggerating, but I’m not. Most of the time, I feel entirely unqualified to be a parent. I call these times being awake. I really do try to be a good dad. I mean “try,” because nothing about parenting has come naturally to me. Last summer, we had four children, and I noticed there were only three Eskimo pies left in the freezer for dessert. The first thought that came to me was, “Well, looks like I’m eating three Eskimo pies.” In spite of my lack of parental instincts, in the end I did the right thing. I only ate one. That way the four of them could split the last two evenly. How else are they going to learn math? Just trying to do my part.