My “vacation” this week consists of caring for my son and granddaughter while their mothers have a real vacation in the Caribbean. Oh, I’m also checking work email intermittently because… well, just because. On Monday morning as Maddy napped, Kyle and I caught an episode of this year’s “Rescue Me” on the DVR. In one scene, the boys sat around the firehouse table and debated whether, given the choice, they’d give up “an eye or a nut.” I don’t recall who chose what, but later as Kyle, Maddy and I dominated the left lane toward Nana’s house, I asked Kyle for his opinion on the “eye or a nut” question.

Dad: “Kyle, do you remember that scene today when the guys were talking about whether they’d give up an eye or a nut?”
Kyle: “You mean ‘Rescue Me?’”
Dad: “Yeah, so which would you pick?”
Kyle: (a little embarrassed) “I don’t know. What would you?”
Dad: “Oh, a nut for sure. What about you?”
Kyle: (after some thought) “An eye.”
Dad: “Whoa, really?”
(Now at 17 and hormones raging, obviously Kyle’s nuts are much more important to him than mine are to me at 50, but his rationale just cracked me up.)
Kyle: “Yeah, then I could get an eye-patch like Captain Hook.”
Dad: (laughing and thinking… “Yeah, and keep the boys.”)

Maddy had no comment…

• Anyone who appreciates the implosion of the current Republican party should send Karl Rove a “Thank You” note. He got “Dubya” elected by smearing front-runner John McCain prior to the 2000 South Carolina primary and then became “the Architect” of the most destructive presidency ever. Thanks Karl!

• I’m on full-time Mr. (Grand)Mom duty next week as Megan vacations for a week with her mom in Aruba… It will be a week of Kyle school > Maddy daycare > work > Maddy daycare > Coma > repeat from Wednesday to Wednesday. From Wednesday on if I am blank-faced more than usual or drooling, that’s probably why.

• I hope the Bruins can make a good run at the Cup this year, but overall my interest in sports has never been lower.

• After my “car window got smashed in and laptop stolen” week, I offer the following:

• Back shit up weekly or more frequently.
• Include your internet “favorites” or “bookmarks”
• And any network drives you map at work. IT can’t tell you.
• Put your laptop in the trunk.
• If all this fails, call 1-800-54-GIANT. They were great.

• Oh, and my new laptop has Office 2007 installed. WTF? I now feel like I need one of those “Idiot” books. It took me 10 minutes to figure out how to add a pivot table yesterday. I thought this stuff was supposed to be “productivity software?”

• Rachel Maddow is brilliant.

That’s all I’ve got for ya.

Unlike Jed Lowries “Texas League” bloop single yesterday, there aren’t many “tweeners” when it comes to Massachusetts Senator Edward M. Kennedy. Adored by the left and demonized by the right, he’s led a life of privileged imperfection. None of that mattered yesterday for the 77 year old Red Sox fan as he threw the first pitch to open the 2009 season for the Sox.

As he peered in at new Hall of Famer Jim Rice, the childlike glee on his face spoke a unifying language for kids of all ages:

“Play Ball!”

The glass of a shattered automobile window is a beautiful greenish pattern of little cubes, all glittering like unique ice crystals. Those on and around my cars rear window were enhanced by the light spring rain falling. Inside the drivers side rear pane once sat my laptop computer, but it apparently was fed up with my abuse and jumped through the glass in a desperate run at freedom while I dined with some work friends at a local Naked Fish.

I slept soundly last night in spite of a 45 minute drive home accompanied by the loud slapping of a plastic bag enduring 60 mile per hour winds and a fear that my laptop would use it’s knowledge to take me down. After all, it knows all my internet log ins to banks and brokerages. I was pretty dazed when I got home, but made the required calls to shut off account access. Well, I tried. Shutting off a credit card is doable 24/7, but without your logins and passwords, disabling web access is a challenge.

Anyway, with the help of openoffice.org and an external backup, I was able to retrieve my login data, access my accounts and change my passwords. I also shut off my credit card. Replacing all the files I’ve worked on recently won’t be so easy. Most of the important ones can be found attached to emails, but many are gone forever, including pictures and videos not uploaded to YouTube. It will be kinda like putting that window back together.

How do you measure the passage of time? Obviously we use seconds, minutes, hours, days, weeks, months and 50th birthdays, but I mean those moments. Some of those are the year you graduated high school (1976), got married (1987) or divorced (1996). We also know the year of our children’s births (1989, 1992) and those of our parents (1933, 1940), but it’s difficult, for me at least, to put those dates in context. For example, many of us have our stories on “where we were” on September 11, 2001 and October 20, 2004, both epic disasters in New York, one real and one symbolic only to Red Sox and Yankee fans…

Lately I’ve been reeling when scanning channels, I note a date on a movie and think, ‘Wow, it’s been 20 years since “Field of Dreams” was released,’ before flashing a thought about where exactly those 20 (now 21) years went…

Another cinematic phenomena for adding context to racing years is seeing a movie listed that I’ve been meaning to see, and still consider “fairly recent,” but actually was released several years ago… Some examples:

• Unforgiven (1992)
• Braveheart (1995)
• Fargo (1996)
• Mystic River (2003)
• V for Vendetta (2005)
• The Departed (2006)

As I researched these films, the list became full of these dark films that for some reason I don’t want to see. Maybe I’ve got enough darkness.

March 19, 2009 – Megan and I tried to convince Kyle to do some of his “Heath Ledger as the Joker” impressions before launching into his masculine rendition of “My Heart Will Go On,” but he would have none of it. In this first clip, my boy perseveres after the background song and mike go out on him mid-tune… Other kids might have wilted, but Kyle never chokes when he’s got a mike in his hand and an adoring crowd to perform for…

After hosing off some overheating equipment and the rabid fans during intermission, “old brown eyes” came out for an encore.

Last weekend Kyle and I blurred through a magical history tour from Philadelphia’s Independence Hall to the US Capitol and all of these in between:

• Liberty Bell
• White House (smaller than I imagined)
• WWII Memorial
• Lincoln Memorial
• Vietnam Memorial
• Washington Monument
• Smithsonian Air and Space Museum
• National Gallery of Art

We also toured a variety of culinary haunts from Pat’s King of Steak in South Philly to Sam and Harry’s steakhouse in DC. Neither Sam nor Harry allow jeans in their house of beef, so the boy and I cabbed it to a Men’s Wearhouse for khaki’s, dress shirt and a belt. Given Kyle’s conscientious objector status regarding clothes shopping, it wasn’t a bad trip. Mr. Daley was very agreeable, and after a brief fitting of the pants, we were out of there.

It was a great learning experience for Kyle and while he may not understand the subtlety of the moving Vietnam wall, he was patient and respectful through several walking hours on Saturday. Once the pain from his fallen arches got to be too much, my hand went up and a taxi arrived. We took it easy on the misty Sunday, limiting our stroll to the Capitol and the National Gallery of Art. The Capitol seemed pretty deserted for a nation teetering on the economic abyss. Shouldn’t these people be pulling all nighters? I mean working, not chasing interns… The National Gallery was pretty uninspiring compared to other “great” museums like the Met and MFA, but the wire sculptures of Alexander Calder did stand out.

As we wound our way along the curving, stone wall lined Delaware turnpike headed back to West Chester, PA, I asked Kyle what he thought of DC. “Dad, my feet hurt.”

“Too big to fail” has and now “We the People,” are funding yet another “Puppet Regime,” this time not some foreign dictator who’s “our son of a bitch,” but the cartel of financial corporations who still have the leverage to bring the economy down. Really, the term should be “too rich to fail,” because how else can one explain how AIG, 80% owned by US taxpayers (The tab is $170B so far), can pay out $100M in bonuses because, as their CEO says, they are legally obligated, yet the United Auto Workers, a union representing blue-collar employees, had to make contract concessions before GM could receive a mere $25B of bailout bucks?

Just like OPEC could cripple our economy by shutting off oil as they did in the early 70’s, our financial institutions can do worse damage by shutting off the money. The “leverage” these men (well, the leadership of these rackets are dominated by men) have is that they are already rich, and will not lose homes to foreclosure or health insurance from job loss. They are all set financially and likely lack the conscience to give a damn if the rest of us circle the financial drain together, including President Obama. AIG, at the summit of arrogance, has so far refused to open their books to federal auditors. This company would not exist if not for taxpayer money, yet they know their people on the inside like Tim Geithner and Larry Summers will help keep the curtains closed while propping up their puppet theaters.

Over the years, many of the puppets we supported like the Shah of Iran and Diem and Thieu in Vietnam caused the United States incalculable losses of human life and treasure. We’re still paying for the sins of our puppet the Shah and he was ousted 30 years ago. There’s no telling how much our US corporate puppets will cost us. We haven’t even ousted them yet.

As usual this morning, I was awoken by the sound of a cry. Like a man reaching for a lost “phantom limb,” Madison jumped to my mind, but in about the fraction it takes for a judge to sign divorce papers, I realized it was not Maddy ringing the breakfast bell, but a cat howling through these thousands of joyless square feet.

Divorce rips at the fabric of family with a raw, jagged cut that takes forever to heal and if it ever does, the torn area never functions quite the same way again. This house once had a heart and a little girls voice pumping it with love. About a year ago, the heat of fire from an outdoor grill took a neighbors house here. Now its wooden neighbor is dying from “internal injuries.”

Having experienced the shredding of my family fabric twice, once as a child and once as a protagonist, I can report it is excruciating and destructive. Regardless of circumstances, and without assigning blame, now seeing loved one tortured by the phantom cries of a child and spouse gone makes my scars ache.

I’ve written here, here, here and here about how we need to fundamentally change “the American Way” or risk losing it all.

The weather is too nice to sit here and write yet another “the American sky is falling” post, but read Tom Friedman’s article in today’s New York Times. Here’s a taste:

‘What if the crisis of 2008 represents something much more fundamental than a deep recession? What if it’s telling us that the whole growth model we created over the last 50 years is simply unsustainable economically and ecologically and that 2008 was when we hit the wall — when Mother Nature and the market both said: “No more.”’