Parenthood is awesome. Last Saturday I had ballet practice. Yes, ballet. I am King Triton in my daughter’s ballet company’s production of The Little Mermaid. Just to jazz things up, I prepared a rap to perform and auditioned it for the instructor:

I’d like to talk to you about my frustration
With crabs and the shrimps and the other crustaceans
Those tropical fishes, they got the groove
And that freaky jellyfish can bus’ a move

All the lobsters in the house putcha hands up!

It mortified my daughter.

Last night, my son had baseball practice, and at the risk of sounding like a whiner to my friends in places like the Poconos, it was 28 degrees outside. When it’s 28 in South Carolina, we deplete the grocery stores of all their bread and milk. We don’t drive. And we certainly don’t practice baseball.

Apparently we do—from 7-9 p.m. Did I mention it was 28 degrees?

I don’t know who was bitching more, the kids whose skin was becoming frozen to their aluminum bats, the kids whose fingers were cracking with each caught ball, or me. Good bet it was me. At one point I heard a plane overhead. I scanned the sky for it looking for skis where wheels should have been. God please let it be some arctic rescue operation, I thought.

Earlier that day, I had bought my son a cup. I also bought a jock strap and something they didn’t have when I played ball—compression pants. They’re like a tight-fitting pair of boxer shorts with a pocket for the cup. My son preferred the compression pants.

As the temperature dipped and wind began to increase, I looked for something to protect my frostbitten ears. You got it—the unused jock strap with its wide elastic waistband. I put it over my head, the leg straps dangling by my shoulders. Ahhhh…nirvana. Not pretty, but warm, by golly.

At some point, Alexey looked over at me.

I mortified my son.

I’m two for two this week. Ain’t parenthood sweet?