Vacation

Vacation

Tuesday, March 29, 2005-5:49 P.M.

My life has turned itself inside-out with the inclusion of a baby into the mix.  Now it seems that when I go on the road to my never-ending comedy tour (the work days) it's more like a vacation because I'm away from house work, errands, and the constant attention that my daughter needs.  I'm ashamed to say that I don't feel like I have the energy to adequately give her what she deserves...play time to me is letting her scoot all over the bed or letting her examine and chew on whatever favorite toy she has at the moment, and I lay there like an invalid, only moving when she gets dangerously close to falling off onto the floor (too big a drop for lil' baby).  I want to read to her and spend time, but she's at the age where chewing on books is more satisfying than looking at the pictures, so it just drains me.

Yesterday on line at the post office, I was holding Harmony in my arms and I got into a conversation with a young man behind me.  He asked how old Harmony was, and when I told him she had just turned one, he told me he had two daughters of his own, and one more on the way.  I couldn't even imagine!  He also observed that Harmony only had one shoe on, and added "It's probably in the car," which of course, is exactly where it was.  The funny thing is that before going into the post office, I had just put that shoe back on her, but she managed to get it hooked on the child safety seat as I was lifting her out.  Thanks again, velcro.

So today, among my house-husband duties while my wife is working at the Eastman school preparing for the opera, I managed to fill in another week of work for myself this year, with a booking at the Funny Farm comedy club in Broadalbin, NY.  I'm down to ten open weeks, and I think I'm going to take one or more of them off as a vacation.  I haven't really had a week off in about eight years or so, and I think that my wife deserves my time and attention.  I don't know if we should travel somewhere, but I think Pam might enjoy that.  I fiddled with the idea of getting U2 tickets for Toronto or Cleveland and taking her on a weekend excursion, but that would entail leaving the baby at home and imposing on someone for a whole weekend, and I don't think Harmony or mommy and daddy are ready for that, not to mention the caregiver who steps up and volunteers.

In other news, I took my 1996 Toyota Corolla in to Jiffy Lube for an oil change, and was told by the staff that it didn't have any oil in it!  I think the oil reserve must have been low, but that's the benefit of using a full synthetic...you can run the engine low on oil and not be so concerned about blowing the engine.  I splurged on an engine flush, too, and was out in less than half an hour.  You can't be too careful with your car maintenance when you're averaging 1,000 miles a week.  Comedians do so much driving, we should have sponsorship stickers on our cars like the NASCAR drivers....more people would see them than NASCAR, too.

OK, off to play with the baby.  Or take a nap.  Whatever you want to call it.

Ralph Tetta

Rochester, NY