My Life With Ah-Ah Or I Have Seen The Enemy and his name is Diego

Davey is at school. The new baby is coming down the pike pretty soon and I have given myself a half hour to write something, anything. To be creative is to create something.

Davey loves monkeys. His teacher just told me that when the stuffed monkeys come out for playtime at school, Davey goes nuts and organizes all of the gorillas. He loves Curious George, the T.V. show and the books. Whenever we take him to the zoo, Davey demands to see the monkeys and then he gets too scared to talk to the gorillas who have their faces pressed up against the glass.

Davey has a monkey puppet that his Grammy bought for him at the zoo and the name Davey gave him is "Ah-Ah", the sound that monkeys make in Davey's shorthand vocabulary. So about two months ago when Davey was at the height of his Ah-Ah fever he would instruct me to put the puppet on my hand ("Daddy Do, Daddy Do") and then he would want me to pretty much have Ah-Ah talk to him all morning. Have Ah-Ah help Daddy cook eggs. Have Ah-Ah go on the morning walk with Eliott around the condo complex. (For the full power of this image: please imagine me in sweat pants with morning hair with the dog leash in one hand and a monkey puppet on the other hand trying to get a toddler to walk more than three feet at time without getting distracted.) Sometimes when I'm doing Ah-Ah's voice, I'll slip into my own voice and then Davey will keep calling Ah-Ah's name until I respond to him in Ah-Ah's voice. Hil says my voice for Ah-Ah sounds like an old lady (I would say a poor man's Mickey Mouse) and her voice for Ah-Ah is more like a Brooklyn street kid from the 30's. When Hil as Ah-Ah reads Davey's favorite book about the zoo the monkey puppet gets freaked about the pictures of the snakes and lions. Davey loves when Ah-Ah cowers behind him till Davey turns the page to bring Ah-Ah to safety. Sometimes Davey likes to pretend that he's scared of the lions in the book and he'll grab Hil's shoulder and say in a little voice, "I scared. I scared."

Now up until a month ago, Curious George and The Toy Story dynamic duo of Buzz and Woody were Davey's favorite characters. That was until we brought home from the library a DVD of Go! Diego! Go! Now D. had seen some Dora the Explorer and really liked it, even going so far as to imitate the fox Swiper by swinging his arm and saying "Ah, man!"(Some parents would be horrified by their son's growing list of television character imitations, but predictably Hil and I were both proud of this moment.) But D's interest in Dora was nothing compared to his PASSION for Diego. The first couple of times we rented it, he wanted to do nothing else but watch it. It freaked me out -- I questioned my choices as a parent and I considered putting our television in the closet. Luckily, we don't have cable so our only supply of Diego is monitored by the local library. And you know things calmed down slightly and we installed some "No Diego" weeks to keep things balanced. But you know I'm pretty confident, we could all sing the Go! Diego! Go! theme song by heart at this point too.

Good God, April.

Well, hello. I have thought about blogging a lot over the last few months. Thinking about blogging is exactly the same as thinking about anything else ... just a thought, not an action. To think about losing weight, to think about writing a play, to think about posting photos online, and to think about taking your career more seriously -- they are all just thoughts bouncing in your head. To do the thing is a different matter all together.

Much has happened. I guess if you're in the small audience that reads this blog (and even you have gone away for the good reason of again, it's been since freaking April since I've written here) then you probably know what has gone on in my life.

But I chose to write in this public forum this morning and that's what I'm going to write about.

Somewhere in May I had another reading of my play, Putting The Days to Bed, at Circle X Theatre here in L.A. The reading went well and the small but passionate audience enjoyed it. It felt good to hear it aloud in my new hometown. I hope it doesn't die in a drawer, but the next step seems up to me and I don't know when I'll have the time or energy for such a thing in the next few years.

Which is to say I'm going to be a father again ... in about five or six weeks. I'm incredibly excited. Like when Davey was about to arrive ... I have no idea what to expect. Well, I have some idea of what to expect thanks to Davey but since I am an only child I have no idea what the sibling thing is all about. It's going to be a lot.

I love Davey a lot. I am incredibly grateful that Hil has kept up her blogging because she has detailed so many of the Davey moments. I am an archivist deep in my blood and if no one was chronicling this time with words it would be a disappointment to me. I think I'm going to set up a Twitter account and see if I can detail the boys in that way. I have resisted the Twitter but I think this would be a solid use for it and I could handle 140 characters daily. Might be good for me to have those limits.

I love my family a great deal. Hil continues to be a wonderful wife and passionate mother. She also continues to assign me tasks when she sees I might have a free moment. Right now as I write this she would prefer that I be vacuming and picking up the train tracks off the living room floor.

One of the reasons I am too tired to blog is that I have worked a lot over the last six months. I had two part time jobs and then watching Davey five days a week. Well, I just quit one job and Davey has started going to day care three days a week. So that loosens things up slightly ... until the new baby arrives.

I am a member of a playwriting group here in L.A. that I'm very proud to be in. Here's the website which I've wanted to link to since April.

I had a burst of writing energy around November that lasted till about May right around the time I had the reading and then started the two part time jobs. Then everything fell apart. I think that I can see it coming together ... I think it has to come together for me to claim the playwright title another year but it has to come through action. Thoughts as this blog has proved are just thoughts.

R.I.P. Mark "The Bird" Fidrych

Pete sent me the news in an email last night titled: "was sad to see this." Kip emailed me the Times article this morning. Man, I was sad to see it too. As well documented on this blog the Tigers were my team from roughly the years 1985 to ... 1989? God, is that all? It seemed like a lifetime then. Anyway, I found a Sports Illustrated article about a retired Fidrych in my dentist's office during this time and I couldn't believe this guy's story and that he was a Tiger. I think one of my huge loves of baseball is the cast of characters and this guy was one of the CHARACTERS of all time. My dad, a lifetime Tigers fan almost had a chance to see him start the 1976 All-Star game in Philadelphia and then came down with the flu that weekend. That first year we were in Seattle I realized how great of a Fidrych Matty Ford would be and so I started to write a solo show for him to do this. It was a spark and I made a few pages into it, but it never took -- I just wasn't a mature enough of a writer yet to pull it off. Hell of a story though, so I'm always circling back to trying to figure out how I might approach it. Anyway, rest in peace, Mark, you really touched a lot of lives in a short amount of time.

Great video linked to in the Times article.

Best Use For This Blog Yet

This NYTimes article reminds me that a few months ago my wallet fell out of my sweat jacket on a stroller walk with little D. I was totally upset -- the last time I lost a wallet was my first trip to New York in high school. I retraced my steps, but nothing. Then, I came home and checked my email account -- BAM! a good man had found and tracked me down here. I reclaimed my wallet within the hour. The internet is useful after all!

Now if the internet could only find the lost camera and video camera that has little D's birth and his only meeting with my Mom.

Davey and The Radio

Davey and The Radio from Deron Bos on Vimeo.

Davey is teething and has a cough today. It sucks. Here's a video from a few days ago when he was feeling like himself.

It Ain't Fancy, But It's Our Life.

Little D In The Morning from Deron Bos on Vimeo.

From the Jan 19 New Yorker

Goings on About Town

FRESHWATER MARTIN

At Women's Project, Anne Bogart directs the only play written by Virginia Woolf, a comedy centered on a young theater director who has a penchant for Budweiser in a bottle and Slop Chicken. Previews begin Jan 15. (424 W.55th St. 212-239-6200.)

Looks good.