I am...a ninja.

Well at least between the hours of 9-11am, 3-5pm, 9-8am. Because like giants and dragons, you don't want to wake a sleeping baby. Not so much for them, but for you. I have seen significant Dad-duty the past couple of weekends to help Emily do some fun stuff and volunteer. These past couple weekends have forced me to move like the wind that stirs no leaf (cue Asian flute).

The biggest hurdle is that we have high ceilings and wood flooring - some people call that a concert hall. Sound carries in our house with ease. So you set a glass down harder than usual on the kitchen counter and it sounds like a blacksmith forging an axe. All of these factors have been the iron that sharpens my iron - I am now able to operate and function with Low Decibel Output (LDO for you science types).

I walk heel to toe. I level out a glass and slide on to the counter. I can navigate our house in the dark. When I pour Schmax's food into his aluminum bowl, you'd swear it was the sound of a butterfly flapping its wings. I fully turn a door knob so as not to stir the inner-tumbler. I have WD40'ed all of the door hinges to eliminate the haunted house factor.

Am I proud of these things? Maybe. Do I like doing them? Absolutely not. It ends up feeling like a monastic existence. I had to turn on closed captioning on our TV because I was tired of Emily and I asking each other, "What did he say?!" Sidenote - once you turn on closed captioning you can't not read the text. It turns a show your liked watching into a subtitled film you're forced to watch in high school English class. The typos are funny though. During a Packers game it kept coming up as "Bret Farth".

All of this has become a necessary evil. I am a doer and weekends are prime-time for doing stuff - albeit not fun stuff. Floors don't sweep themselves, things don't fix themselves, laundry doesn't wash itself. So a Saturday afternoon has become a Mission Impossible type operation for me where I covertly get things done as to not set off any alarms (Benjamin) in the base (house). If I don't try and make things fun, I'd go crazy. Like literally talk to Mrs. Butterworth crazy.

The net result of this equation is that the opportunities for that thing I remember having called, oh what was it..."fun" - are a little compromised. Yes, playing with Benjamin is a certain kind of fun, but I require activity that either works up a sweat or stretches my mind. At least playing with Benjamin sometimes makes my mind sweat.

So the next time we see each other and I just appear out of nowhere, don't worry. I mean you no harm, it's simply the way of the House Ninja (cue Asian gong).

**Picture explanation - despite our protests Benjamin has enrolled in the 1920's Navy. And his first words were "Yeah-see, you better show up at the docks with the money-see. Or it's curtains-see. Curtains-I-tell-ya!"