Fun with Facial Hair

I am lazy over the Winter Holidays.  Well actually I'm lazy all of the time.  But I really go all out (if that can be said about laziness - it's sounds too active but you get the idea) over Christmas.  One of my lazy rituals is that I stop shaving.  I shower and all.  I'm clean.  I just don't shave,

When the holidays are over and it's time to be moderately presentable and go back to work I do try to tidy the facial hair up a bit.  I trim it here and there.  But it's hard for my to jump back in to daily shaving, so I keep a 'beard' for a while.

I use quotes because anyone who has seen the sparsely populated follicles across my face will tell you I'm simply not capable of growing a true beard.  But I let the hair grow anyway and hope that someday it will fill in.  It hasn't yet, but I've only been doing this 20 years now.  One must show some patience.

After it's grown as much as it's going to I try to have a little fun with it by removing it in stages.  The sideburns generally go first as they are just awful.  They never fill in and it looks like I started to shave on each side and gave up after one stroke.  So to save us all a little embarrassment I take that off early.

I'll lose a bit of the excess off the neck next.  I keep just enough so I can continue to get by with an electric razor every couple of days, but otherwise trim it back a bit as it generally looks pretty bad too.

The next stage is the goatee.  I keep everything about moustache-wide down through the chin and just a bit underneath.  This - well, in my humble opinion (which I should point out is not shared by my wife) - actually looks decent.  So I stick at this stage for a few weeks.  

This year when I made it to the goatee stage I announced it to the world via my FaceBook status.  Really have to learn to be more careful about that.  I phrased it as "Denis touched razor to cheek for the first time in 5 weeks. Smooooth! [And no cuts]."

Of course my friends just couldn't let that one go without comment (and let's be honest.  I phrased it in exactly that way so as to generate some comments.  I do try to entertain).  What I didn't expect is that the first comment would come from my business partner in Geneva.  That's cool, because Andy's a good guy.  But what worried me was how little it takes for some of my VB friends to get rolling.  Here's how the exchange went:

Andy - I dearly hope you're talking about your face.

Jonesy (from VB) - I don't know you Andy, but I like the way you think! I always pictured Denis pretty much hairless anyway

Andy again - Hi David. Who'd have thought the McGrath's hairy arse would become a topic for international debate? I must admit I haven't given his naked body as much thought as you clearly have, but if in your head he's nice and smooth, then who am I to disagree?

Luckily (very luckily!) they found new posts to respond to and let it lie there.  That's a combination I don't want to encourage too much!

Over the weekend I decided it was time to trim it back again.  I had never done the "connected Fu Manchu" before.  Essentially a moustache, then straight down on the sides, to connecting underneath by a thin patch.  I thought it would look kinda cool.

I was wrong!  Oh Lord it looked horrible.  So after trimming out the middle I quickly lost the under-chin connection.  It looked like a training bra for an Amish beard.  That had to go.  But after it went I noticed that the downspouts of the remaining Fu were terribly uneven.  And in attempting to drive some equality I ended up killing them altogether.  

So now I have a moustache.

I did all this while everyone else was at the boy's BB games.  So they had a nice surprise waiting for them when they got home.  Liam was first.  "Ewww"  quickly followed by "Yuck" was the verdict.  No surprise there.  But the question that followed did catch me off guard.  After looking it over and deciding that yes, he in fact didn't like it at all, Liam looked at me with a puzzle on his face.  "Dad" he asked "when did you grow the moustache?"

When did I grow it?  Now that's an odd question given the fact that I'd been sporting a goatee for 3 weeks.  Near as I can tell he got used to the goatee - that was just how dad looked.  And in his mind it was just one thing.  All together.  And that was gone.  So clearly in the span of 2 hours I had shaved off the goatee and grown a new moustache!

How's that for hormones?

Looking back I'm really glad it doesn't work that way - I'd be shaving every hour!

No pictures this time, maybe next year!

Basketball!

It's Winter.  That brings a lot of indoor time with it.  But in the last couple years the kids have decided another sport was in order so they're all playing basketball.  ALL of them.  Even 6-year-old Seamus!

I think Tara is playing too.  She keeps telling me she's on a team.  But I've yet to take her to a practice or a game yet.  So I'm not certain what the deal is there.  This is the kind of attention you get in a 4-child household.  You want undivided attention then go be an only child somewhere!

Anyway.  Basketball.  Both Denis and Liam play a brand of BB that would at least be recognizable.  They dribble, pass, shoot, etc.  Sure they take free throws from a spot a foot or more closer to the basket, but that's about it.  Essentially the same game you see on TV.

For Seamus?  Well.  What he plays is about as close to basketball as throwing a tennis ball around the community pool is close to water polo.  In other words not so close at all.  First of all, dribbling is clearly optional.  Some kids try to give it an effort - usually with two hands at a time - and that's not so bad.  But other kids forget it completely.  They just pick the ball up and run!  Secondly; the ball.  It's about the size of a decent melon.  And about the same color come to think of it!  It's small enough that your average 5th grader could palm it.  What else?  Lesse, Thirdly there's the defense.  You're familiar with a "3 second" violation?  When the offense camps out under the basket for too long?  When in the bizarro world of Kindergarten BB the defense is required to camp out!  They can't come outside the box to defend at all.  So you end up with 5 kids all acting like chained up junkyard dogs.  If any kid is crazy enough to venture near the box with the ball they jump at him gnashing their teeth as he/she stops just outside their reach.  Oh, and finally the basket is lowered 2 feet to 8 feet.

So in other words it's about an much entertainment as anyone could possibly stand at 9am on Saturday morning.  I go to the game tired and grumpy and leave with a huge grin on my face.

Seamus joined the team late.  They were already halfway through their season when I relented and let him join.  I'm not really a fan of organized sports at that age, but after a month of snow anything that gets him out of the house and lets him run around and burn off steam is a good thing!  So he's never played before, and the team is already fully formed.  No worries according to the coach.  He'll fit right in.

I picked him up after the first practice, and the coach happily announced to me that (of the 10 players they had) Seamus was one of the top 4!  This was a little bit of a surprise to me.  I know he's a mean soccer player, but for his first practice that is pretty impressive.  Coach went on to tell me that he made this assessment by watching him shoot.  Until Seamus arrived they only had 3 kids who could get the ball all the way up to the rim.  And Seamus can do that just fine.  So Voila!  He's in the top 4!

This last weekend everyone had games.  Mimi and I split duties.  I took Seamus to the early game, and she took Liam and Denis to the later ones (so I could stay home and work on taxes - yay).

It was a banner weekend for the McGrath boys.  Seamus' team (though they don't keep score) won handily, and Seamus scored his first ever basket!  Liam's team lost a close battle, 24-22, but Liam scored as well.  He probably scores in 1/3 of the games.  So that's pretty cool.  Denis' team won easily also, and while Denis very rarely scores (gets that from Dad!) he picked up a point in this one!  There was much rejoicing!  Next weekend will bring new excitement to be sure, but for now I'm just going to enjoy one weekend of success for all my boys!