tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-333148562024-03-23T13:12:15.393-05:00Dorky DadWhere hope and testosterone go to dieAnonymoushttp://www.blogger.com/profile/02737980462115396236noreply@blogger.comBlogger667125tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-33314856.post-2568950971305886472013-02-09T22:41:00.001-06:002013-02-11T00:06:22.843-06:00My Wife, Daniel Craig and The MuppetsThe Wife and I went on something called a "date" this evening. A date, as far as I can tell, is an evening in which you hand money to some random teenager so you can get a couple hours of glorious freedom from parenting, enabling you to spend more money all while cautiously watching your cell phone, hoping it doesn't buzz or ring or pop up with some text. <br />
<br />
We decided to see a movie, our go-to date option. We had, actually, planned to use a gift card to a fancy restaurant, but yours-truly, his brain battered by years of parenting, neglected to make a reservation, and the restaurant was jam-packed. But we weren't going to waste a good babysitter. <br />
<br />
We'd planned to see Argo, but my wife suffers from Affleckophobia: fear of Ben Affleck. She also suffered from a similar condition, Damonophobia, or fear of Matt Damon, but I'd spent years forcing her to watch Bourne movies, and now she's over it. I'd thought of doing the same and making her see Argo, but she just looked so sad. Ben Affleck scares her that much. <br />
<br />
So we went to see Skyfall instead. It was playing in the Cheap Theater. Our cheap theater is great. Half of the movies it shows are Bollywood productions. Half of the remaining movies just came out on DVD. <br />
<br />
Like most cheap theaters this one also has flypaper floors and stained seats -- assuming that the seats hadn't been ripped out for some unknown reason. The movie itself looked like it was being run on an old science-class film projector and the speakers had a nice, pleasant buzzing sound coming from them. The employees are extra surly. And at Skyfall, at least, the clientele seemed like it had been stolen from a nearby porn theater. <br />
<br />
Come to think of it, it probably was stolen from a nearby porn theater. I heard some awfully funny noises during the flick. And Daniel Craig does spend half of the movie shirtless.<br />
<br />
The Wife doesn't see Bond movies much. She hadn't seen any of the Daniel Craig variety, and the last one starred Timothy Dalton and, she said, "I fell asleep because it was nothing but car chases."<br />
<br />
Her synopsis? "It has so many bad puns!" Yeah, true, but it's a Bond movie. And all Bond movies have bad puns. <br />
<br />
"You know what this reminds me of?" she added. "The Muppet Movie." <br />
<br />
The Muppet Movie?<br />
<br />
Main characters getting back together (007 and M in Bond; Kermit and Miss Piggy in the Muppets); them being dismissed as obsolete; they fix up an old building for one last show (the Muppets built a theater to show a telethon, Bond fixed up his childhood home so he could shoot some bad guys); and lots of bad hair (the Muppets all have bad hair and, well, if you've seen Javier Bardem's hair in Skyfall, then you'll know what she means). Oh, and both Kermit and Bond spend most of their respective movies shirtless.<br />
<br />
I guess that's what I get for not remembering to make reservations: I take my wife to see an awesome Bond flick and she likens it to Muppets. Now I'll never be able to watch a Bond movie again without getting "Rainbow Connection" stuck in my head.<br />
<br />
<br />
<br />
<br />
Anonymoushttp://www.blogger.com/profile/02737980462115396236noreply@blogger.com6tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-33314856.post-41450650766740672252012-03-12T22:21:00.001-06:002012-03-12T22:36:50.609-06:00Kids, Cats and Big, Giant Sofas<table cellpadding="0" cellspacing="0" class="tr-caption-container" style="float: left; margin-right: 1em; text-align: left;"><tbody>
<tr><td style="text-align: center;"><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEiAeeBgT1_m1rZeoHJ-JAEbXsANmx1BypsZQOu44_1fvqLpd4wqlW0i5pQYPYaQJE_qfRzsAqQoFLOlVszqRmvcT4tXuTRZK4BluPs1vTPmnIxxG4GHFEuLg8jzZm0-CEULY1w6Yw/s1600/couch.JPG" imageanchor="1" style="clear: left; margin-bottom: 1em; margin-left: auto; margin-right: auto;"><img border="0" height="239" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEiAeeBgT1_m1rZeoHJ-JAEbXsANmx1BypsZQOu44_1fvqLpd4wqlW0i5pQYPYaQJE_qfRzsAqQoFLOlVszqRmvcT4tXuTRZK4BluPs1vTPmnIxxG4GHFEuLg8jzZm0-CEULY1w6Yw/s320/couch.JPG" width="320" /></a></td></tr>
<tr><td class="tr-caption" style="text-align: center;">Hey, but at least it was comfortable.</td></tr>
</tbody></table>
Children and furniture don't mix. Neither do cats and furniture. Not long after The Wife and I got married, we got a nice set of living room furniture. And then we got cats. It didn't take long before said cats began turning various parts of that furniture into a scratching post. They also turned our ottoman into a hairball depository.<br />
<br />
The kids, meanwhile, turn couches into jungle gyms, food waste recepticles and canvases for their artistic creations, not to mention ... well, I just won't go there.<br />
<br />
So when we moved to Minnesota, and into our current house, with its fancy basement and all, we opted to go the cheap route for the excess furniture we needed. And by "cheap," I mean "free." My sister had a friend who was getting rid of a couch she labeled as "comfortable," which is just another word for "really ugly." I had cofirmation of its ugliness when my sister said this: "My daughter won't bring it to college because it's too ugly."
We'll take it!<br />
<br />
That was six years and only God knows how many houseguests ago, quite a long time to live with a couch rejected for a beer-fueled environment. And now that our kids are getting older, we decided it was time to abandon our old, maroon plaid -- and, yes, comfortable -- sofa.<br />
<br />
There was only one problem with this plan:
We'd have to go to a furniture store to get one.<br />
<br />
As I said, kids and furniture don't mix. I have two boys. Whenever they see soft furniture, they see a trampoline. So imagine the furniture store from their point of view: a wide sea filled with nothing but trampolines and expensive, breakable things like lamps and vases. It's a kid's dream, and a parent's nightmare.<br />
<br />
We knew the danger going into our visit to the local furniture store, but we went, anyway, because when you're about to emerge from six years of ugly sofa purgatory you just don't think straight. That, and parenting makes you really stupid. So we went.<br />
<br />
Our furniture store has these neato carts designed to look like racecars. They're too small for The Boy, who is now seven, but they are perfect for The Sequel, who is three. He got in, and then The Boy decided that he really wanted to push the cart.
The Sequel would have none of it.<br />
<br />
Our youngest is still in that stage between toddler and preschooler where he's smart and can do lots of things for himself but is still prone to major malfunctions in the emotional department, and so rather than kindly inform his brother that he'd prefer it if his mother pushed the cart, he did this:<br />
<br />
AAAAHAHAHAHAAAAAAAAAUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUGGGGGGGGGGGHHHH!!!<br />
<br />
Only really, really, REALLY loud.
Every eye in that furniture store, and it was big and well populated at the time, was staring straight at us.<br />
<br />
We settled the issue, and then we looked at a sofa, and were approached by a nice, old salesman named Bob who told us all about this big, giant sectional sofa. Bob the Furniture Salesman was interesting and easy to talk to. After a while, we were enraptured by his discussion, and by the big, brown sofa. And then, like a deer about to sense the approach of imminent danger, I looked up from the sofa, because the area was eerily quiet. I looked around, with a look of fear familiar to every parent. And I thought this: "Hey, where did my kids go?"<br />
<br />
"Excuse me!" And then I ran off, looking for my escaped progeny, who had taken refuge near another sofa. Fortunately, they didn't destroy anything. I'd like to think that I have a sixth parental sense that warned me of danger before their escape resulted in any collateral damage. Most likely I just got lucky.<br />
<br />
After our sales presentation, we decided to go look at beds. One problem with furniture stores, besides their intense atttraction to children, is the fact that they remind you how awful all of your other furniture is. See, our bed is also in hideous condition -- actually, it's a "bed" only in the broadest sense of the term; it's shaped more like a giant bathtub after 14-plus years of use. And unlike our couch, "comfortable" would not be an accurate term here.<br />
<br />
The great thing about looking at beds is that you're actively encouraged to lay down repeatedly on one bed after the other while the salesperson talks to you, which always makes me sleepy ... and off my parental guard.<br />
<br />
Fortunately, the boys didn't quite view the bed area as a trampoline park. Instead, they copied us, laying down on bed after bed after bed. And then they pushed one another in the cart (The Sequel and his short attention span had gotten over his dislike of his brother as the cart pusher, apparently) and we finally gave up and decided to leave.<br />
<br />
My eldest topped our trip off by testing his spitting skills on the floor as we sat in the cafeteria, eating cookies and talking sofas. Suffice it to say, he cleaned it up, and then we left. Quickly.<br />
<br />
The next time we looked at furniture, we got a baby sitter.<br />
<br />
But this story has a happy ending. We eventually got our sofa, though not from Bob the Furniture Salesman. And the day that I brought it in the house and unwrapped it from its plastic casing, The Boys instantly started jumping on it, repeatedly.<br />
<br />
At least the cat hasn't barfed on it yet.Anonymoushttp://www.blogger.com/profile/02737980462115396236noreply@blogger.com9tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-33314856.post-5325433200510986072011-11-18T18:33:00.001-06:002011-11-18T18:40:38.056-06:00A Procrastination Lesson Not Learned<span class="Apple-style-span" style="background-color: rgba(255, 255, 255, 0.917969); color: #222222; font-family: arial, sans-serif; font-size: 13px;">I'm a lifelong procrastinator. As a teenager a friend gave me a "procrastinator's license," and my mom called me a procrastinator so much I think she forgot my actual name. And I have continued that procrastination habit well into my adulthood.</span><br style="background-color: rgba(255, 255, 255, 0.917969); color: #222222; font-family: arial, sans-serif; font-size: 13px;" /><br style="background-color: rgba(255, 255, 255, 0.917969); color: #222222; font-family: arial, sans-serif; font-size: 13px;" /><span class="Apple-style-span" style="background-color: rgba(255, 255, 255, 0.917969); color: #222222; font-family: arial, sans-serif; font-size: 13px;">So it was no surprise, then, when earlier this week I sat at my desk at work and realized that I had to take The Boy to Cub Scouts that evening, and that this was Rocket Derby Night, and that we hadn't done even the tiniest bit of work on his rocket in the month we'd had it. Dangit.</span><br style="background-color: rgba(255, 255, 255, 0.917969); color: #222222; font-family: arial, sans-serif; font-size: 13px;" /><br style="background-color: rgba(255, 255, 255, 0.917969); color: #222222; font-family: arial, sans-serif; font-size: 13px;" /><span class="Apple-style-span" style="background-color: rgba(255, 255, 255, 0.917969); color: #222222; font-family: arial, sans-serif; font-size: 13px;">For those who don't know, the rocket derby is much like the soapbox derby, only using rockets that are propelled along strings with a propeller and two or three big rubber bands. I say "propelled" loosely, because the most likely result is that a rocket goes a couple of feet, assuming it doesn't plunge to the earth altogether. That's what happened to The Boy and I last year. We had worked on the rocket for days. Yet yours truly failed to do something rather important last year: effectively glue the piece the connects the rocket to the string. The device plummeted to the ground and broke upon start, breaking The Boy's heart with it.</span><br style="background-color: rgba(255, 255, 255, 0.917969); color: #222222; font-family: arial, sans-serif; font-size: 13px;" /><br style="background-color: rgba(255, 255, 255, 0.917969); color: #222222; font-family: arial, sans-serif; font-size: 13px;" /><span class="Apple-style-span" style="background-color: rgba(255, 255, 255, 0.917969); color: #222222; font-family: arial, sans-serif; font-size: 13px;">So when I sat at my desk and realized that I hadn't built his rocket and I had precisely 9 hours to get it done, 7 of which would be spent in the rocket-construction-unfriendly environment that is my workplace, I was a wee bit disappointed in myself.</span><br style="background-color: rgba(255, 255, 255, 0.917969); color: #222222; font-family: arial, sans-serif; font-size: 13px;" /><br style="background-color: rgba(255, 255, 255, 0.917969); color: #222222; font-family: arial, sans-serif; font-size: 13px;" /><span class="Apple-style-span" style="background-color: rgba(255, 255, 255, 0.917969); color: #222222; font-family: arial, sans-serif; font-size: 13px;">I thus embarked on a daylong mental rocket-planning expedition. I went home briefly for lunch and I glued the two pieces together that formed the block from which we could carve the rocket. That evening, The Wife and I met with The Boy's teacher for his parent-teacher conference, and then The Boy and I rushed home to begin carving. We then began turning that block of wood into a projectile.</span><br style="background-color: rgba(255, 255, 255, 0.917969); color: #222222; font-family: arial, sans-serif; font-size: 13px;" /><br style="background-color: rgba(255, 255, 255, 0.917969); color: #222222; font-family: arial, sans-serif; font-size: 13px;" /><span class="Apple-style-span" style="background-color: rgba(255, 255, 255, 0.917969); color: #222222; font-family: arial, sans-serif; font-size: 13px;">Incidentally, the wood is made of balsa, which is wood so soft you could carve it with a spoon. I used a potato peeler, because as a household cook who specializes in mashed potatoes, I am one with the peeler. Yet I got a tad aggressive with the peeler and took a chunk of the nose off the rocket off and, along with it, all of its aerodynamics. But we pressed on. The Boy helped some, but as we were rushing I decided to do the carving and sanding for, you know, <i>expediency</i>.</span><br style="background-color: rgba(255, 255, 255, 0.917969); color: #222222; font-family: arial, sans-serif; font-size: 13px;" /><br style="background-color: rgba(255, 255, 255, 0.917969); color: #222222; font-family: arial, sans-serif; font-size: 13px;" /><span class="Apple-style-span" style="background-color: rgba(255, 255, 255, 0.917969); color: #222222; font-family: arial, sans-serif; font-size: 13px;">This was the moment that my phone rang. It was my wife. She was at day care.</span><br style="background-color: rgba(255, 255, 255, 0.917969); color: #222222; font-family: arial, sans-serif; font-size: 13px;" /><br style="background-color: rgba(255, 255, 255, 0.917969); color: #222222; font-family: arial, sans-serif; font-size: 13px;" /><span class="Apple-style-span" style="background-color: rgba(255, 255, 255, 0.917969); color: #222222; font-family: arial, sans-serif; font-size: 13px;">"My car won't start," she said.</span><br style="background-color: rgba(255, 255, 255, 0.917969); color: #222222; font-family: arial, sans-serif; font-size: 13px;" /><br style="background-color: rgba(255, 255, 255, 0.917969); color: #222222; font-family: arial, sans-serif; font-size: 13px;" /><span class="Apple-style-span" style="background-color: rgba(255, 255, 255, 0.917969); color: #222222; font-family: arial, sans-serif; font-size: 13px;">DANGIT!</span><br style="background-color: rgba(255, 255, 255, 0.917969); color: #222222; font-family: arial, sans-serif; font-size: 13px;" /><br style="background-color: rgba(255, 255, 255, 0.917969); color: #222222; font-family: arial, sans-serif; font-size: 13px;" /><span class="Apple-style-span" style="background-color: rgba(255, 255, 255, 0.917969); color: #222222; font-family: arial, sans-serif; font-size: 13px;">So we set aside the rocket and headed out the door. The Boy looked at me with big, blue eyes. "But Dad," he said, "are we going to do the rocket?"</span><br style="background-color: rgba(255, 255, 255, 0.917969); color: #222222; font-family: arial, sans-serif; font-size: 13px;" /><br style="background-color: rgba(255, 255, 255, 0.917969); color: #222222; font-family: arial, sans-serif; font-size: 13px;" /><span class="Apple-style-span" style="background-color: rgba(255, 255, 255, 0.917969); color: #222222; font-family: arial, sans-serif; font-size: 13px;">I melted. Yes, Boy, I said. I'll do anything within my power to get that rocket done. But first, we must rescue your mother.</span><br style="background-color: rgba(255, 255, 255, 0.917969); color: #222222; font-family: arial, sans-serif; font-size: 13px;" /><br style="background-color: rgba(255, 255, 255, 0.917969); color: #222222; font-family: arial, sans-serif; font-size: 13px;" /><span class="Apple-style-span" style="background-color: rgba(255, 255, 255, 0.917969); color: #222222; font-family: arial, sans-serif; font-size: 13px;">We drove to day care, tried to jump her car once, failed, went to a mechanic, got some car-jumping advice, returned, and got the car started. The Wife followed me successfully home, and then we restarted the rocket-building process. Only we had less than an hour.</span><br style="background-color: rgba(255, 255, 255, 0.917969); color: #222222; font-family: arial, sans-serif; font-size: 13px;" /><br style="background-color: rgba(255, 255, 255, 0.917969); color: #222222; font-family: arial, sans-serif; font-size: 13px;" /><span class="Apple-style-span" style="background-color: rgba(255, 255, 255, 0.917969); color: #222222; font-family: arial, sans-serif; font-size: 13px;">We glued the pieces correctly, especially the part that connects the rocket to the string, and then I had The Boy get the paints so he could paint the rocket and make it look like he did the whole thing himself. And then I heard this, "Dad, this paint don't work."</span><br style="background-color: rgba(255, 255, 255, 0.917969); color: #222222; font-family: arial, sans-serif; font-size: 13px;" /><br style="background-color: rgba(255, 255, 255, 0.917969); color: #222222; font-family: arial, sans-serif; font-size: 13px;" /><span class="Apple-style-span" style="background-color: rgba(255, 255, 255, 0.917969); color: #222222; font-family: arial, sans-serif; font-size: 13px;">The paints we had bought last year for the rocket were bone dry.</span><br style="background-color: rgba(255, 255, 255, 0.917969); color: #222222; font-family: arial, sans-serif; font-size: 13px;" /><br style="background-color: rgba(255, 255, 255, 0.917969); color: #222222; font-family: arial, sans-serif; font-size: 13px;" /><span class="Apple-style-span" style="background-color: rgba(255, 255, 255, 0.917969); color: #222222; font-family: arial, sans-serif; font-size: 13px;">Alas, I added a little water, and The Boy began painting the rocket to look like a red crayon. Actually, it was a pink crayon, given that he had time for only one coat. It looked remarkably nice, given how rushed we were. And sure, I would spend the evening getting pink on my hands as I installed the propeller, but it was done and I was relieved.</span><br style="background-color: rgba(255, 255, 255, 0.917969); color: #222222; font-family: arial, sans-serif; font-size: 13px;" /><br style="background-color: rgba(255, 255, 255, 0.917969); color: #222222; font-family: arial, sans-serif; font-size: 13px;" /><span class="Apple-style-span" style="background-color: rgba(255, 255, 255, 0.917969); color: #222222; font-family: arial, sans-serif; font-size: 13px;">That was when The Wife went to her car to go get a new battery, only to get the same clicking sound she got earlier in the evening. So a jumping I went.</span><br style="background-color: rgba(255, 255, 255, 0.917969); color: #222222; font-family: arial, sans-serif; font-size: 13px;" /><br style="background-color: rgba(255, 255, 255, 0.917969); color: #222222; font-family: arial, sans-serif; font-size: 13px;" /><span class="Apple-style-span" style="background-color: rgba(255, 255, 255, 0.917969); color: #222222; font-family: arial, sans-serif; font-size: 13px;">Suffice it to say, by the time we got there, 10 minutes late, our expectations were low. Frankly, I just wanted the rocket to go a few feet. I just wanted to do better than last year.</span><br style="background-color: rgba(255, 255, 255, 0.917969); color: #222222; font-family: arial, sans-serif; font-size: 13px;" /><br style="background-color: rgba(255, 255, 255, 0.917969); color: #222222; font-family: arial, sans-serif; font-size: 13px;" /><span class="Apple-style-span" style="background-color: rgba(255, 255, 255, 0.917969); color: #222222; font-family: arial, sans-serif; font-size: 13px;">The younger kids went first, and then The Boy and I began winding up our propeller. We wound it 100 times, just like they told us, and then The Boy calmly held his projectile and waited his turn. When they grabbed his rocket and put it on the string, he looked at me with both his fingers crossed and his eyes crossed. The scout leader running the derby yelled "Three! Two! One!" and then pulled down the device holding all of the propellers.</span><br style="background-color: rgba(255, 255, 255, 0.917969); color: #222222; font-family: arial, sans-serif; font-size: 13px;" /><br style="background-color: rgba(255, 255, 255, 0.917969); color: #222222; font-family: arial, sans-serif; font-size: 13px;" /><span class="Apple-style-span" style="background-color: rgba(255, 255, 255, 0.917969); color: #222222; font-family: arial, sans-serif; font-size: 13px;">And The Boy's rocket fell straight to the ground.</span><br style="background-color: rgba(255, 255, 255, 0.917969); color: #222222; font-family: arial, sans-serif; font-size: 13px;" /><br style="background-color: rgba(255, 255, 255, 0.917969); color: #222222; font-family: arial, sans-serif; font-size: 13px;" /><span class="Apple-style-span" style="background-color: rgba(255, 255, 255, 0.917969); color: #222222; font-family: arial, sans-serif; font-size: 13px;">I was devastated. The Boy speechless. Two years in a row!</span><br style="background-color: rgba(255, 255, 255, 0.917969); color: #222222; font-family: arial, sans-serif; font-size: 13px;" /><br style="background-color: rgba(255, 255, 255, 0.917969); color: #222222; font-family: arial, sans-serif; font-size: 13px;" /><span class="Apple-style-span" style="background-color: rgba(255, 255, 255, 0.917969); color: #222222; font-family: arial, sans-serif; font-size: 13px;">But just as we thought it was a lost cause, just as I was frantically thinking of a way to explain my failure to my young son and just as I began thinking of ways to make it up to him, the scout leader picked up our rocket, and the one piece that fell off in the crash, one of the fins. Surprisingly, our haphazard rocket survived the fall. "Glue this back on," he said, "and try it again. It was wound up too tight and just flew off."</span><br style="background-color: rgba(255, 255, 255, 0.917969); color: #222222; font-family: arial, sans-serif; font-size: 13px;" /><br style="background-color: rgba(255, 255, 255, 0.917969); color: #222222; font-family: arial, sans-serif; font-size: 13px;" /><span class="Apple-style-span" style="background-color: rgba(255, 255, 255, 0.917969); color: #222222; font-family: arial, sans-serif; font-size: 13px;">Another chance! We went looking for glue, and then a savior offered some of the "super" variety. We glued the fin on, I held it for a few seconds, and then we went back to the starting area to get our second shot.</span><br style="background-color: rgba(255, 255, 255, 0.917969); color: #222222; font-family: arial, sans-serif; font-size: 13px;" /><br style="background-color: rgba(255, 255, 255, 0.917969); color: #222222; font-family: arial, sans-serif; font-size: 13px;" /><span class="Apple-style-span" style="background-color: rgba(255, 255, 255, 0.917969); color: #222222; font-family: arial, sans-serif; font-size: 13px;">We wound it up, this time stopping well short of that 100 mark. The leader grabbed our pink projectile and placed it in the blocks. "Three! Two! One!"</span><br style="background-color: rgba(255, 255, 255, 0.917969); color: #222222; font-family: arial, sans-serif; font-size: 13px;" /><br style="background-color: rgba(255, 255, 255, 0.917969); color: #222222; font-family: arial, sans-serif; font-size: 13px;" /><span class="Apple-style-span" style="background-color: rgba(255, 255, 255, 0.917969); color: #222222; font-family: arial, sans-serif; font-size: 13px;">Boom.</span><br style="background-color: rgba(255, 255, 255, 0.917969); color: #222222; font-family: arial, sans-serif; font-size: 13px;" /><br style="background-color: rgba(255, 255, 255, 0.917969); color: #222222; font-family: arial, sans-serif; font-size: 13px;" /><span class="Apple-style-span" style="background-color: rgba(255, 255, 255, 0.917969); color: #222222; font-family: arial, sans-serif; font-size: 13px;">Our rocket went a few feet. And then some. It flew off the blocks much faster than the other rockets in our heat, and went much further. When it finally came to a rest it was just a few feet short of the end, a very rare feat for even the best rockets, let alone our last-minute bottle of Pepto Bismol. Success!</span><br style="background-color: rgba(255, 255, 255, 0.917969); color: #222222; font-family: arial, sans-serif; font-size: 13px;" /><br style="background-color: rgba(255, 255, 255, 0.917969); color: #222222; font-family: arial, sans-serif; font-size: 13px;" /><span class="Apple-style-span" style="background-color: rgba(255, 255, 255, 0.917969); color: #222222; font-family: arial, sans-serif; font-size: 13px;">The moral of this story is, of course, that procrastination pays. Just wait and wait and at the last minute a combination of adrenaline and willpower will get the job done. My Mom is probably reading this and is crying quietly in her hands.</span><br style="background-color: rgba(255, 255, 255, 0.917969); color: #222222; font-family: arial, sans-serif; font-size: 13px;" /><br style="background-color: rgba(255, 255, 255, 0.917969); color: #222222; font-family: arial, sans-serif; font-size: 13px;" /><span class="Apple-style-span" style="background-color: rgba(255, 255, 255, 0.917969); color: #222222; font-family: arial, sans-serif; font-size: 13px;">I patted The Boy on the back after our race. We had given our high-fives, and I handed him his rocket. His first question was this, "What prize do we get?" Alas, Boy, no prizeāthe rocket derby is far less competitive than is the soapbox event. All we get is our pride in a job well done under extreme circumstances.</span><br style="background-color: rgba(255, 255, 255, 0.917969); color: #222222; font-family: arial, sans-serif; font-size: 13px;" /><br style="background-color: rgba(255, 255, 255, 0.917969); color: #222222; font-family: arial, sans-serif; font-size: 13px;" /><span class="Apple-style-span" style="background-color: rgba(255, 255, 255, 0.917969); color: #222222; font-family: arial, sans-serif; font-size: 13px;">He didn't seem satisfied with his reward.</span>Anonymoushttp://www.blogger.com/profile/02737980462115396236noreply@blogger.com7tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-33314856.post-38431716602585394562011-10-20T23:00:00.000-05:002011-10-20T23:00:49.335-05:00Discovering The Modern Version Of The Playboy StashThe Wife and I don't watch a lot of television, mostly because we put the TV in the basement, where it's cold and buggy. It's also far away, and we're too cheap to buy a second set. So instead, we watch our fish tank, which has fewer commercials and is usually more entertaining than 93 percent of the selections on at any given time, anyway. We also stare mindlessly at our computers.<br />
<br />
The Boy quickly took to our evening family ritual of staring at the computers. He did this climbing up onto our laps and then pounding on the keyboards whenever we were on the computers. The only way to assuage his computer needs was to give in, so we started with friendly little kid sites with lessons on the ABCs and vowels and how to spell words. We'd periodically let him watch Blue's Clues on the web or would peruse the PBS Kids site for him.<br />
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Eventually, time and The Boy's learning capabilities provided him with the ability to surf these websites himself. For the most part, our Household Internet Policy was liberal, which was something we could do because The Boy could not spell. He simply learned how to use bookmarks where we'd saved various sites for him. Life was easy.<br />
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But then he learned to spell. And he discovered YouTube, but mostly he used it to watch videos of skateboarding lessons or of funny home videos or music videos of bubble gum pop that was fine, even if the music made my ears ache and my musical sense scream.<br />
<br />
Still, we kept our eye on what he was watching. And then The Boy came home from school one afternoon with this tale: a friend of his had been surfing the web, and then for giggles typed in a web address starting with the word, "butt."<br />
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It's a pretty funny thought, when you think about it. Few things on Earth are as funny to a 7-year-old as "butt," and so a website devoted to butts would have to be filled with flatulence, making it a veritable second-grader goldmine, would it not?<br />
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No, it wouldn't. The site was not quite the flatulence festival he expected. Instead, The Boy's classmate discovered the modern version of Dad's closet-kept Playboys.<br />
<br />
"He said that he saw a girl licking a man's wiener," The Boy said.<br />
<br />
Dangit.<br />
<br />
I had long hoped that this day would never come. Oh, in the back of my mind I knew that it would. But I had always hoped that my eldest would never require such "parental guidance" and would simply avoid all bad things for the rest of his natural life so I could go on whistling and staring mindlessly at the fish tank all evening. Alas, that was not to be. His innocence is now gone. His friend had pulled back the curtain, revealing in playground talk that there exists this entire world of nudity and wiener licking, a world his parents had not told him about.<br />
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Fortunately, he found it totally disgusting.<br />
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"Put a password on that site, Dad," he said. "I don't to accidentally go to the site."<br />
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I'm proud of the kid, of course. He was honest, and he was suggesting ways to block his own access to those sites, lest temptation get the best of him. We ultimately did one better, and installed Net Nanny software that we should have probably installed about two years ago, which means that his old man now can't use half of the websites he normally peruses -- such as sportsillustrated.com.<br />
<br />
Had he been more like his old man, he would have pocketed that information and then looked at the site when his parents weren't looking. But in my day, we had old-fashioned paper magazines, and we usually found them stashed in someone's father's closet or got them from a friend. Someone always had a source who had Playboys stashed in an attic, or Penthouses hidden under a bed. <br />
<br />
We looked at them long before we had any idea why we were looking at them, because we knew that we weren't supposed to look at women with no clothes on. We were doing something forbidden, dangerous. It was exciting, far better than eating paste or playing Duck Duck Greyduck.<br />
<br />
So imagine our joy the day that a friend of mine hit the jackpot. We frequently went dumpster diving, looking for toys, preferably, or any neat thing we could find that some idiot tossed away like it was garbage. On one particularly lucrative expedition we came across a large box. It was filled with skin mags of all types. We had reading material for years. We spent hours looking at them. We treated them like gold, and let only our closest friends know of their existence.<br />
<br />
To be honest, I have no idea what happened to those magazines. Maybe we lost them, or perhaps my annoying little sister threw them away. Or maybe mom found them and burned them and then lamented to random people about her son's lost innocence. Of course, when I found those mags I was much closer to middle school, and middle schoolers aren't innocent.Anonymoushttp://www.blogger.com/profile/02737980462115396236noreply@blogger.com3tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-33314856.post-14519723478884602712011-10-06T22:48:00.000-05:002011-10-06T22:50:05.517-05:00Misleading My Spouse For Her AmusementMore than a year ago, my wife held what is commonly known as a "surprise birthday party" to celebrate the day that marked my having survived four decades without being shot for saying something stupid. As I do every birthday, we went to get hamburgers. When we got there numerous friends and family members were waiting for me, and handed me a funny hat and a blinking button that said "40" on it.<br />
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I had no idea it was coming, even though my wife was exceedingly grouchy for some reason about our inability to get out the door in a timely fashion -- most of the time, it is I who is the grumpy one in such instances. Nevertheless, on that day I vowed my revenge, giving me 17 full months of planning a surprise birthday for her.<br />
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That day came last week. Well, technically, The Wife's 40th came this week, but her birthday landed on a Tuesday, and nobody celebrates birthdays on Tuesdays. So instead, I'd hold it on a Friday.<br />
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I had only one problem: Seventeen months may be plenty of planning time, but it's an awfully long time to hold a secret, which the last time I checked was the top requirement for a successful surprise birthday.No secret means no surprise, and no surprise means a boring old "birthday party," which I can have any old time, even on a Tuesday.<br />
<br />
And I ... can't ... keep ... secrets.<br />
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Seriously: I'm a reporter by trade. And reporters are glorified gossips. My job on a day to day basis is to find information and tell people about it. I can't exactly turn this tendency off when I get home. And the result has made me notoriously bad at keeping secrets, and bad at not blurting out what I get her each Christmas.<br />
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My only saving grace is The Wife's strong desire not to know what I'm getting her for Christmas. She loves surprises. And so when I would taunt her about the gift I bought her in the days leading up to the holiday, rather than beg me like a starving puppy dog to let her in on the secret--which is what I'd do--she just blows me off and doesn't act like she wants to know at all.<br />
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Still, this was a different sort of surprise, one that involved considerable planning and the lure of various people, including far-flung family members, into the Twin Cities. So several months ago I convinced them to fly in or drive in from various locations. I then plotted the party in my head -- they'd be at our house when The Wife got home from work, and then we'd have a party a little later. And then I proceeded to bite my tongue for several months.<br />
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This was hard. Among the visitors would be The Wife's brother, who lives on the West Coast, and her pregnant sister, who calls Michigan home. How hard? The Wife once planned to unload some baby stuff onto her sister by sending it to her, and I all but had to shove my head into a vat of pudding to keep from saying, "HEY, just wait until they come here for your birthday rather than waste money on mailing it?!"<br />
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But, for some, inexplicable reason, I managed to keep this idea a secret. I avoided mentioning it during obvious conversation points. She never got a hint that I was emailing and facebooking various people behind her back. It was a lot of work. It was like a dog climbing a tree and meowing -- it all went against the very nature of my being. And so you can imagine my anger at myself the day last week that I almost blew it all.<br />
<br />
It was Wednesday. The entire plan was set. Everybody was to come into town on Thursday night. They'd hang out on Friday. I'd take that day off to prepare for the party, and they'd be here by the time The Wife walked in the door after work. Later on, members of my family and several close friends would join us. And we received video greetings from numerous friends who live in far-flung locations.<br />
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That Wednesday, at the end of a long workday, I decided to write myself an email reminder about the menu I was going to serve at the party, and the food I needed to buy. I then clicked "send." But as I sent it, I noticed something wrong.<br />
<br />
It wasn't going to my email. It was going to my wife's work email!<br />
<br />
My immediate reaction was to begin cursing, and when I was done I cursed some more and then cursed again before frantically thinking of an excuse why I sent my wife an email labeled "party menu" with a lengthy list of food one would only cook at a party. Among the menu items were deviled eggs and pigs in a blanket, which nobody eats unless they're in a large group where nobody notices you actually eating them. The Wife also hates deviled eggs, meaning it would be plainly obvious that a party was afoot.<br />
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Dammit. My choices were to break into her office, hack into her email account and delete the email, or simply deny having ever written any email. "I don't know what you're talking about. I never wrote an email listing pulled pork and deviled eggs on a party menu. You must be thinking of your other husband."<br />
<br />
But then I realized that, thanks to the wonders of modern technology, my wife, among others, can access her email at home. And then I consulted with some people who advised me on ways to mislead my wife. So, on the way home, I cooked up a frantic story, saying that I had accidentally sent an email to her that I had meant to send to my boss, and that nobody outside the company is even supposed to look at the message. For some reason, The Wife bought the excuse. She let me into her email account. I deleted the message, and then my heart sunk back into its chest. Crisis averted.<br />
<br />
The rest of the shindig went well. The Wife never suspected that I was taking the day off on Friday, never noticed smoke pouring out of my smoker for the pulled pork that morning, never noticed the sudden surge of pie crusts in the refrigerator (The Wife prefers pie over cake on her birthday, so I made several pies; I'd personally recommend<a href="http://allrecipes.com/recipe/apple-pie-by-grandma-ople/detail.aspx"> this recipe here</a>, and<a href="http://www.foodnetwork.com/recipes/tyler-florence/peach-blueberry-pie-recipe/index.html"> I'd strongly recommend this one,</a> but only because all of my guests gobbled it up, leaving none for yours truly.) Nor did she hear me dropping several pots and plans at 3 a.m. during my midnight pulled pork preparations.<br />
<br />
When The Wife walked in the door and saw her siblings and their spouses staring at her, smiling, she jumped about 10 feet and then went into "I can't believe you did this mode" for the next several hours. But she might have been the most surprised to discover that I cleaned the entire house all by myself, proving that birthday miracles do happen.Anonymoushttp://www.blogger.com/profile/02737980462115396236noreply@blogger.com3tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-33314856.post-48516488643088965122011-09-12T22:38:00.002-05:002011-09-12T22:39:29.724-05:00I Hate Sagging Pants And Maroon 5I like music videos. As a child of the 80s, videos were a huge part of growing up. But I'm also old enough to remember the dark days of the 70s, when there were no music videos. Probably because everybody had bad hair and ugly sideburns.<br />
<br />
<div>
So when my eldest recently discovered the wonders of the music video, I didn't protest, though these days he watches them on YouTube, which in hindsight is a better format than MTV. Lots of people complain that videos have disappeared from Music Television, only to be replaced by half-clothed, obnoxious young adults doing stupid things, but the fact is that we still had to sit through a stupid Paula Abdul video with Keanu Reeves before we could see something from U2 or The Cure. Dammit! Why didn't we have that viewer control when we were kids?</div>
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There are a couple of problems with my video-watching eldest. One is that not all music is the same, and thus I actually have to provide that parental supervision all those authorities keep talking about. Another is that he listens to a lot of bubble gum pop music, which makes me want to cry and stab my ears with a butter knife. But the biggest issue is that The Boy is now 7 going on 17. Suddenly, and without warning, my boy has become concerned with his clothing choices. Given a rare $40 gift card recently, he opted to <i>voluntarily </i>spend part of it on a pair of skinny jeans. (This led to an odd moment where I almost literally had to hold my tongue, because I kept wanting to shout to him, "ARE YOU KIDDING?! Buy something COOL! Your parents will buy you those pants! You don't need to get them! And then I realized that <i>my son was buying himself pants, thus saving me $20</i>. And I kept my mouth shut.)</div>
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In the old days -- three months ago -- he would only wear shirts with some licensed character on it or with the name of a local sporting team. Now he's wearing patterned shirts. And I don't dare mention cutting his hair, which has grown long and unruly. He likes it that way.</div>
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<div>
This is a little difficult for us to get used to, given that past clothing choices haven't exactly inspired confidence in his fashion sense, often because they paired neon green with maroon. But we've let him choose the clothes and the hair style thus far, with one key exception: his pants.</div>
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<br /></div>
<div>
The Boy recently indicated that he wanted to wear his pants down low, preferably with his underwear showing. I had a problem with this, mostly because I do not want to look at that butt any more than I already have. I've wiped that butt. I've potty trained that butt. I've seen things literally shoot out of it. I'm completely done with it. Plus, low-hanging pants just looks plain stupid. So I informed him, that, "as long as you're living in my house, Boy, you'll keep your pants up." I can't remember, but I think that when I walked away I might have muttered something along the lines of, "Dang kids these days ..."</div>
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<br /></div>
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And then it hit me: I'm a crusty old guy. Commonly known as a curmudgeon.</div>
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<br /></div>
<div>
Actually, this fact hit me a long time ago, probably when someone told me that I'm a curmudgeon. And it's difficult to argue with. I tend to complain a lot and dismiss people who disagree with a wave of the hand and a "BAH!" I'm known at work for rants about the word "solutions" in company literature, such as "we deliver business-aligned solutions to support corporate and technology functions." (No, no no, no no!!! Your stupid software company does NOT sell "solutions," you sell a product or a service, so QUIT USING THAT WORD TO DESCRIBE YOURSELF! What I need is a solution to poorly written company announcements). I'm also known in my family for my hatred of Maroon 5 (I just wish that guy would lose his voice; it makes my eardrums scream and want to commit suicide) and the Miracle of Life center at the Minnesota State Fair, home of animals who are about to, are are in the process of giving birth, or they've done so recently (dang place is way too crowded, you can't see any animals, too many strollers, including mine, and poor animals have to poop out babies in front of a crowd).</div>
<div>
<br /></div>
<div>
But being the parent of a wannabe teenager has brought my curmudgeonness to an entirely different level. This evening, for instance, I found myself chasing after my eldest, pulling his pants up, grumbling the entire time. </div>
<div>
<br /></div>
<div>
The real problem is that the guy doing the griping about his son's pant waist level is also the same guy who once took a pair of new, white jeans, dyed them with black splotches, and then cut several holes in them, leading my girlfriend to say, "nice holes!" I wore these in public. Several times. Sometimes with a tshirt emblazoned with several versions of the f-bomb. Honestly, I can't say anything along the lines of, "In my day, we kept our pants UP!" to my son with a straight face. Sure, we kept our pants up, but they had holes that required that I wear a <i>clean </i>pair of boxer shorts under them.</div>
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<br /></div>
<div>
Of course, now I know better, and really I'm just trying to keep my kid from making the same mistake I did, thus preventing him from looking like an idiot. Then again, perhaps instead of pulling his pants up in public and complaining about his underpants, I should actually encourage him to wear his pants like that. Then he'll think the look is dorky and he'll abandon it. Reverse psychology. </div>
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<br /></div>
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So I guess I'll keep letting him watch the YouTube. Unless he starts listening to Maroon 5. Then I'm throwing the computer under a bus.</div>
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Anonymoushttp://www.blogger.com/profile/02737980462115396236noreply@blogger.com1tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-33314856.post-3766231080782434732011-08-22T21:56:00.004-05:002011-08-25T00:11:14.667-05:00How I Became An Egghead<a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEhc2Jx72QfKyLBBmggYnVgdTs-FnM-YesJhFpWCsue_APA1qqglKQqQhVPc21-Mixt4cjASR_xTF2mUXbpsqFT_GJjKTDgMep7flV5sjxKqhjvarY2oX0Dz0OzlK-sSInaRTRQpyw/s1600/big+green+egg.jpg" onblur="try {parent.deselectBloggerImageGracefully();} catch(e) {}"><img style="float:left; margin:0 10px 10px 0;cursor:pointer; cursor:hand;width: 320px; height: 238px;" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEhc2Jx72QfKyLBBmggYnVgdTs-FnM-YesJhFpWCsue_APA1qqglKQqQhVPc21-Mixt4cjASR_xTF2mUXbpsqFT_GJjKTDgMep7flV5sjxKqhjvarY2oX0Dz0OzlK-sSInaRTRQpyw/s320/big+green+egg.jpg" border="0" alt="" id="BLOGGER_PHOTO_ID_5644656643077175170" /></a>One of the dangers of spending any time in the South is the taste you acquire for its food, namely pig, slowly cooked over several hours in a smoky black barrel somewhere in the vicinity of a trailer park. The barrel itself looks as if it belongs with a blacksmith. Tending to it is usually some fat guy in a dirty tank top who last used deodorant during the first Bush presidency and looks as if he just spent some quality time underneath an oil-gushing Ford.<div>
<br /></div><div>Such places do exist in Minnesota, but they're not as common. And so, upon my return to the state of my birth five years ago, I took up smoking. </div><div>
<br /></div><div>Food. Not tobacco. (I did smoke tobacco, briefly during and after college, which made all sorts of sense, given that before and after college I had no money, so naturally I threw what I had away on useless cancer sticks; apparently, if my college offered, "Common Sense 101," I missed it; or maybe I did have it, it was scheduled at 8 a.m. and I slept through it, just like mythology.)</div><div>
<br /></div><div>I had already been the household grillmaster and had wrested from The Wife the title of Household Cook, when I saw a friend smoke all sorts of meat on his smoker. So I invested in a cheap, electric version purchased on Craigslist. It was small, black and barrel shaped and smelled like wood. It worked fine for a while. Better yet, it was easy. And there's nothing I like more than easy. Especially easy food. The less effort required to get grub gets into my digestive system, the better.</div><div>
<br /></div><div>The only problem I had with the smoker, other than the fact that it looked like a poorly-made rocket done in by a shrinking ray and painted black, was that it was useless when it got cold. And the last time I checked, my address said I lived in Minnesota. And it tends to get cold here for several months out of the year. Unfortunately, my love for the cooked pig doesn't end when the temperature drops. So off I started looking for a new smoker.</div><div>
<br /></div><div>The Wife is afraid of three things: clowns, more clowns, and me uttering the phrase, "I need a new grill." Because she knows the potential for financial and/or physical harm that such a purchase can bring upon a household. And there are three things I'm afraid of: fricking rabbits, my kids uttering the phrase, "Dad, can we get a (FILL IN THE BLANK)," and my wife's reaction when I say, "I need a new grill." That's why I didn't tell her that I needed a new smoker for about a year.</div><div>
<br /></div><div>And it's also why I didn't tell here exactly what kind of smoker I wanted.</div><div>
<br /></div><div>See, when you begin researching smokers, eventually you come across the Big Green Egg. For those of you who don't know, the Big Green Egg is big, green and egg-shaped. The Egg smokes, but according to its enthusiastic users it does everything else, too: cooks steaks, makes pizza, bakes bread, makes cookies, laughs at your jokes about your mother-in-law, finishes your beer, babysits your children, and rescues cats from trees. It also cooks year-round, meaning I'll be able to stand on my deck smoking a pork butt in the middle of a mid-January snowstorm wearing bunny slippers. Woohoo!</div><div>
<br /></div><div>(No, I don't wear bunny slippers; I would wear them, however, if they were made from actual bunnies ... that came from my yard.)</div><div>
<br /></div><div>Egg owners are called Eggheads. And their boasts about the grill are legendary. Go to any smoking forum, and bring up, "What smoker should I get," and Eggheads will pop out of the woodwork like seagulls to a piece of bread or old people to a garage sale. All of them will say, "Get an Egg! It cooks everything! It lights up fast and uses less charcoal! It's like God made a grill and bestowed it unto His people! You will never leave the house again because you'll be too busy cooking! The food it cooks is orgasmic! GET IT! GET IT NOW!!!"</div><div>
<br /></div><div>I NEEDED this egg. The moment I found out about it, I realized that I would stop at nothing to get my hands on one. Only, there was one problem: It's not exactly cheap. The Egg is an expensive grill that you keep shoveling money into once you get it. So not only do you have to spend hundreds of dollars on the grill itself, you have to buy all of these "eggcessories" so you can cook with it properly. You have to get something to enable you to cook indirectly. Then you have to buy something to stir the ashes. And then another device to lift the grate. And of course you have to build a nice table for it, lest all other Egg users laugh and call you sissy boy. By the time you're done your children are selling apples downtown so you can make your next mortgage payment. And you're selling stuff you've made on the Egg.</div><div>
<br /></div><div>But such was my desire that I got it, anyway (Just a few more bushels of apples sold and we'll have that mortgage, boys!). Which brought me to one other problem: the egg weighs about as much as a Honda Civic with a family of four still inside. It's <i>heavy</i>. And as it's made of ceramic, meaning that one mistake and your egg will go Humpty Dumpty all over the ground. So I employed my 16-year-old nephew, who has recently become huge. He lifted the egg like it was an actual egg, and we got it home in one piece.</div><div>
<br /></div><div>(Seriously, how did that happen? Here's a kid I used to spin around the parking lot over and over and over again and now he could probably do that to me; come to think of it, that kinda sounds like fun ...)</div><div>
<br /></div><div>It's here that I'd like to say that I made a bunch of food and it was all awesome and that's the end. And so I will. But I'm glad to say that I haven't purchased all of the eggcessories they offer: I drew the line at the Big Green Egg corn holders.</div>Anonymoushttp://www.blogger.com/profile/02737980462115396236noreply@blogger.com1tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-33314856.post-36137894254153016242011-08-07T18:43:00.005-05:002011-08-07T19:50:42.922-05:00Escaping Yard Work The Hard And Painful WaySomeone in the 1970s looked at homes around the country and declared, "You know what this yard needs? MORE ROCKS!" The result was a decorative landscaping rock trend that today is the bane of my existence. Someone somewhere leveled a mountain, broke it up into a million billion rocks, smoothed them out, and then spread them all around my house. I hate every single one of them, especially those that venture out into my lawn shortly before mowing time.<div><br /></div><div>One particularly notable patch of rocks is in my back yard, where the drunk farmer who built my house decided to put an unsightly, raised area of decorative rocks. Did he plant anything in this patch? No. It's just rocks. Well, rocks and weeds now. And my central air unit, which is old. Probably older than the house, really. I think someone discarded it here back in 1977 and the house-building farmer decided to use it. A friend of mine once, upon walking in my yard and seeing the air conditioner, said, "What the heck is THAT thing?" </div><div><br /></div><div>The job of that rock patch for the last few years, besides serving as a weed haven, is to be the object of my constant declarations of, "I'm going to do something about that." Of course, the job of transplanting decorative rocks from one part of my house to another, or to the driveway where some poor Craigslist shopper will take them, isn't exactly fun, and so I've usually found other things to do, such as <i>anything</i>. (Seriously, didn't Alabama chain gangs shovel rocks as punishment? Why would I want to do that?) Five years after we moved in, that patch is still there.</div><div><br /></div><div>But this afternoon, in a fit of responsibility, I took my wheelbarrow and a shovel and got to work, shoveling rocks. I had asked The Boy if he wanted to help and earn some extra money, and apparently, after remembering the Alabama chain gang reference, decided that playing his skateboarding game would be more fun.</div><div><br /></div><div>So I went back there and started shoveling. I periodically had a visitor in the form of my toddler, but asked The Wife to remove him, because toddlers and rocks really don't go well together -- or perhaps they go too well. Besides, some of those rocks would be flying from my shovel, and hitting my toddler with rocks is not how I want to end the weekend. </div><div><br /></div><div>I started humming old blues songs, shoveling away, when I felt something on my ankle. Something painful. I looked down.</div><div><br /></div><div>Wasp!</div><div><br /></div><div>Apparently, wasps don't like it when you dig up their home. I shoved it out of the way, then felt something else painful. I took my shoe and sock off. I felt another sting of pain. More wasps! So I did what all the backyard survival books tell me to do, I began yelling and running while doing the Adult Wasp Dance. I yelled and danced my way into the front yard, hoping that someone would see me and come to my assistance. They didn't, meaning my neighbors (and family members) probably didn't think I was doing anything abnormal, at least for me. </div><div><br /></div><div>I had about a million wasps coating my ankles and legs. OK, I had fewer than that. A dozen. OK, a half-dozen. I went into the house, having left a trail of shoes and socks and sunglasses and pride in my wake. I ran straight to the shower, figuring that the 5 million wasps I was certain were still on me looking to do some a-stingin' would run away and die at the first drop of lukewarm shower water. </div><div><br /></div><div>I have been stung by a bee precisely once in my life. I was 3. And it hurt. But that didn't cause my fear of bees and wasps. That fear was already well ingrained, because I'm human, and it's a human instinct to act crazily the moment we see anything with a stinger on its butt. Now that I've been stung again, that fear has been magnified. I've been seeing and hearing bees everywhere since removing myself from the shower. I haven't gone outside since then, either, so my shoes and socks are still on the lawn.</div><div><br /></div><div>And, indeed, the first dose of removed footwear is still near the yellow jacket nest, driving them crazy. We looked out the window and saw my shoe. It was under a relentless attack by a nest's worth of wasps. An hour later, the swarm was still there, though they were clearly tired, as a few were taking breaks. Nearby were my shovel, my wheelbarrow and a metal rake I was using for the job. And there they will stay until I can get myself a hazard suit. Or maybe a suit of armor.</div><div><br /></div><div>The good news is that my eldest opted against earning money and my wife removed my youngest, or else they'd be the ones with stings, and it's one thing for a wasp to sting me, but them things had better not sting my kids. Or I'll go all gasoline-and-propane torch on them.</div><div><br /></div><div>I guess this was just nature's way of telling me to sit around the house more often.</div>Anonymoushttp://www.blogger.com/profile/02737980462115396236noreply@blogger.com1tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-33314856.post-1228078846209318742011-07-19T21:42:00.004-05:002011-07-19T22:57:52.516-05:00Sex, Trunks and Boiling Hot DogsWe recently went to see a movie at something called a "Drive-In." For those of you who were born after 1985, a drive-in is a giant parking lot with a massive, poorly maintained white screen at one end. The theater then shows a movie on that screen that you can watch from the comfort of your vehicle, which is fine if you drive a Cadillac Escalade, less fine if you drive a 1978 Dodge Aspen with a bench seat. You listen to the sound through your scratchy FM radio, all the while praying that, by the time the triple feature is over at 3 a.m. you still have battery life to start your car and head home.<div><br /></div><div>They were popular in the 1950s and 60s when everybody was so thrilled about the automobile that they wanted to spend as much time as humanly possible in one. They declined over time as people who owned the drive-ins realized that they'd make a lot more money by subdividing the land and selling it to developers. And they wouldn't have to employ people to stop people from having sex in their cars.</div><div><br /></div><div>A funny thing has happened more recently: people realized that they preferred spending time outdoors in the summer while the weather was still decent, and thus outdoor movies have become in vogue again. So now we can watch movies in parks or in parking lots, if you know where to look, and the few drive-ins that remain have become more popular. So now you can say you're spending time outdoors, when in reality you're still sitting on your butt eating too much food.</div><div><br /></div><div>One more bonus, at least for us parents: they're cheap. You generally don't have to take out a second mortgage on your house to take your family to a drive-in--provided, of course, there is a decent, kid-friendly movie available rather than something titled "Naked Ax Murderers 3." Actually, it's usually my luck that whenever I think of a drive-in movie, "Naked Ax Murderers 3" is the opening movie, followed by something like Bambi. <i>Uh, can't you reverse those so I can get my nudity and violence after my kids have fallen asleep (or been given a heavy dose of Benedryl?).</i></div><div><br /></div><div>We have two whole drive-ins in the general vicinity of my house, meaning that I can get to them without having to stop and use the restroom (by the way, as we age, that distance shrinks, I've found). They are the two I remember most from when I went to drive-ins during my youth. And, from the looks of it, they haven't updated either of them since. Or cleaned the bathrooms. Here's a sign that the public bathroom is in a nasty state: people wait in a long line to use the portapotty that they have as an apparent backup. </div><div><br /></div><div>One more thing they didn't change: the between-movie advertisements for the snack bar, in which they showed film of popcorn being popped and pop being poured into a cup and hot dogs being boiled in water. It was the same thing they showed back in the 1970s, and as I recall, boiling hot dogs weren't appetizing back then. They sure as hell aren't appetizing now. </div><div><br /></div><div>But at least they fenced off what was used for a playground, which in my day were usually made of metal. If at least one kid didn't get sent to the hospital from a severe cut, laceration or impalement, we just weren't playing hard enough.<i> What? No injuries? SLACKERS!</i> Anyway, most of the kids at the movie we attended played on a grassy knoll on one side of the theater. And they had a blast, proving that most playgrounds are almost totally worthless. Kids will always fill the playground void with whatever is available -- hill, steps, cars, other people, etc. </div><div><br /></div><div>I saw E.T. in a drive-in theater, and the second feature that day was Airplane, the best single movie ever made, making it the most valuable drive-in visit in history. I also saw a Bruce Lee film at a drive-in theater. And this was the theater where I noticed that a van parked in the row in front of our vehicle was bouncing up and down vigorously during the film. The bouncing stopped after it was surrounded by a group of employees carrying flashlights. It would take me a while before I figured out why the van was bouncing.</div><div><br /></div><div>In later years, I went on a double date at a drive-in, and the movies were so good all four of us fell asleep. We were woken up at 3 a.m. by some Grinch with a flashlight, probably the same one stopping the action in that van years before. My high school girlfriend and I went on a date with the same couple a few weeks later, only that time we tried hiding two of us in the trunk. You know, to avoid paying the extra ticket costs.</div><div><br /></div><div>Being chivalrous folk, we men decided to hide. The girls were to let us out after finding a spot in back. So we hid, and got hot. My fellow male date and I baked in that trunk as the girls drove and paid for their tickets. We could not hear them well, so we just heard "mumble mumble mumble mumble." They drove around a while. "Mumble mumble mumble." And then they drove some more. "Mumble mumble mumble." Then they sped up! HEY! What's going on!</div><div><br /></div><div>Next thing we knew they opened the trunk, we got out at the same parking lot where we got into the trunk. This was the 1980s, and they'd been replacing the old speakers with the newfangled FM broadcast of the audio. The problem: the car we were driving was a beater with only an AM radio, and all of the speakers were up in front. Nice of them girls not to keep us in the trunk the entire movie.</div><div><br /></div><div>I'm glad to say we didn't resort to that during our recent visit, when we saw a 90-minute Disney toy advertisement called "Cars 2" and then something called "The Green Lantern" (I think it was a movie, though it sure didn't seem like it), making it the exact opposite of that awesome E.T.-Airplane double feature in that both movies sucked badly.</div><div><br /></div><div>But the kids enjoyed it. They fell asleep in the back of the van after the first movie, and then The Wife and I got to "enjoy" the second, less kid-friendly second movie on our own. And then she fell asleep and it was just me watching a badly made superhero flick. Just like at home. </div>Anonymoushttp://www.blogger.com/profile/02737980462115396236noreply@blogger.com1tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-33314856.post-46880498198984195472011-07-12T22:25:00.005-05:002011-07-12T23:49:39.098-05:00The Inevitable Black Hills 'Vacay'<a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEi6k1KTZ5mVxXCXPbHPbqFyhOA4bK8NCEw3JabwzW-Q6nXn-gMbYJ_4z8WoG9nqn3ZszQKHSdncbCUvwAntiQ4gOXxtiRq8Ck8D0o6lO5CEnAd-bssGn1SEgTmezWNgX0dD-mcN1A/s1600/South+Dakota+dork+at+Wall+Drug.jpg" onblur="try {parent.deselectBloggerImageGracefully();} catch(e) {}"><img style="float:right; margin:0 0 10px 10px;cursor:pointer; cursor:hand;width: 240px; height: 320px;" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEi6k1KTZ5mVxXCXPbHPbqFyhOA4bK8NCEw3JabwzW-Q6nXn-gMbYJ_4z8WoG9nqn3ZszQKHSdncbCUvwAntiQ4gOXxtiRq8Ck8D0o6lO5CEnAd-bssGn1SEgTmezWNgX0dD-mcN1A/s320/South+Dakota+dork+at+Wall+Drug.jpg" border="0" alt="" id="BLOGGER_PHOTO_ID_5628694524960681234" /></a>I went on vacation last week, or "vacay," in modern cubicle parlance. We went to South Dakota. The Black Hills. I live in the Midwest. A Black Hills vacation is inevitable, like death, only you would prefer to get it over with sooner, rather than later. We got it over with sooner.<div><br /></div><div>The Black Hills is exactly like every other vacation destination on the planet, meaning that somebody once came across its beautiful scenery and unique environment and thought to himself, "You know what we need to get people to come here and visit? Tacky, expensive destinations, and lots of them." You know, because nothing compliments God's creation quite like obnoxious billboards, expensive trinkets and ugly t-shirts.</div><div><br /></div><div>Truth be told, it works out for people such as myself, a father of two boys. My wife and I got to see the area's awesome beauty, even if our drives through the forested hills of Custer State Park or the moonscapes of the Badlands were interrupted by periodic screams and cries and shouts of "I'M BORED" or "I GOTTA PEE RIGHT NOW!" Or, in my toddler's case, "I WANT A HUG!" My kids, meanwhile, get to pan for gold or have a blacksmith pound their names into a railroad spike or look at the same five, cheap toy spears or guns that every retailer keeps on hand, regardless of whether they sell tourist trinkets or expensive jewelry.</div><div><br /></div><div>Indeed, the boys spent a lot of time in the car, because we drove the 10 hours to get there. Then we spent a lot of time driving once we got there, and to escape we had to drive 10 hours more. My kids, despite the periodic incidents such as the time The Boy decided to play, "Bite My Finger" with his chomp-prone younger brother, actually handle the car pretty well. That's what happens when you take your children on numerous cross-country drives. Eventually they get numb to the whole experience. </div><div><br /></div><div>That, and kids on road trips have it easy these days. The Wife and I usually take enough electronic gadgetry on road trips to power NASA. And by the way, we went <i>camping </i>on our trip to South Dakota -- in a campground with wifi, of course, which is probably your first indication that we weren't exactly "roughing it." That said, we were staying in a tiny cabin, and it contained little more than beds. Meaning no table! We had to eat OUTSIDE! With the bugs and the bats and the creepy people from Nebraska in the next cabin! It was awful, I tell you! And the Internet connection was WEAK! I sometimes had to wait MINUTES for sites to load properly! It was horrible. Just horrible! And it RAINED a lot (because we were on vacation; it generally rained wherever we were at the moment), so sometimes we had to go to a restaurant instead of eating by the campfire!</div><div><br /></div><div>Anyway, we usually take a computer, a DVD player, a Nintendo DS and various products produced by Apple. Once, on a trip to Chicago in which we took my youngest niece, we had three of those products going at once in the car: two iPods and one iPhone playing music. Steve Jobs' takeover of our lives is nearly complete. </div><div><br /></div><div>So on a trip, my boys can watched movies and play games and listen to music and generally ignore the presence of their parents until they have some sort of need. (Preferably before they have that need all over their pants, that is.)</div><div><br /></div><div>They certainly didn't have to resort to the things we did as kids, mostly bugging our fellow passengers or counting the billboards along the way -- and, incidentally, those billboards in South Dakota are the only things that lie between you, the traveler, and hypnosis. For much of the trip, you're looking at nothing but grasslands as far as the eye can see. Thank God for the western part of the state and its hills. And occasional herds of cows. Thank you, cows, for breaking up the monotony.</div><div><br /></div><div>Most people will tell you that, back in the day, they played games or sang songs like "99 Bottles of Beer," which is ridiculous, because nobody ever finishes that song. <i>Nobody</i>. The Wife and I on one of our road trips tried to get through it, and failed. It is physically impossible for a person to have enough of an attention span to get through all 99 of them damn bottles. At some point, you realize that it's time to get on with your life. Even if that life involves staring at cornfields or grasslands while leaning against the car window and trying not to drool on the upholstery.</div><div><br /></div><div>As a result, all car trips were long and painful and usually involved too many overnight stops because the driver, sick of hearing a regular chorus of either, "I'm hungry!" Don't hit me!" or "I've gotta pee!" pulls over to spend a night preserving the limited remains of his or her sanity. I made it 10 hours with two stops on our way back. Kids these days are travel wimps. </div><div><br /></div><div>So we made it through our annual road trip, though being cramped in a cabin and/or a minivan with a pair of young boys made me appreciate the comparatively spacious expanse of our home. At least here I can run away without leaving the car driverless. </div>Anonymoushttp://www.blogger.com/profile/02737980462115396236noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-33314856.post-3495618196698905342011-06-08T23:20:00.004-05:002011-06-09T00:45:29.977-05:00On Ring Bearing, Wedding Costs And CummerbundsI have a handful of nieces and a single nephew, all of whom are considerably older than my boys. The first of this crop is getting married this weekend, which officially makes me old, no matter how often I tell myself that these are the offspring of my <i>considerably older</i> sisters. (Though now that I think of it, my 16-year-old niece, the daughter of my younger sister, should not be allowed to marry until she's 40.)<div><br /></div><div>The age of my boys has made them prime candidates for the job of ring bearer. The Boy has already been a ring bearer at one wedding, and he will get another chance this weekend when he'll work alongside his younger brother, The Sequel, as a co-ring bearer. </div><div><br /></div><div>It's a risky move to place the responsibility for holding a small, yet expensive piece of jewelry into the hands of a person with little attention span and a penchant for running in random directions and climbing on various implements and forgetting what he did five seconds earlier. Or, if he's younger, someone who still soils his shorts and places everything into his mouth. </div><div><br /></div><div><div>Which is why the ring bearer usually bears no ring, because no woman in her right mind, even a mind damaged by months of wedding planning and then obliterated by several days of pre-wedding stress and one night of alcohol-fueled partying, would give a ring to a boy so small. Thus, the job of the ring bearer is to pair with the flower girl to give wedding attendees a double-dose of cuteness before the arrival of the bride's dress. </div><div><br /></div><div>With no real responsibilities, then, the ring bearer walks several feet in one direction holding a pillow. The whole job will last about 5 minutes. The real work will have happened before hand, for several hours, as they get photographed repeatedly in their little tuxes, both by themselves, with the flower girl, and with oodles of family, hopefully not crying his eyes out as the younger one is likely to do. (We recently sat for a family photo; after a while, The Sequel started crying and pleading, "No more flashing! No more flashing!")</div><div><br /></div><div>Weddings are good things. You get an evening of free food and free booze and all you have to do is buy a cheap set of towels or a toaster and sit through an hour-long "service." It's even more fun when you're in that wedding, because you get to wear special outfits and sit in special seats while wearing special outfits that nobody else gets to wear. And then you get your pictures taken. In my case, I get the pleasure of torturing my two boys with formal wear and cute pictures for several hours. And all I have to wear is a sportcoat.</div><div><br /></div><div>(By the way, as the Creepy Uncle, my job at this wedding will be to give my niece and new nephew-in-law all sorts of unsolicited marriage advice and watch people dance at the reception, both of which I'm really good at.)</div><div><br /></div><div>All that specialness comes with a cost. And, as anybody who has ever been married can attest, that cost is usually far, far, far more than whatever item is being purchased is worth if it were being purchased for any other reason. To wit: tuxedo rental.</div><div><br /></div><div>Some people buy tuxedos, because they're rich or they're politicians and they get invited to fancy parties or because they like to look nice when they change the oil in their cars. But nobody buys tuxedos used for weddings, mostly because the tuxes come with tails or funny things called cummerbunds or brightly colored vests that you wouldn't be caught dead wearing anywhere but in a church basement filled with drunks. Or in a school gym filled with drunk high schoolers.</div><div><br /></div><div>(By the way: does anybody know the actual purpose of a cummerbund? Is it to de-gut a male? Make him look thin? Or is there some sort of male-female accessory equivalency rule I don't know about? Of course, now that I think of it, I can't really think of a reason for the existence of a vest, either.)</div><div><br /></div><div>So you have to rent the tuxedo in most cases, and in most cases the prices are what you'd expect from a one-day rental place: insane. Add in the "wedding premium" that comes with just about any product or service provided at a wedding, and a typical dude needs to take out a loan to rent a tux for his buddy's nuptials. </div><div><br /></div><div>This wedding premium is on everything -- clothing, facility rental, napkins, invitations, candles, etc.. And given the fact that many brides go bonkers planning for these events, the result puts a couple into debt faster than a couple of years at Harvard. (Census data says that <a href="http://www.boston.com/news/local/breaking_news/2011/05/census_study_fi.html?rss_id=Top+Stories">fewer people are getting married</a>. I know why: nobody has any money to pay for the damn wedding because nobody has a job.)</div><div><br /></div><div>We figured that the price for renting little tuxes for small boys would be half the cost of an adult male tux. Less fabric! Apparently, we were wrong. The cost was the same, meaning that renting a pair of tuxedos would have cost us about the same as it would cost to replace my dishwasher. Fortunately, we were given the option of buying our own tuxes, and we ended up purchasing a pair of cute, all-black tuxes for the boys for the wedding for less than the cost of renting one. And when we're done we'll be able to take the boys to all those fancy black-tie parties I get invited to but have to turn down because my boys have nothing to wear. I'll finally get to wear my old, green cummerbund.</div></div>Anonymoushttp://www.blogger.com/profile/02737980462115396236noreply@blogger.com2tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-33314856.post-6902111559171235032011-05-26T20:58:00.003-05:002011-05-26T22:01:31.759-05:00Only Scary Cake Could Make This Kid HustleThe Boy plays baseball. He's decent at it. He hits, usually, and he typically catches the ball when he's not tumbling backwards like a drunk sailor. The tumbling, apparently, is a hazard of being a six-year-old. Not that being six makes one clumsy. Rather, it gives six-year-olds an irresistible urge to roll on the ground. <div><br /></div><div>And the urge to roll around is directly proportional to the newness, cleanliness, expense and niceness of the clothes being worn. If the kid is wearing a beat-up pair of old jeans with more holes than jeans and a musty-old tank top, he'll likely sit inside and play video games and use napkins. If he's wearing a nice pair of khakis and a polo shirt, he's outside mud wrestling while having water gun fights using red Kool-Aid filled Super Soakers and eating mustard-coated hot dogs. Actually, make that mustard coated mustard dogs. And don't even ask what he'd do if he were wearing a tux.</div><div><br /></div><div>(That's because I don't know what it'd be like if he were wearing a tux ... but I'm going to find out in two weeks when one of my nieces gets married; both my boys are to be ring bearers, and thus we had to rent two tuxedos. Ever try getting the measurements of a toddler? The kid acted like the measuring tape we were using was white hot. The Sequel went so crazy trying to avoid being touched by the tape that an experienced waterboarder would have fallen to his knees and surrendered and became a nun, even if he were a dude. I still haven't recovered from that episode, and it was about a month ago. But we got the measurements. Sure, his coat will likely be big enough to fit the shoulder pads of a linebacker and the arms will be different lengths and the pants will be long enough to fit Dirk Nowitzki, but we got the measurements. As God is my witness, we got those measurements.)</div><div><br /></div><div>In any event, The Boy is good at the baseball, with one key exception: he is not exactly gifted on the basepaths. And when it comes to hurrying from one spot to the other. Truth be told, The Boy prefers to leisurely stroll toward first base. And when a ball is coming in his general direction, and then when the ball gets past him for a base hit and he has to chase it. </div><div><br /></div><div>The problem with this is that, in baseball, coaches always talk about something called "hustle." Attend a baseball game of any sort, and you'll hear that word at least 100 times being yelled at by various coaches, fans, parents, and random passers-by. Players may be out by 45 feet, but if it looks like they ran their fastest, they'll be lauded for their "Nice hustle!" Those who look like they'd prefer being in a library reading Tolstoy are screamed at to "C'mon, hustle!" </div><div><br /></div><div>Because I'm a dad, I've adopted the language of the ball field, and find myself repeatedly urging my boy to hustle. Actually, I usually just tell him to "RUN!" But sometimes I tell him to "HUSTLE!" And other times I tell him to run to first base like his mom is chasing him with a huge piece of carrot cake that she wants him to eat. That usually gets him to run like Usain Bolt. Or some reasonable, 6-year-old facsimile. </div><div><br /></div><div>(My eldest, for those not in the know, is famous for his dislike of cake; I've learned to embrace his confection resistance wholeheartedly, mostly because it means that I get more cake; in any event, though my boy loves carrots, putting them into cake tends to make his head explode, so being chased by Mom With Cake is something of a nightmare scenario. That's right: this joke took an entire paragraph to explain. I'm officially the worst blogger in history.)</div><div><br /></div><div>The problem with me adopting the Hustle Mantra is that The Wife is usually sitting next to me when I say such things. And my wife, having been married to me for 15 years, knows full well this one fact:</div><div><br /></div><div>I absolutely, positively DO ... NOT ... HUSTLE.</div><div><br /></div><div>"Maybe <i>you </i>should hustle," she says.</div><div><br /></div><div>I don't run. I walk fast, sure. In fact, I'm usually the faster walker whenever I'm in a walking group of two or more. And at fairs or the mall or along downtown streets, I usually find myself grumbling as I search for ways to walk past annoyingly slow people who quietly stroll side-by-side-by-obese side as if walking one block an hour would give them a heart attack, blocking the entire sidewalk or mall hallway and half the nearest street and/or parking lot in the process. </div><div><br /></div><div>But this speed walking rarely evolves into actual running. This is because I have an abject fear of looking stupid, and I'm convinced that the sight of me, a middle-aged white dude, running at any speed looks ridiculous. So I choose not to. If my choice is between running or missing my bus and thus my plane flight, I'll just miss the flight. I have a personal motto: I only run when chased, and even then it depends on who or what is chasing me. The IRS man? I'll pay you whatever, just don't make me run. A man-eating Tiger? I've had a good life. My mother-in-law? OK, I'll run.</div><div><br /></div><div>So The Boy comes by his lack-of-hustle naturally, and to be perfectly honest, that's OK. He's not likely to make it to the major leagues, anyway, given his genetic makeup. So he'll just have to pay extra attention to bus schedules and avoid tiger-infested areas. Or perhaps he can just have Mom show up with some cake.</div>Anonymoushttp://www.blogger.com/profile/02737980462115396236noreply@blogger.com2tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-33314856.post-61284376219081540352011-05-10T22:11:00.004-05:002011-05-10T22:53:10.981-05:00Shopping For Boxers, Waiting For Our DoomI never imagined that my doom would occur while I stood surrounded by men's underpants.<div><br /></div><div>We were on our way home this evening, hoping to beat some oncoming storms, when The Wife realized that we needed something:</div><div><br /></div><div>Butter spray.</div><div><br /></div><div>She had started using the stuff years ago, when Fabio was the Butter Spray spokesman. She said that it was because the ad was funny. I think it's because she's a secret fan of romance novels with shirtless hunks on the cover. Suffice it to say, it's become a staple of our household. We've grown accustomed to its convenience. Plus it provides enjoyable moments such as the time when The Wife went to spray her asparagus but instead sprayed her face--the nozzle was pointed in the wrong direction.</div><div><br /></div><div>Being a household staple also means we never have it around. And we've been dangerously low for days now, putting us in danger of using actual butter for our vegetables or toast. Hoping to avoid such a horrible, frightening fate, we made the decision to go to Target, even though we had both kids with us.</div><div><br /></div><div>We're stupid.</div><div><br /></div><div>Taking kids to Target, especially when one of them is a toddler, is idiotic. And as veterans of toddler parenting, we know that it's idiotic, yet we repeat this mistake over and over again, even for menial trips. </div><div><br /></div><div>But we really needed butter spray! BUTTER SPRAY!</div><div><br /></div><div>We got into the store, just as the raindrops were beginning to fall from some ugly, gray clouds. </div><div><br /></div><div>(By the way, it was only a few days ago that such clouds were producing snow -- today it was in the mid-80s and humid, which after our winter felt like it was in the mid-8000s and deadly; and of course it results in big thunderstorms. This weather is weird.)</div><div><br /></div><div>Anyway, the kids head straight for the toy section. They know the Target by heart because, as I said, we've taken them there before. And, as we stood there as the kids tried pushing any button they could find, we heard this:</div><div><br /></div><div>Sirens.</div><div><br /></div><div>Not the sirens atop of police cars headed to the Target to investigate child-related toy vandalism, but the type of sirens heard before imminent nuclear war or tornadoes. We considered the options for what the sirens could mean, and concluded that they must mean a tornado was bearing down somewhere in the county. </div><div><br /></div><div>I started herding the kids out, because if I was going to sit through severe weather, I'd much prefer to do so in my own basement where my kids can break their own toys, rather than ones belonging to Target or one of its future customers. But then the nice person on the overhead speaker told us that we wouldn't be allowed outside, and directed us all to head in back, away from any windows. </div><div><br /></div><div>So we did. And we went straight for the toy section, figuring that it was "in the back" and was "nowhere near windows." We also knew that the area was filled with "stuff we'd like to look at," because at this Target the toys were right next to the electronics area, otherwise known as Toys For Dad.</div><div><br /></div><div>Besides, keeping kids occupied as we're waiting for our imminent doom is probably wise, given their ages. But, apparently, we were dead wrong, for soon a Target employee came walking past, proclaiming that "there are lots of people near the electronics and toys, having way too much fun. We must put and end to it right now." She thus demanded that we all congregate near the fitting rooms. </div><div><br /></div><div>So that's where we went, because we always listen to Target employees, unlike one of our fellow shoppers who insisted that, twister or no, she was going to get some shopping done, dammit, and no two-bit college kid in a red shirt was going to stop her.</div><div><br /></div><div>I and my family followed the herd to the fitting rooms. Actually, I was looking at my phone the entire time, posting the event on my Facebook profile, because I figured that being trapped in a Target by a tornado warning was sufficient fodder for said profile. (NOTE TO OTHER PEOPLE: Being at Target WITHOUT the tornado warning is NOT sufficient Facebook fodder.)</div><div><br /></div><div>So there we were, standing amid men's underpants and women's workout clothes, waiting for the cyclone to come and take us all to Oz. The red-shirted Target workers standing amid the rainbow colored customers. I nearly decided to buy a pair of boxer shorts emblazoned with acorns because they were on clearance and because nuts on underpants is funny. But then I figured that I wouldn't be around to wear the boxer shorts, anyway.</div><div><br /></div><div>The boys, by the way, were having a blast. The Sequel used the aisles between undergarments as his own personal running track. So he ran and he ran, giggling, probably because it's a rare event when he gets to run around a Target without a parent picking him up and cursing under his or her breath.</div><div><br /></div><div>And then a mysterious voice could be heard on the walkie talkies attached to the red-shirts' hands, saying that an "all clear" has been given by the weather service. And then the message was repeated over the loudspeaker. HALLELUJAH! WE'RE STILL ALIVE!!</div><div><br /></div><div>But I still didn't buy the boxer shorts.</div><div><br /></div><div><br /></div>Anonymoushttp://www.blogger.com/profile/02737980462115396236noreply@blogger.com3tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-33314856.post-85683503047910647522011-04-19T22:30:00.003-05:002011-04-19T23:38:39.388-05:00My Experience at The Bike OperaI recently took The Boy to a bike auction in Minneapolis because I'm apparently stupid. <div><br /></div><div>The Boy is growing, which is an apparent side effect of youth. We got him his first bike, with training wheels, and he used it for about five days before his knees kept hitting his forehead when he rode around. So we got him a bigger bike. That's the one he learned to use sans-training wheels. It also lasted about a week. Fortunately, those two weeks took up about two summers here in Minnesota.</div><div><br /></div><div>So when he took his second bike for a spin during a freakishly warm, 55-degree April day and looked like one of those trick bicyclists you see riding teeny bikes at circuses, The Wife and I conferred and came to the conclusion that he may be in need of Bike No. 3.</div><div><br /></div><div>But, instead of buying at a local bike shop or going to a Target or a Walmart for a new one, I decided to take him to a bike auction held by the local police department. The cops were holding their first one of the season, and I figured that my son deserved nothing more than a bike that had been abandoned, or stolen and abandoned, or thrown away, taken by some random dude, and then abandoned, and then stored in a warehouse bunched up against a bunch of other abandoned bikes.</div><div><br /></div><div>I'll admit it: I was using The Boy's need for a bike as an excuse to go to the auction. I have a perfectly good bike, but was curious about how such auctions work. And, despite my previous paragraph, a few of the bikes on the auction's web site didn't look like they'd been cobbled together from parts found at garage sales. Some of them actually looked good. </div><div><br /></div><div>And I had heard, over and over again, that auctions were good sources for good deals on bikes. </div><div><br /></div><div>"Besides," I thought, "it'd be a good learning experience for The Boy."</div><div><br /></div><div>So we went. I rushed there after work. It was cold and rainy, and I figured that most people would stay away. I was wrong. Cars were parked everywhere. A few of them were armed with bike racks. And there was a line out the door to the warehouse.</div><div><br /></div><div>But The Boy was excited about the whole idea. Of course he was -- kid was getting a new bike. Sure, it would be used, would probably have a rusty chain and a bent wheel and smell like stale cigarettes and dirt. But it would be big, and it would be his. </div><div><br /></div><div>The line moved fast. We got our number and inspected the bikes. The Boy picked out a couple he liked, and I looked at some I thought were nice enough to bid on. We picked our spot in the crowd. I provided The Boy with one of my Child Pacification Devices, in this case my iPod, and waited for the auction to begin. </div><div><br /></div><div>(Incidentally, what on Earth did parents do before smartphones and iPods? I don't know if Steve Jobs has children or not and I'm way to lazy to look it up, but between the iPod and Pixar that guy has done more for parenting than the guy who invented disposable diapers.)</div><div><br /></div><div>I had been to silent auctions, which are nice because they're silent. I hadn't been to a live auction since my childhood. All I remembered is that some dude in a cowboy hat stood in front of a bunch of other people wearing cowboy hats. He talked fast and funny, and people now and then raised their hands. In the end the hatted guy up front yelled "SOLD!" And then they moved onto something else.</div><div><br /></div><div>But those auctions were in open areas. This was a crowded, enclosed warehouse, making it warm and amplifying the noise. And so the moment she started talking the auctioneer's voice pierced through my brain and practically knocked it off of its stem. The Boy, smartly, covered his ears. I could do no such thing, because it would be my luck that by raising my hand to cover my ears I'd accidentally end up buying a 1982 Huffy with one tire and half a rusted handle bar and no pedals.</div><div><br /></div><div>I have no idea what language she was actually speaking, I only noticed number amounts every now and then. I wanted to pay money just to get her to stop. </div><div><br /></div><div>I wanted to leave the moment it started. But I couldn't bring myself to do so. I might ... just ... get ... a deal.</div><div><br /></div><div>And yet, it became clear that the auctioneer had no intent of letting people leave with a bike that was actually cheaper than it was worth. She knew exactly what she was doing. She started high -- say, $100. All of us smart people waited until it got lower. When the bidding got to $20, someone bit, and then in a split second the bidding had run up to $50 or higher. And then, usually, it kept going, almost always blowing past that high, opening amount.</div><div><br /></div><div>Junky bikes went cheap, but anything decent fetched good money. One mountain bike went for well over $300. "I wouldn't pay $300 for any two bikes here," one guy behind me said. A few road bikes neared that amount. Schwinn mountain bikes, some of them a few years old, went for roughly the amount that you could buy the <i>same, exact model </i>brand new at Target. It was all I could do to keep from turning around and yelling something along the lines of, "WHAT THE HELL IS WRONG WITH YOU PEOPLE???!!!???"</div><div><br /></div><div>In reality, I was the idiot. I keep forgetting this little fact: I live in the Twin Cities. We get roughly five hours of decent weather here every year, and as such people are intent on making that five hours count. So we have lots of parks and trails and paths. We invented Rollerblades and water skiing and boat like crazy. And in Minneapolis people ride bikes. A lot. This creates an insane demand for used bikes that drives up prices. Even at a bike auction. It makes no sense buying an adult bike used.</div><div><br /></div><div>But, of course, I wasn't there for me, I was there for The Boy, and kids bikes are always cheap, because most parents want to get them the heck out of their garage. And when the first bike he wanted was brought up front, I did my duty and waited until the auctioneer brought the price down to a reasonable level, and then I bid. Then some other loser bid a higher amount. And then I bid again. And then he bid. And then I bid. And I realized I was doing exactly what I didn't want to do -- get into a bidding war.</div><div><br /></div><div>(Indeed, I found it really easy to get into a bidding war and end up bidding higher than you want; the auctioneer just kept looking at me, giving me that, "Cmon, it's for your KID" look.)</div><div><br /></div><div>But I held my ground. The bidding had reached my personal limit, $55, the amount I could get that same bike off of Craigslist. And I stopped. My opponent got his bike. The Boy was disappointed, but not too much. There were other bikes, after all.</div><div><br /></div><div>And about a half-hour later, one of those other bikes came up, a black bike that had been in almost-new condition. This time, my bidding opponent lasted one bid, and my $20 bid won the day. WOOHOO! VICTORY!</div><div><br /></div><div>We went and paid for the bike. He got on it immediately and rode it outside, thrilled at the purchase. And as I watched him ride away, I noticed this: the back tire looked like it belonged on a clown bike. It was totally warped, something I hadn't noticed on inspection. <i>So that's why it never got claimed.</i> It would need a wheel that would cost more than I paid for the bike. </div><div><br /></div><div>But The Boy liked the bike. Best of all, he kept calling the auction "The Bike Opera," which on this day seemed an appropriate title. </div>Anonymoushttp://www.blogger.com/profile/02737980462115396236noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-33314856.post-43240547043407422822011-04-04T22:28:00.006-05:002011-04-04T23:14:01.227-05:00This Post Really StinksAh, Spring in Minnesota. Thick outerwear can be shed in favor of thinner outerwear. Birds return from their southern migration. The first buds of life appear on hibernating trees. And snow melts to reveal a thick blanket of hardened road salt, discarded tube socks and defrosted dog poop.<div><br /><div>Walking down the street around here in early April is like touring a male dormitory, only with less alcohol. Actually, it's like touring a male dormitory, if you combine it with a soggy field recently trod upon by a herd of cows with digestive problems. Only it smells worse. Apparently, nobody in this state picks up after their dogs when the weather falls below freezing in the hopes that snow will cover up their dog's mess. </div><div><br /></div><div>This winter certainly obliged. Snow first arrived in November, and then it stuck with us for several months, refusing to go away, much like a bad chest cold or annoying in-laws. And then, last month, just when we thought the snow was gone for good, it returned for one last, irritating punch in the gut (see previous comparison to in-laws, above).</div><div><br /></div><div>The beauty of snow is that it hides all sorts of ugliness. The worst winters are those without much snow cover, because it's not like those winters are warm. They're still limbs-falling-off freezing, but instead of a blanket of white you have to look out at a world that's brown and dead and ugly. At least the snow covers all that up and you can do things with it like make snowmen and hurtle down steep hills on cheap plastic and throw snowballs at passing cars driven by gun-toting Midwest rednecks.</div><div><br /></div><div>Yet, when that snow goes away, all those months of ugliness return in one concentrated, smelly bunch.</div><div><br /></div><div>All of these dog piles make walking dangerous, because all of that dog crap congregates on sidewalks and usually moves directly into my path during those few moments when my attention isn't fully paid to the few feet of ground directly in front of me. And there are few fates worse than stepping in a pile of dung--death of course, or taxes, or standing in line at the DMV, or being the victim of a terrible disease, or being locked in a room and forced to listen to "Life Is A Highway" by Tom Cochrane or Rascal Flatts (take your pick). But there are not many. </div><div><br /></div><div>The Wife provides any walking companion of hers a 15-feet dog crap warning radius, which, while annoying, is a valuable service. She warns you, and then you do the "I'm-about-to-step-on-dog-crap" dance, only to find that the offending feces is several feet in front of you. You're relieved to avoid the dog pile, but annoyed that you looked like an idiot out in public. Looking like an idiot > having a shoe soiled by dog waste.</div><div><br /></div><div>And you do know <i>exactly </i>when you do step in a dog pile, because it feels like nothing else--just slimy.</div><div><br /></div><div>I may not like it, but I understand where all this dog crap comes from. Here's what I don't understand: What are all of these socks doing here?</div><div><br /></div><div>The Wife and I recently took a crap-defying walk in our neighborhood and saw so many wet, dirty, discarded socks littering the ground that we could have kept an entire village from going barefoot for a month. Perhaps people get so disgusted stepping on the dog piles that they remove all of their footwear, but I see no shoes, and it's the shoes that get marked with the offensive canine waste. Maybe our town's sock-thieving gnomes get sloppy in the winter. Or maybe old socks just come home to mate every April to make baby socks. </div><div><br /></div><div>Whatever the reason, if you're cheap and in need of socks and have a good washing machine and a tolerance for dog feces, take a walk around here every April. It's like an old sock gold mine around here. Just watch where you're stepping.</div><div><br /></div><div><div><div><div><br /></div><div><br /></div></div></div></div></div>Anonymoushttp://www.blogger.com/profile/02737980462115396236noreply@blogger.com5tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-33314856.post-13429501440701804532011-03-21T21:27:00.004-06:002011-03-21T22:25:53.800-06:00Yup, I'm A Fish KillerI haven't felt much like blogging lately, mostly because I've been too busy killing my fish.<div><br /></div><div>We acquired some goldfish four years ago. Note that I did not use the phrase "happily purchase." I "won" two of them at a county fair, which means that I won a chore and the right to buy more stuff, which is really like losing. Indeed, the carny who "awarded" me the fish tried selling me the World's Smallest Aquarium. I said no. We went to a pet shop and bought what I considered a decent-sized, 10-gallon aquarium to fit the teeny goldfish I had procured. The salesman sighed when he sold us the tank and said we were the 10th people to come in from the fair that day.</div><div><br /></div><div>The goldfish were more fun than I thought, but then they kept getting bigger. And bigger. And eventually I realized that there was more fish than water in the tank. So we went on Craigslist and got a bigger tank. And another fish -- one to eat all the algae. And we moved the tank to our living room, where we don't have a television. It sits in front of our couch, and instead of watching networks bottom-feeding for viewers we watched our fish feeding from the bottom of our tank.</div><div><br /></div><div>All was well. Our fish kept growing and eating and we were proud that, unlike 98 percent of domestic goldfish, these didn't end up being toilet fodder within the first six weeks of ownership. </div><div><br /></div><div>But then I noticed something that I didn't think should be happening: water dripping from the top of the tank. The tank's filter style is known as an Eclipse, though don't ask me what the blocking of the sun's light by the moon has to do with aquarium water filtration. In any event, the filter sits above the tank, and has a proclivity for leaking water along the side of the tank. Given that our water contains more minerals than a rock garden, the result was some nice lines of calcium deposits along the back of the tank that required the use of a jackhammer to get off (which is tough work on a glass tank).</div><div><br /></div><div>And this new tank had also become too small for our goldfish, which had grown to be about eight inches. (I would later discover that the tank I bought was 50 percent smaller than the size the tank's original owner told me it was -- yet one more reason why I hate Craigslist.) Apparently, goldfish can grow to be the size of a 1973 Dodge Dart and their emissions are just as bad -- making the tank a small, messy, drippy place. So we had to buy yet another tank. </div><div><br /></div><div>Some people keep buying bigger televisions every two years. We buy bigger fish tanks.</div><div><br /></div><div>We found a big tank on sale. Then we found a stand to go with it. We also let The Boy pick out all new decorations, and given that he has no concept of money we ended up spending more on the decorations than on the tank itself. We got the tank ready, and then talked to our fish excitedly about their new home, because giant goldfish can apparently understand everything we say. After waiting a day, we put them in.</div><div><br /></div><div>And then one died the next day.</div><div><br /></div><div>The other goldfish lasted a few more days, though those days were spent at the bottom of the tank, not eating, and just looking like he was dead. </div><div><br /></div><div>Our third, algae-eating fish lasted a few more days after that. And then he, too, went to that big toilet in the sky. </div><div><br /></div><div>And it was all my fault. </div><div><br /></div><div>I just assumed that the fish would enjoy a nice, clean tank. I also assumed that goldfish were bulletproof, and mine had withstood four years of my poor tank-cleaning habits. But my goldfish had grown so accustomed to the nasty water in their small tank that they couldn't bear to live in a big tank full of crystal clear water. They had about the same reaction as a teenage boy who comes home to discover a clean room -- only they're fish and the shock killed them.</div><div><br /></div><div>This is what happens when a person is thrust into pet ownership. We had no clue what to do with the items we just won. In my case, my fish lasted four years before my pet stupidity did them in. Of course, I also had four years to look this all up on the Internet. </div><div><br /></div><div>So, armed with a new tank and no live fish, we actually read about fish, tested our water and picked varieties that wouldn't get big and that wouldn't die easily and preferably wouldn't eat any other fish in the tank. And then we got pygmy frogs because they're cool, but then the frogs spent all of their time hiding before they both died (one unfortunately got caught in the filter and didn't quite recover, and I have no idea what happened to the second). So then we got shrimp, and now they're the ones hiding.</div><div><br /></div><div>Given my recent fish owner track record, hiding is probably a good idea.</div>Anonymoushttp://www.blogger.com/profile/02737980462115396236noreply@blogger.com6tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-33314856.post-26062320492634308532011-03-02T22:12:00.003-06:002011-03-02T23:11:58.965-06:00Watch Out For Falling (And Running) ChildrenI have lots of fears, as I'm sure most people have. I fear that my zipper is down every time I have to get up in front of a crowd. Whenever I leave the house, I fear that I left the garage door open, a fear that has a tendency to ruin vacations (I never have, by the way). And I'm dreadfully afraid of dropping my kid.<div><br /></div><div>I was afraid of infant fumbling long before my DNA helped form a child-making partnership in my wife's uterus. I have nieces who are now in their 20s. I held those nieces. And each time I treated that baby as if it were an egg with a nitroglycerin yolk. I treated The Boy the same the first time I held him, convinced that one false move and he would plummet to his certain doom. </div><div><br /></div><div>Over time, I gained confidence in my baby-holding abilities. I gained enough, in fact, that I could swing him up into the air or carry him with one arm while holding something else, like the mail or my lunch box or a giant turkey leg. And the confidence became important, because once the baby discovers mobility, he frequently wants to be anywhere but your arms. And so he frequently tries to remove himself from your clutches, often by bending like a rubber band in a direction that no other human can bend. </div><div><br /></div><div>(Seriously: Do toddlers have extra joints in their backs that enable them to bend all the way backwards when being held in the air by a standing parent? I swear my toddler can touch the back of his head to his butt sometimes ...)</div><div><br /></div><div>Regardless, because you have that fear in the back of your mind, or at the forefront, your first focus is on keeping that kid locked tightly. And I had managed to avoid any child-carrying mishap.</div><div><br /></div><div>Until today, that is.</div><div><br /></div><div>I was taking The Sequel into day care. He is fully capable of walking on his own, but the combination of moving cars and a fully mobile toddler can be hazardous to the health of the toddler and the parent. In addition, he usually likes to remove his hat on cold winter mornings, making me want to get to the building quickly, though on this day he put the hat back on himself -- backwards, and tilted toward the back, though well enough that he smiled proudly at his efforts.</div><div><br /></div><div>To get to the building, you have to walk about 100 feet down a sidewalk that goes past some parking spots. It can be a surprisingly treacherous walk -- not because of ice or the lawyers who have nearby offices, but because of the high frequency of running children. But I carried him in, and I talked with him along the way.</div><div><br /></div><div>And then I heard a "stop" behind me, and I ran into something small, tumbled forward, and fell to the ground. As my knee hit I dropped The Sequel, who hit the back of his head on the sidewalk.</div><div><br /></div><div>My first thought was something along the lines of this: UUUUUUUUUUGH! I DROPPED MY KID AND HE'S HURT REAL BAD!</div><div><br /></div><div>That was also my second thought, and third thought. Suddenly, that fear of dropping my child came out at once and I pretty much started screaming and asking if he was OK. But The Sequel began screaming, too, which I took as a good enough sign to quickly get him inside.</div><div><br /></div><div>As it turned out, one of my fellow parents had allowed her child to run ahead of her. The kid entered my blind spot -- the area between my eyes and the ground that is blocked by my toddler when I'm holding him. I tripped over him and fell. </div><div><br /></div><div>I was angry, at first, and then I realized that if I had a nickel for the number of times my own children nearly took out some wandering adult at the knees because of their careless running, I'd have a nice retirement fund. </div><div><br /></div><div>Still, for my efforts, my kid got a nice lump on the back of his head, but he was OK. The hat, and the winter gear that makes him look like a linebacker every January, kept the tumble from being a lot more serious.</div><div><br /></div><div>Me? Sometime later I looked down and realized that my knee took the brunt of the fall. My pants were torn and bloody. I had a nice, juicy strawberry on my left knee. It looked awesome. So if anybody asked what happened, I just said that my knee saved my kid from the concrete of doom.</div>Anonymoushttp://www.blogger.com/profile/02737980462115396236noreply@blogger.com3tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-33314856.post-50117468548680586692011-02-28T22:41:00.006-06:002011-02-28T23:44:24.962-06:00Tips For Future Toddler Parents: Lock Yourself In The HouseOK, so it's been three weeks since I've written a post here, but I have a good excuse: I have a toddler.<div><br /></div><div>My youngest boy is in the full throes of toddlerdom, meaning we get a full dose of tantrums, roller-coaster mood swings (insert your own cheap-shot Charlie Sheen joke here); death-defying acts such as running at top speed in every direction regardless of the presence of oncoming vehicular or rail traffic; disappearing acts in public places and a constant, loud speaking, all wrapped up in a small ball of irresistible cuteness. And all of this will happen during one visit to the local Costco. </div><div><br /></div><div>Here's some advice for parents of soon-to-be toddlers: Lock yourself in the house for 18 months. Begin telecommuting. Employ grocery delivery services. Buy all your crap from Amazon.com. Host all family get-togethers. Inform various friends and relations that they are to remain alive and in good health for that period, lest they have a few fewer guests at their funeral. Get all your newspapers online or on your iPad. Have your dog fetch the mail. </div><div><br /></div><div>Sure, this may sound extreme. A little crazy, even -- a rarity on this blog, to be sure. You may get a bad case of cabin fever; you could go stir-crazy and may even risk ending up like Jack Nicholson in The Shining, but any of those fates would be far better than the insanity that can ensue from any field trip with a toddler in tow.</div><div><br /></div><div>(At this point, a few of you may suggest something along the lines of, "Well, why doesn't one parent stay home while the other do the errands?" Some may also ask, "Have you considered letting grandparents or aunts and uncles watch the kids now and then?" To which I say, "Well, yeah. Those ideas work, too. Just go with whatever feels right.")</div><div><br /></div><div>I'm on my second toddler now. I am fully experienced in public meltdowns and the toddler's escape efforts, and his penchant for finding the most expensive and most breakable thing in any retail establishment. The memory of the amount of hair I lost through the physical force of my own hands should be fresh in my mind -- The Boy was only a toddler a couple of years ago, after all. I should understand that the best way to save myself from the near-heart-attacks and immense stress of such situations is to avoid them at all costs, even if it means I don't see a blue sky for a year and a half.</div><div><br /></div><div>(It would be just like living in Indiana; I lived there for a year and a half and I don't recall seeing the sun once.)</div><div><br /></div><div>Despite this, The Wife and I continue to take our toddler out of doors, mostly because we're stupid or insane or because diaper cream fumes have turned our respective brains into oatmeal. Or maybe The Sequel's cuteness makes us weak -- such as this evening, when he ran around the house saying, "No cookies in the fish tank! Not OK! I can see you!" </div><div><br /></div><div>(So far as I can tell, nobody in this house has ever actually attempted to put cookies in the fish tank, mostly because they would get consumed before they reached said tank; so the origins of that phrase remain a mystery.) Nevertheless, its cuteness was beyond belief, and the moment he said it he could have received just about anything from either of his parents, no questions asked.</div><div><br /></div><div>Thank God toddlers have yet to truly pick up on the wonders of capitalism; if they were just a bit more greedy, they could manipulate their cuteness into just about anything. </div><div><br /></div><div>Anyway, in recent days we've gone on various shopping expeditions with both boys in tow; and as the eldest one is begging for us to buy him stuff, the young one is trying to have one or both of us arrested for vandalism or child endangerment or worse. This makes such trips more difficult.</div><div><br /></div><div>Just the simple process of trying to discuss the purchase of a fish tank with The Wife is an immense exercise. "So, what do -- No, you can't have that -- So what do you think -- HEY, GET BACK HERE! -- what do you think of -- I said no, you can't have another cheap rubber band shaped like Spongebob -- HEY! Put that breakable glass bowl down! Now COME BACK HERE! Don't climb on that! And Boy, you can't have a dog! -- So what do you think of this fis -- WHAT ARE YOU DOING ON THAT THING! And don't step on that! -- quicktellmewhatyouthinkofthisfishtanknownownownowNOW!"</div><div><br /></div><div>Most of our shopping expeditions take too long and end before they should be done, and then one of us gladly volunteers to make the make-up trip later on -- alone. </div>Anonymoushttp://www.blogger.com/profile/02737980462115396236noreply@blogger.com2tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-33314856.post-39806159937866658822011-02-06T21:33:00.006-06:002011-02-06T22:46:49.436-06:00Building 'Shelter' Out Of Snow<a onblur="try {parent.deselectBloggerImageGracefully();} catch(e) {}" href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEi_GoTAWgomtzcK6FLec7QBpixWUW9xuv2CrRHkFrTE9yed1WZ00kXRylAWAtrjrcb6onK4qVA408sF1av-OjrXCgRacDiIu5SPbM4Yi7L8ONNWHqkXNrhQZ71fULDXNPdvB8xXBA/s1600/fridge+igloo.jpg"><img style="float:left; margin:0 10px 10px 0;cursor:pointer; cursor:hand;width: 320px; height: 223px;" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEi_GoTAWgomtzcK6FLec7QBpixWUW9xuv2CrRHkFrTE9yed1WZ00kXRylAWAtrjrcb6onK4qVA408sF1av-OjrXCgRacDiIu5SPbM4Yi7L8ONNWHqkXNrhQZ71fULDXNPdvB8xXBA/s320/fridge+igloo.jpg" border="0" alt="" id="BLOGGER_PHOTO_ID_5570800986651641410" /></a>Like much of the country, we up here in the Frozen North have been hit with a lot of snow this winter. This is not unusual for us, so we have some experience with what to do with all this frozen stuff after it has littered our lawn.<br /><div><br /></div><div>It would seem a shame to let all that snow go to waste. Otherwise, its only use is to hide dog poop, dead grass and hated relatives. So go ahead and ski, either down hill or the the other version for wimps like me who are deathly afraid of hurtling down a hill at top speed when there are very hard trees all about. Or snowmobile, because drunken, motorized hurtling is always a good idea. </div><div><br /></div><div>For kids, there is sledding and snowball fights and snowmen creation which for parents mean, respectively: watching and praying your kid doesn't slide into somebody else; a chance for revenge against your kid for all the annoying things he's done his entire life, and yet one more example of you doing all the work while he gets all the credit.</div><div><br /></div><div>Another great part of winters is the creation of a snow f0rt, in which you work furiously to dig a claustrophobic tube so you can crawl into it. The venerable snow fort is a rite of passage in a Minnesota childhood, as important as throwing snowballs at passing cars and writing your name in the snow. Snow forts have a long tradition, dating back to igloos built by northern natives and snow huts built by survivalists who for some reason feel a need to be in the middle of nowhere in the far north in the dead of winter.</div><div><br /></div><div>I have a neighbor who builds an igloo in his front yard every winter. And then he and his kids sleep in it. </div><div><br /></div><div>He told me about this at a party at Christmas. Logically, I should have chuckled at the very silliness of it all: "You mean you're working hard to build a house made of snow just outside the very nice home that you undoubtedly spend a considerable sum of money every year to heat?" Alas, that was not my first thought. Instead, I just thought this:</div><div><br /></div><div>"Dang. I NEED to build my very own igloo RIGHT THIS VERY MOMENT."</div><div><br /></div><div>Alas, laziness took over and I never did. But then, on Saturday, The Boy and I attended a Cub Scout function at the Scout Camp that involved a lot of running around in the snow at events run by enthusiastic young people who had odd names like "Banshee" and "Noodles" that I suspect weren't their given names. Our pack went from station to station performing various activities, such as a game of "Capture The Flag," only with rubber chickens, and bastardized versions of soccer and hockey. At another, we were supposed to track one of the staffers who had gone to search for a recently sighted yeti. We never found him during our allotted time, though nobody seemed particularly disturbed by this fact. <i>Shouldn't we keep looking? Are you just going to leave him in the hands of the abominable snow monster? What's wrong with you people?!?</i></div><div><br /></div><div>One of the most popular of the activities involved a huge pile of snow Swiss-cheesed with a bunch of tunnels that the kids, and some unfortunate, willing parents, crawled through, in and out of. The Boy had a blast. And my Minnesotan "Build An Igloo" instincts returned, only my expectations lowered and I decided to build a snow fort. </div><div><br /></div><div>So today I took The Boy to the front yard and we got to building. And, because a regular snow fort is just way too easy, I insisted that we transfer snow from the big pile of snow that had developed in front of my house from my roof raking activities. So I spent my afternoon shoveling snow into a wheelbarrow and then transferring it to another part of the yard. My 6-year-old "helped" transfer the snow, and by "helped" I mean "didn't do anything but dig holes where I didn't want him to dig holes."</div><div><br /></div><div>But we eventually dug our tunnel under a big pile of snow and then took turns crawling through said hole. And when we were done we found another pile and dug a hole into that one, and then dug channels to connect the holes so it looked like your typical messy snow pile with holes in them and footprints everywhere. The Boy had dreams of large rooms and comfortable sitting areas, much like I did as a kid when the snow forts I built were originally planned to have multiple levels and running water but ended up looking more like they had been dug by a giant rat. </div>Anonymoushttp://www.blogger.com/profile/02737980462115396236noreply@blogger.com2tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-33314856.post-72478129338718195142011-01-25T21:31:00.004-06:002011-01-25T23:22:14.356-06:00The Tooth Fairy Is Alive, And He Is MeI'll admit it: I still want to believe in Santa Claus. And Bigfoot. And the Loch Ness Monster. And ghosts -- yes, ghosts. And I really hope that aliens do visit the planet now and then, though I'd prefer they stop it with the kidnapping and anal probing. I could do without the Easter Bunny, because I have enough damn rabbits in my back yard and I certainly don't want any that break into my house and defecate the place with "Easter eggs."<div><br /></div><div>I could also do without the tooth fairy, who creeps me out. While he's not the only myth we have that is guilty of breaking and entering, he is the only one that actually steals something in the process. Worse, the creep sneaks into kids' bedrooms while they're sleeping. Anybody else who did that would get a baseball bat upside the head from yours truly, and then a quick trip to prison.</div><div><br /></div><div>Nevertheless, I do my best to keep all of these myths alive in my eldest son's head, though I'm thinking of telling him that a fox got the Easter bunny because I hate that thing and, frankly, it would be best if that damn rabbit succumb to the laws of nature (seriously, an egg-laying bunny? What poppy-chewing Roman monk came up with that idea as a way to spread Christianity?) </div><div><br /></div><div>I have, however, found it increasingly difficult to keep up this ruse -- not just because he's aging and is increasingly exposed to older kids who are long past the myth belief stage of childhood. The biggest threat is from yours truly. After Christmas, after "Santa" gave my son a Nintendo DS, I decided to fill my boy's head with guilt by informing him that I never got such nice gifts as a kid because I was poor. Oops. "Why wouldn't Santa give you nice gifts because you were poor, Daddy?" I quickly changed the subject. Thankfully, The Boy has a minimal attention span.</div><div><br /></div><div>Last night, The Boy lost his second tooth. Tooth loss is, of course, a joyous occasion for young ones because a detached tooth is a ticket to wealth. All he needs is to stick it under his pillow and in the morning it has turned into cold, hard cash thanks to the aforementioned tooth thief. In my youth I was lucky to get a quarter. My eldest got $5 when he lost his first tooth while we visited my wife's sister over Thanksgiving, and I noted in the morning that the Tooth Fairy was both "generous" and "probably out of 1s."</div><div><br /></div><div>So when he lost the second tooth we quickly said that kids usually don't get as much for second teeth as they do first teeth, lowering his expectations -- which was good, because I only had a dollar and some change (I can guess that future Tooth Fairies will just leave debit cards). He went to bed, and put the tooth under his pillow and quickly went to sleep. Being the household "Tooth Fairy" I was responsible for the cash-for-tooth exchange. And I waited for a while -- how long I didn't check -- and then went into his room.</div><div><br /></div><div>I reached under his pillow. And then I heard this: "Dad, what are you doing?"</div><div><br /></div><div>Crap.</div><div><br /></div><div>"Uh ... just checking on you, buddy." Fortunately, I did not have the tooth in hand. So I just kissed him on the forehead, said good night, and left his room like a bat out of hell. When I went in there a second time I practically took his pulse to ensure that he was asleep before making the exchange.</div><div><br /></div><div>Logically, I could just let this myth die, because it will die soon enough, along with Santa and all that, and it's a creepy myth, anyway. It would also save me a few bucks. But I'm guessing that he'd simply expect cash for his teeth in the future, and just giving him cash when he loses a tooth seems terribly boring. Indeed, the more I think of it, the sadder it would seem to see my son realize that all these myths were little more than stupid stories parents made up to either get their kids to behave (Santa), get them to go to bed early (Santa, Tooth Fairy) and get them to eat horrible, hard-boiled eggs scattered all over the back yard (That stupid Easter Bunny). </div><div><br /></div><div>So I was relieved in the morning when my son showed no ill-effects from my faux pas. He apparently got up in the middle of the night and turned every single light on in his excitement over having two whole dollars (this was according to my wife, who gets up more easily at kid loudness than I do; I sleep like a rock and didn't hear this, Thank God). And today, he dragged us to Target so he could get something with his money, and there he found out that a lost tooth just doesn't buy you much these days.</div>Anonymoushttp://www.blogger.com/profile/02737980462115396236noreply@blogger.com3tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-33314856.post-60138429555817365952011-01-16T12:57:00.003-06:002011-01-16T13:30:17.065-06:00Ignore Mom Warnings At Your Own RiskWe went to an indoor water park yesterday, because we live in Minnesota and are willing to pay big bucks to spend a day denying winter's existence. We packed the kids up early in the morning, and stayed for several hours. I spent many of them trying to convince The Boy that he'd love the water slide. He finally relented, and then I spent the rest of the time trying to keep him from going so much because he was wearing me out.<div><br /></div><div>The Sequel was his own handful. He viewed the entire complex as his own personal drinking fountain. At least, that's what he did when he wasn't trying to dive in headfirst into the deep end. By the end of the day we parents voted him Most Likely Sibling To Break A Bone. </div><div><br /></div><div>But a good time was had by all and, by late afternoon we were all ready to go home. The Sequel quickly fell asleep in the van. He then took a two-hour nap. And when he woke up, he began screaming.</div><div><br /></div><div>This is not an uncommon occurrence. The phrase "sleep like a baby" is terribly misused, and should only be reserved for descriptions of nights when you frequently wake up yelling your head off. Alas, after six years of parenting we are quite used to a kid waking up screaming, and to us it's almost like white noise. Almost.</div><div><br /></div><div>This episode was unusual, however, in that it didn't stop, and that the screaming was loud enough to wake the dead (though I'm thankful that we don't live near a cemetery, for then that screaming episode would have ignited the zombie apocalypse, and I'm not entirely ready for that yet).</div><div><br /></div><div>The Sequel just kept screaming. And screaming. Sometimes he stuck his tongue out. Sometimes he coughed. White noise, this was not. And so we decided to do something dreadful: call the doctor.</div><div><br /></div><div>We have had a few occasions in which we've called the doctor because of one of our children. In every single case, it went just like this following episode, which is based on a very true story:</div><div><br /></div><div>US (panicking): OH MY GOD OH MY GOD OH MY GOD! The Boy's head has blown up like a balloon! He looks like a bad Jay Leno sketch! What should we do??!!??</div><div><br /></div><div>NURSE (yawning): Uh. Nothing. He's fine. Calm down, you over-reactive parents. </div><div><br /></div><div>As 100 percent of our calls to the pediatrician were more or less blown off, we've learned that our kids can handle a lot more than we think they can. So it took an awful lot of really ugly screaming to get us to call the doctor in this case. And we did, fully prepared to hear that, "It's just gas, you morons." But that's not what we heard.</div><div><br /></div><div>"It sounds like something bad has happened to him. You should bring him to the ER."</div><div><br /></div><div>Thus, we spent our evening in the emergency room at Children's Hospital. The Sequel screamed the entire drive to the hospital, then screamed some more when we got to the waiting room. He seemed to tire himself out, but he renewed his screaming episode with vigor when the nurse tried to take his temperature. </div><div><br /></div><div>When we got into the room, we were visited by a succession of hospital employees, none of whom had his or her medical degree, in an effort by the hospital to drive up the ultimate cost of the bill. We waited, for nearly two hours, during which The Boy got to watch old Ren & Stimpy cartoons, while The Sequel was passed from parent to parent like a hot, screaming potato. He seemed to tire out, but screamed now and then, especially when another nurse again tried to take his temperature, this time rectally.</div><div><br /></div><div>(That's fully expected: I scream, too, whenever somebody tries to take my butt's temperature.)</div><div><br /></div><div>Finally, after two and a half hours in the emergency room, the doctor showed up. He took one look at The Sequel, squeezed his leg, and then I heard this:</div><div><br /></div><div>A giggle.</div><div><br /></div><div>A giggle? The doctor did it again, and The Sequel giggled louder. By the end of the 15-minute visit with the doctor my youngest kid was running around the room and bouncing on the bed. "I've never healed anyone that fast," the doctor said. </div><div><br /></div><div>My reaction on the outside was one of relief. But inside, I was like this: WHAT???!! YOU'RE NOT SICK!???? AFTER ALL OF THAT YOU ARE WELL ENOUGH TO GIGGLE AT THE MERE SQUEEZING OF YOUR LEG?? WHAT'S WRONG WITH YOU, KID?!!??</div><div><br /></div><div>Sure, I was relieved that the kid was fine, but annoyed as hell that he needed an emergency room visit to get better. In the end, we spent several hundred dollars so The Boy could watch cartoons and so The Sequel could get tickled by a nice pediatric ER doctor, who told us ... it's probably just gas. Or maybe he cramped up following the trip to the water park. </div><div><br /></div><div>And then, as we went home, we realized that we had eaten lunch at the park, and then went swimming straight afterward, meaning my wife's failure to shout to our kids, "Don't go swimming for another hour!" eventually doomed us to an evening in the ER. The kids will now get a full dose of "No running with scissors!" And "if you keep making that face it'll stick like that!" Or "Don't sit too close to the TV or you'll go blind." Because, apparently, it's all true.</div>Anonymoushttp://www.blogger.com/profile/02737980462115396236noreply@blogger.com2tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-33314856.post-13109806453611535442010-12-28T20:37:00.003-06:002010-12-28T21:58:59.594-06:00Look, Ma! My Pelvis Is Frostbitten!Do they amputate butts?<div><br /></div><div>I went tubing this evening. Not "slowly-float-down-a-lazy-river-getting-sunburned-and-drunk" tubing. Given that it's late December and snowy and cold and all the rivers are frozen, that would be a bit difficult, and chilly. Instead, we hopped atop said tubes, grabbed onto a rope that pulled us up a large hill, then slid down said hill on those same tubes. Trust me. It was a blast.</div><div><br /></div><div>This is the kind of thing we do in Minnesota to make the winter pass: We do crazy things in the cold. Some people cut holes in the ice, put a line in the water and then sit patiently, while drinking, for hours on end. Others ski downhill, usually while drinking. Some people ride on snowmobiles, usually to a local bar so they can drink. A few people ski cross country, and I'm sure those people have flasks in their pocket. Some people are crazy enough to strip naked and jump in the water -- those people are definitely drunk. The conclusion: People around here drink a lot.</div><div><br /></div><div>I do no such drinking, but still found myself sliding down an icy hill without being forced to by bad shoes or an ice storm. I did this because I like sledding and because I have kids and it's my job to regularly help them engage in some silly cold-weather activity. </div><div><br /></div><div>Truthfully, the tube is an awesome idea, because it cushions your butt (or, for you facefirst daredevils, your genitals) from the rigors of a typical sliding hill and because you can't feel yourself plummeting to your potential doom. I've received many a lower-torso injury sliding in my youth, so the prospect of buttpain-free sliding is a welcome event. </div><div><br /></div><div>Better yet, the rope that pulls you up makes the process much easier. The problem with sledding down a typical hill is that when you get down, you have to go back up that hill. You climb up the hill, slide down, climb again, slide -- by the time I've done this three times I'm whining, begging and bribing my kid to relent and let us go home. A typical, hour-long sledding session involves about 40 minutes of climbing, 15 minutes of standing around, 3 minutes of trying to get on your sled and two minutes of actual sledding. </div><div><br /></div><div>The tubing facility took care of this problem with the rope, assuming you can actually grab the rope and hold it. It's like a ski lift, only you're not suspended high above the air (so when it stops, you're not trapped up there and if you fall, you only slide downhill, rather than fall to your doom; this reminds me of the first time I went downhill skiing, I fell down the hill, repeatedly, underneath the ski lift and people kept asking me if I fell off the lift; "No, I'm just a horrible, horrible, horrible skier, now shut up and focus on keeping yourself from falling off that lift."). </div><div><br /></div><div>The problem with the rope-lift is that you have to hold onto the rope, so if you have no arm strength, you are out of luck, and if you wear slick gloves like I do, then you have to have an extra-strong grip to ensure that you can get up the hill. If you let go, the person behind you hits you. Fortunately, my office job combined with my routine stroller-pushing dad workouts keeps my hands and wrists in awesome shape. I can't quite say the same for The Boy, who periodically lost his grip halfway up a hill, causing a big pileup of tubes and tubers.</div><div><br /></div><div>But we'd get up the hill, and then we'd go down. Usually we started too far up the hill, so we had to inch and inch and inch our way toward the hill until our momentum finally pulled us down. I tried jumping on my tube to get us to go down, like all of the cool kids did, but when I did we just sat there, making me look like a doofus. Or more of a doofus than I already was.</div><div><br /></div><div>We got a healthy dose of ice shavings and snow on the way down, so by the time I got to the bottom I looked like a giant snowcone. That is, assuming I didn't barrel into a group of teenagers or a parent with his child or a gang of nuns and orphans or some baby chickens just finishing their own tubing sessions and heading for the rope for their next go-round. And when we were finished, we had to get up and move quickly, lest we be the barrellees. Beefy guys at the bottom barked at us plenty of times to ensure that we got out of the way, but my own fear of broken bones or concussions was incentive enough.</div><div><br /></div><div>We went over and over and over again, and when we were done we went again. The lack of the tired climb, combined with my overactive child kept us going for a couple of hours. This, even though I got a steadily increasing dose of ice and snow underneath my shirt. If I went down on my stomach, I got it on my lower abdomen, making it numb. If I went on my butt, it got my lower back numb. So by the time we were done I had enough snow caked on my shirt to build Frosty a nice wife and some kids. The skin on my lower back now feels like I was held down and given a tramp stamp. But at least my pelvis wasn't broken. </div>Anonymoushttp://www.blogger.com/profile/02737980462115396236noreply@blogger.com4tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-33314856.post-35642227612527096282010-12-18T21:57:00.003-06:002010-12-18T22:37:27.784-06:00The Caroling MenaceI went to a Christmas party this evening. It was to be held last week, but was delayed due to unforeseen circumstances in the form of Snowpocalypse 2010. A former coworker holds the party every year. Her house is at the end of a <i>quiet cul-de-sac in a quiet suburb</i>. She fills that house with Santas that number about the population of Rochester, New York. Her 9-foot Christmas tree has so many lights it can be seen from space. She and her husband spend five months decorating for the party, and another five months taking everything down. <div><br /></div><div>They are awesome.<div><br /></div><div>Every year, a group of people attending this party venture out into the <i>quiet, nondescript suburban neighborhood</i> and sing Christmas carols. It's a great tradition, even if it has been bastardized by light rock stations. I, for one, think that songs about a fat guy with bad fashion sense who burgles houses once a year with the assistance of flying caribou and an army of Arctic midgets absolutely makes the season.</div><div><br /></div><div>A lot of party attendees go caroling, even though it's usually freezing and snowy. But, get a few drinks in a person and loud singing usually ensues, anyway, so why not be festive about it? And most of the time people being sung to don't burst out of their homes with shotguns. Some are actually thrilled to see us. One year some partiers gave us beer. This year a woman caring for her paralyzed brother invited us in and nearly cried and said "God bless you" about 500 times -- even though we sang "Let It Snow." (Must have been a Dean Martin fan.)</div><div><br /></div><div>So naturally, we were feeling pretty good about ourselves as we walked down the<i> quiet, boring suburban neighborhood</i>, looking for our next caroling victim. We were a group of 20, including several small children (one of whom was an increasingly whiny boy of about 6 who looks a lot like me and lives in my house). Many of us were holding flashlights to see our music sheets, which were prepared by our party hosts.</div><div><br /></div><div>At this point, two cars quickly approached us from behind, with their lights off, and then shined bright lights at us. We looked. </div><div><br /></div><div>Cops!</div><div><br /></div><div>Caroling is a tradition that dates back 800 years to the time of St. Francis of Assisi. I'm therefore sure that we weren't the first festive holiday musicians to generate calls to the authorities. But really, we were that bad? "<i>OH MY GOD! People are walking down the street singing about Jesus' birth! And they're awful! And some of them are midgets! CALL 911!!!</i>"</div><div><br /></div><div>But, indeed, someone living in this <i>quiet, nondescript neighborhood</i> looked upon our festive group of carolers holding music sheets and flashlights and thought, "gangbangers." The police came quickly, because there was apparently nothing else to do in this<i> quiet suburb</i>. The officers were a little surprised to find out that we were carolers. They looked a little sheepish. "Someone called about a group of suspicious people carrying flashlights," they said. (OH GOD, NOT FLASHLIGHTS!)</div><div><br /></div><div>What did we do? We sang to the officers. We wished them a Merry Christmas and sent them on their way.</div><div><br /></div><div>Then we went home. Because when someone calls the cops on your singing, you should probably stop.</div></div>Anonymoushttp://www.blogger.com/profile/02737980462115396236noreply@blogger.com2tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-33314856.post-80661731547183853642010-12-14T20:17:00.005-06:002010-12-14T21:10:44.086-06:00The Snow-Filled Birthday PartyThe Boy was invited to a birthday party this weekend. Ordinarily, this is a good thing. For the price of a Chinese-made piece of plastic and a cheap card, I get two-plus hours of babysitting that often includes a meal and even a few party favors. Indeed, I find the birthday party circuit a profitable venture. I have one party. Invite lots of kids. In exchange I get periodic respites from the parenting game as my son is invited to other kids' parties out of guilt. This is a huge reason why I keep urging my son to make more friends. <div><br /></div><div>And in this case, the kid lived nearby. So all I'd need to do is get myself off of whatever piece of furniture I happen to be glued to roughly 10 minutes before party start, stumble out to the van while barking at my 6-year-old to get a move on, then drive the two miles to the friend's house, hopefully with the gift and the 6-year-old. Easy as cake.</div><div><br /></div><div>But, as many of you know, this is Minnesota. And my calendar says it's late fall, which around here means "winter." And "winter" means there is a decent chance that the event will be encumbered by fluffy white stuff and/or frigid temperatures. A few of you know that this is exactly what happened to us this weekend: Seventeen inches of snow, high winds, sub-zero temperatures, sub-sub-zero wind chills. The kind of weather that makes you question your zip code.</div><div><br /></div><div>It's also the type of weather that can clear a schedule, and that it did. I was faced with a Saturday packed with events -- practices and parties. All of them cancelled or were put off for another week. All, that is, except for the 7-year-old's birthday party. </div><div><br /></div><div>But instead of a simple, two-mile drive I had a treacherous journey over snow mountains and through icy valleys. I couldn't even get out of my driveway. I had to shovel my driveway before I could even think of escaping. This is no small task. I have one of those old-fashioned shovels, the one that require physical labor rather than a gas-powered engine. I don't have a snowblower because: A. They're ridiculously expensive and I'm cheap and B. I need any exercise I can get to offset my love of cream cheese frosting. I should also include C. I don't have any more room in my garage. If I add one more item to my garage I won't be able to fit my cars in there. And unlike many other people, I think garages are for automobiles. But I'm picky like that.</div><div><br /></div><div>I had yet to question my no-snowblower decision ... until this weekend. But I shoveled and I shoveled and then I shoveled some more and then my neighbor came to the rescue and took care of part of my driveway so I didn't have to shovel anymore, and good thing because if he hadn't come along I'd still be out there, shoveling and no party for the eldest.</div><div><br /></div><div>So out I went. The snow was falling so hard and so fast that you couldn't tell where the falling snow ended and the fallen snow began. Yes, snow plows were out, but the snow was winning that battle. And I smartly chose to drive the small car, rather than the minivan, because I thought it would be easy to push. It also gets stuck easier, I found. </div><div><br /></div><div>I drove slowly, because when you have no idea which is the road and which is the sidewalk and which is the neighbor's front yard, you drive slow. I skidded some. I slid some. I swerved into oncoming traffic some. Fortunately, nobody was out, or I would have gotten into accidents some.</div><div><br /></div><div>I made it, after about 20 minutes. And my fellow dad confessed that he didn't have the heart to cancel his son's birthday party, something I certainly wasn't going to fault him for. I got home, got stuck once on a busy thoroughfare and passed only three or four cars that had run aground along the side of the roads. I got stuck a second time turning onto my street. Fortunately, this was right in front of my house, so I could quickly dig myself out before anybody came to help me.</div><div><br /></div><div>I got home and we waited and I enjoyed my eldest-free two hours. When it came time to pick The Boy up, I looked out at the driveway and realized that it didn't even look like it had been touched. So shovel I did, again, and drive I did, again. This time I came prepared -- I had a shovel. And I'd need it too, the moment I got out of my driveway. Because I may have shoveled my driveway, but I didn't shovel the entire route to my son's friend's house. And neither had the plows -- not on the side streets. And by that time the snow was so deep it was all the way up to the bottom of the car doors. And small, two-wheel drive cars don't quite have the power to plow their way through foot-deep snow.</div><div><br /></div><div>Suffice it to say, the second trip through snow mountains and ice valleys was far more treacherous than the first, requiring a few pushes and a couple of stops to push other drivers out. I got to help one person, saw that his car was buried, declared "I have a shovel!" and ran back to my car. I came back to find that the 50 other people pushing got him out. "It worked," I said. </div><div><br /></div><div>"This sucks," the driver said to me as he drove away. Couldn't agree more. I may like it here in Minnesota, but that doesn't mean I like these big snowfalls. Sure, I liked them as a kid because 17 inches of snow meant no school the following school day. (Of course, there was the one huge snowstorm when I was in high school when my loser of a superintendent said that school must go on, making him the ONLY SUPERINTENDENT IN THE AREA TO DO SO.)</div><div><br /></div><div>Now that 17-inch snowfalls require shoveling and driving, plowing and pushing and potentially playing whose-job-is-more-important should a snow day occur, I'm no longer a big fan of them. A few inches is fine. But this storm was measured in feet. </div><div><br /></div><div>I managed to successfully navigate my way to my son's friend's house a second time without major incident. "Domino's said this was their last delivery of the day," my fellow dad said to me as I waited <i>forever </i>for my son to quit playing with his friends and get his jacket on.</div><div><br /></div><div>We managed to get home without getting stuck once, which I considered a small miracle, and then we got inside and I declared that we would not set foot outside the house again, a decision I'd ultimately come to regret at about Hour 20 of being snowed in with two restless kids. But that is another story.</div><div><br /></div>Anonymoushttp://www.blogger.com/profile/02737980462115396236noreply@blogger.com3tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-33314856.post-36600993195168613722010-12-07T22:51:00.003-06:002010-12-07T23:55:19.413-06:00The Big Bad Dork<a onblur="try {parent.deselectBloggerImageGracefully();} catch(e) {}" href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEhCppnOqUPtG35yT0QpGFubVSjCn1WnW5diKqmlHwf-pGrhIEbNkq147FIWFf1C4au8SoZ5ecpq_-f3e8ChSKp2s1N67gabD7FjOPJBo2YyQbC2cYgATcDrmF8nCx-FUd6FoyH30w/s1600/Trains+and+Parades+075+%2528600x800%2529.jpg"><img style="float: left; margin: 0pt 10px 10px 0pt; cursor: pointer; width: 240px; height: 320px;" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEhCppnOqUPtG35yT0QpGFubVSjCn1WnW5diKqmlHwf-pGrhIEbNkq147FIWFf1C4au8SoZ5ecpq_-f3e8ChSKp2s1N67gabD7FjOPJBo2YyQbC2cYgATcDrmF8nCx-FUd6FoyH30w/s320/Trains+and+Parades+075+%2528600x800%2529.jpg" alt="" id="BLOGGER_PHOTO_ID_5548185779425247698" border="0" /></a>Once upon a time there lived in a suburb a father, the dorkiest person who was ever seen. But his son was excessively fond of him, and so the father did everything he could to please the child. It suited the father so extremely well to be called "Dorky Dad."<br /><br />One day, the father's wife contacted Dorky Dad at work. "There is a holiday parade coming up," she said. "T'would please our son dearly if you two were to be in it." The father agreed. And in a few short days, the wife came home with the good news: they were selected to be in a Holidazzle Parade, the nightly parade through downtown Minneapolis.<br /><br />Most people shiver at the thought of a parade in the dark of winter. But the people who live in this land, called Minnesota, are hearty folk, if also a bit foolish. And so, risking frostbite and hypothermia they gather along the streets nightly in December to watch the parade of characters dressed in lighted costumes dancing and singing down the street.<br /><br />Such a delight this would be for a 6-year-old boy, though the dad. The Boy wanted to be on a float. But instead, they were assigned clown costumes. They would walk alongside the Circus Train. "We can jest with the best of them," the dad said to his son, and the son agreed. "Indeed, father, we are a pair of jesters," he said. (Alas, The Wife, who has <a href="http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Coulrophobia">Coulrophobia</a>, was not so enthused.)<br /><br />But, on the day of the parade, a big storm hit. A steady, heavy snow fell all day. Would the parade be canceled? As evening approached, there was no such announcement, so the Dork picked up his youngest son, and then his eldest son, and began the journey along icy, snow-covered roads packed with slow moving traffic toward downtown in the midst of the snowstorm.<br /><br />Their journey would end in the parking garage of a downtown Target, 90 minutes later and 30 minutes late. Handing off the youngest son to his wife, who met them there, the dork and his son bolted for the several-block walk to the parade route start, with the toddler-lugging wife behind. Only they would find obstacles at each intersection in the form of red lights, and the wife would catch up as they waited for the light to change. Then they bolted again down the sidewalk only to wait again at the next light, where the wife would again catch up.<br /><br />They ran up to the room to change into their costumes. But the man at the desk said, "There is no clown costume for a child. How would you like to be an animal in the Circus Train, instead?"<br /><br />Oh, joy! The son would be able to be on a float, just like he wanted and wouldn't have to trudge through snow. "How about it, son, want to be an animal and ride on a float?"<br /><br />"No, father."<br /><br />"Alas, my son, my 40-year-old ears do not hear as well as they used to, and this frigid December air is not helping, but I thought you said, 'No.' But of course, you didn't say that, not after that two-hour journey to get here!"<br /><br />"No, father. I want to walk along side you."<br /><br />And thus the Dorky Dad was beside himself. What to do? The Boy didn't want to be on a float. But he certainly didn't want to leave. But that's what they did, and soon The Boy relented, but only after the father promised that he would stay near the float the entire time.<br /><br />So they returned to the man at the desk, and the man looked through his sheet and instead found another costume -- storybook characters who would walk through the parade! The Boy agreed. The dad would be the Big Bad Wolf. And The Boy would be Tom Sawyer (rather than Red Riding Hood, who apparently didn't make an appearance at this parade). "Who's Tom Sawyer?" The Boy said. "I'll read you that story soon, son," the father said.<br /><br />They got their battery packs and their costumes. The boy dressed in a set of overalls decorated with holiday lights, and wore a well-lit straw hat. The father, it turned out, would get a more dramatic costume. "You won't want to wear your coat," someone said. And the father didn't, because he would wear a large wolf suit, complete with a giant head and grandmother's cape, all brightly illuminated.<br /><br />They trudged downstairs, the son dragging his heavy battery pack, the father lugging a heavy wolf's head. They posed for photographs, and then lined up outside. The street was coated with a few inches of freshly fallen snow, and the snow kept falling.<br /><br />The dork put on his wolf's head. He could see, but only barely, and he looked out through the wolf's mouth, making his line of site framed by giant teeth and a big, wagging tongue. "Your task for this evening is to frighten children," the parade guide told the father. "Indeed! I'm a father! Half of my job is to frighten children!"<br /><br />And so the parade began, and of course the streets were packed with people of all shapes and sizes, including many children who would be perfect for a wolf to frighten. So as the son walked down the center of the street, the father roamed from side to side eagerly fulfilling his wolfly duty -- though, unable to see much through the wolf's mouth, he had to arch his back and neck to see anybody first, which made for a painful parade, and a more painful aftermath.<br /><br />As they walked the mile-long parade route, the boy warmed up to the crowd and eventually high-fived some of the audience. The father scared several dozen children plus one clown -- at least he thought it was a clown, for he could barely see. He also lost a few pounds lugging a 30-pound head on his shoulders and, surprisingly, was able to run and walk the entire route without falling on his behind.<br /><br />The parade ended, and the father was only too happy to give up his wolf's head. He had fun, but was tired and worn out. The Boy had fun, too. And so they hopped on the bus for the trip back, only the driver got lost, and the normally five-minute trip back to the start took a half-hour, one in which the father's cell phone kept ringing. The cell phone was in his pocket. But he couldn't reach his pocket through his wolf's suit. It was his wife, who was struggling with a bored and very hungry toddler and had no idea where her husband and eldest son were.<br /><br />The moral of the story: Next time just walk. Or at least keep your cell phone handy.Anonymoushttp://www.blogger.com/profile/02737980462115396236noreply@blogger.com1