Chronicles Of Captain Cheesestick

Foolish Fish

2012-02-23T06:42:00.000-05:00

"Would you like some foolish fish Daddy?"

I'm lying in bed this morning while my kids wake up properly when my daughter says, "you smell a lot better than me Daddy! You smell like a washing machine!" Intrigued I asked her what she thought she smelled like. "I smell like a peregrine falcon!" So according to a website I checked (amusingly it was the Ohio state FAQ on peregrine falcons) she smells like a dead pigeon that a falcon is eating. I got up quickly after that when my daughter genuinely used the phrase, "do a fight" when I asked her what she was tying to do by shoving her head into me.

We're off on a mini-vacation today until Saturday afternoon. Pretty much we've booked a hotel across the state (back towards western NY where we used to live until we moved back to England 6 years ago or so) so we can behave like we're somewhere else entirely. As far as my kids are concerned it'll be the same vacation as if we'd ensconced off to the west coast or down south. We'll be going to a kids museum (a darn good one at that), seeing some old friends and taking a breather. My wife could do with it, that's for sure. I'm hoping she doesn't just nap for most of it. I've promised to take my daughter swimming at least once. Obviously she'll swim - I'll flail about when I realize that I'm deeper than I'm comfortable with. I have such little ability to swim that when my son - not quite two years old yet - is invited to these sorts of things then I want nothing to do with it. I can't be trusted to keep other people from drowning.

Anyhoo - we're staying in one of those hotels that has a kitchen in it as well. Actually we're behaving like giddy nerds at the notion we can go to a decent grocery store that we used to shop at and buy stuff to eat, take it back to the hotel and cook it. Living the life, man. So for the trip I went down the street and bought some car-snacks. Basically some cooked sausage and a few treats for my wife to pretend are for her and the kids. My daughter insisted that the Swedish Fish I'd bought are actually foolish fish. Obviously she explained that, "foolish fish" is the English name for whatever ridiculous name I just claimed these candies are called.

Actually after blathering on yesterday about kids on leashes and rigging your teenager with a tracking device I had a few people message me elsewhere that I'll change my tune. They hadn't read what I'd written here - but rather commented on something I'd written on a parenting forum somewhere else. Pretty much I posted the Youtube video and made a comment that it seemed overprotective and prevents actual learning about listening, rules and all the good things about not being staked to another moving object that. This inevitably led to defending the, "protecting kids at any cost" arguments for all the other guff that I mentioned. They gave me the mocking, "oh you'll see...." tone. As in one day I'll find out that my kids are downloading alcohol and smoking porn or whatever, and I'll fit them with hardware to only allow approved foods and fluids into approved orifices. I was given sage advice on how I'll not only go this route somewhat, but that the sanctuary of the kids' bedrooms will become a problem in and of itself. As in - I'll convince myself that if they're in there then they'll be shielded from it all and unable to desperately try and rub themselves in all the filth that teenagers seem to want to rub themselves in. There was some comment about it not being just a case of questioning them having a TV in their room - because in 10 years phones will be so advanced that there will be nothing I can do as a parent to prevent them from the absolute mayhem of it all (leading to an hilarious diatribe about webcams being more dangerous than weed). All of which stemmed from me saying I thought kids on leashes is weird.

First off - balls. No amount of waffling on is going to convince me to literally tie a dog-leash to my kids. Secondly - a television in their room? That's where you went wrong. Thirdly - I don't know anything. Why argue with me? Parent the way you want and leave me to mock you for it if I think it's weird.

I ended up being asked to justify how I could justify letting my kids run into traffic or have sex with boys when they're fifteen years old. All I'm saying is if you think that your kid is going to have unprotected sex at fifteen because you didn't check their email (presumably the one with the subject line: My Mom Is Never Going To Know We Are Going To Have All That Sexiness Tonight) then you're deluded. Acting like the home-version of a TSA agent isn't actually going to do anything in my mind. Instead it seems like every bit the overreaction as telling some grandmother you've just fondled in an airport that she can't bring the snow-globe on the plane that she bought for Christmas because it may be a weapon. By the way - the only time that is appropriate is if you actually work for the TSA. Mind you people donning a yellow work-vest and fondling grannies at JFK sounds like the sort of thing the Today show tries to scare the shit out of Americans with every morning.

Look - I get that you want to protect your children. And I get the logic behind watching them in case they get hurt somehow. But seriously - there is absolutely no link between your four year old being unruly in a grocery store (therefore you needing a leash) and software that checks keystrokes on a computer in order to stop your kid from being abducted. None. That's not the same thing at all. Because if there was you be damn sure that the people who sell those kid-leashes would stick right in the commercial that their product is a great way to prevent kidnapping. They'd have some silly statistic they made up wherein their leash, "reduces unwanted rapings by 400%!" (presumably verified by Liz Trotta of Fox News.) I know this because most of the Internet child-safety websites that I checked through (like this one) have cut-and-pasted entire paragraphs from the The National Center for Missing and Exploited Children. As in they took very useful and altruistic text en masse from a website about the tragedy of missing and abused kids and applied it wholesale to suggest that if your teens use the Internet without total supervision then they are in very serious danger of, "abduction, endangerment, and sexual exploitation."

I recently read a book by Steven Pinker (Harvard Psychologist) called The Better Angels Of Our Nature. It's a fantastic book. In which he writes a great part about how so much fear is exploited (generally by fluff-media) to sell a product in spite of how far-less dangerous the world really is. Pages 441 -447 pretty much cover the total unlikeihood statistically that your child will be whisked off. It reads, "[T]he annual number of abductions by strangers has ranged from 200 to 300 in the 1990s to about 100 today, half of whom are murdered. … The writer Warwick Cairns has calculated that if you wanted your child to be kidnapped and held overnight by a stranger, you’d have to leave the child outside and unattended for 750,000 years.”

Speaking of which my son has been upstairs hitting things for the last twenty minutes.

Princess Bounce And Tooting Karmoon

2012-02-22T16:42:00.000-05:00

Yes that really is as cheap and childish as it reads. My daughter is home today. I was wandering about the house with my headphones in - stand-up on so I could hear both the talking and the kids - and doing laundry. Then I heard my daughter running through some crazy story about how Princess Bounce needed to take photos of a man farting so that she could arrest him for "being criminal."and prove to the world that he was the reason that, "there's a weird smell."

Obviously I obliged in the role of world-famous Egyptian chuffatron - Tooting Karmoon.

Not exactly an Olivier performance, but got the job done. I shall have to pull back from this easy, crass character before this whole enterprise turns into something overtly silly, like a Dav Pilkey plot-line. Except he can draw and I can't.

Tra-la-laaa.

Walking The Dog

2012-02-22T08:12:00.001-05:00

I saw this happening yesterday afternoon.

The kid I saw tethered to his mother was older - maybe 3 to 4 years old. I can't get my head around that. I probably should point out that they were walking around a store. So the Mom was pushing a cart, walking her canine-child and therefore free to not think about what the kid was getting up to. And there was that handy snapping-back of the leash every time the kid was at maximum circumference away from her. Good doggy. I'm presuming that this is a safety thing that caused a parent to buy a synthetic umbilical cord. I get the train of logical thinking behind it - the "safety is the most important thing" process that must have been traveled along to get to this. But it's just otherworldly to me. If you really have no idea what it looks like this is pretty indicative -:

It reminded me actually of someone I used to work with casually telling whoever was listening about their kids at home. They told a cutesy story about how they were sat in the living room casually reading late at night when they glanced down at the night-time video monitor and saw the cat climb out of the kids school bag and onto the bed right onto the child's chest. Other people went, "awww" and the like. I blanked out. First off - if that kid is in school why do you have a monitor? I get why you might want a monitor for babies. But for a child in school? Unless newly-made shoes are showing up every morning in your kids room, and you're trying to rule out elves having anything to do with it then I'm not understanding why a school child needs monitoring while they sleep. And a night-vision monitor? This is a 6 year old's bedroom - not Helmand province. Are you keeping look-out for insurgents? I can imagine a parent deliberate playing an extra hour of Call of Duty just to improve their ability to spot out-of-the-ordinary movements on night-vision. And no mention of night-vision in the dark can pass by without mentioning Buffalo Bill in Silence of The Lambs. He seems like the kind of person who drags other people around on a leash as well.

Of course my opinion on how you raise your kids is meaningless. Whatever works for you. It's not like I'm right. I remember how people would look at me when I rode the bus with my daughter strapped on my back in an Ergo. I heard the, "he's literally suffocating that child..." whispers. Couldn't care less what was said. Or the horrified look a mother gave me when I handed my son a whole carrot when picking my daughter up at school. They even felt compelled to point out that he may choke to death. Sorry - but not taking advice from a parent who thinks carrots are life-threatening to a two year old but thinks they're being conscientious as a parent because they don't smoke in the house. Almost all the parenting I do in public is immediately questioned by others. Not because I'm flagrantly careless. But because people without kids have absolutely no idea what they're talking about, and other parents reinforce their own parenting choices by deriding others. I still recall listening to one parent I worked with passionately begging another parent to reconsider their choice not to read their own child's emails, text messages and the like. Not out of genuine compassion for the other parent's child - but because they know that lots of people think child monitoring bracelets and software to track keystrokes is a little bit too Enemy Of The State.

I'm not tethering my kids on a leash, putting a GPS chip on them (and not telling them), giving them a cellphone at 8 years of age "for their safety" or watching them through a CCTV camera in their room. I think I can teach them trust and to follow rules appropriately and assume they'll only get up ti as much trouble as I did when I was a kid. My wife will probably interject here that I at least consider also teaching them the responsibility of good old honest farm-work, to take up a vocational college degree and the inherent value of compound interest. Fine. -Although the photo of the kids tied to the mother above makes me wonder if I shouldn't enter myself and my kids into the local harness-racing at the horse-track up the road. We shall have to practice pacing correctly in the driveway while he drags a deadweight behind him until the season begins.

Anyhoo - I should probably let my son back in. I can hear his dog-collar clinking on his empty water bowl. So either he's run out of water or it's frozen due to it being 20 degrees Fahrenheit out. He get's so thirsty when it's this cold!

Hygieia Is Reborn

2012-02-21T07:24:00.001-05:00

There are decaying testicles dangling from my bedroom ceiling.

Yesterday I took a video of my son goofing around in my bedroom. The original intent was to just photo or video us looking out the window at the sun coming up. But after that I started doing laundry and thought he looked cute pointing at squirrels and goofing around so kept taking the odd picture. Then when I looked back through them and I realized what an utter cackhole the room is. It desperately needs a proper cleaning up. I think I'm going to have a go at that this morning. I've put it off because my kids get antsy and want me to come back downstairs if I'm up there too long doing laundry. Then they come upstairs and decide that bouncing on the bed and making the laundry rain down on them would be a fantastic game. So I usually just go up there in quick short spurts until my daughter is in school and my son is napping.

But other than that - it's also just a horrid room. It's the only room in our entire house that we haven't touched in any way as far renovating goes. Actually we replaced the windows, ripped the heating units off the walls, filled the holes in that they left and built some inner walls to create a laundry room and a hallway of sorts - but the room itself is untouched. The ceiling is still made from those nasty polystyrene ceiling tiles. The walls are still that odd unnatural pink color that deep fried sausages are in chip shops in the UK (the ones that look like a massive scaly-pink scabbed willy). Except it's old and not well cared for, so the walls have pock-marks and clumps notched out of them. The paint is peeling off in places. And the walls themselves are so poorly put together that the seams between the paneling have a good 1/4 inch gap between them. The window frames are scraped off - intentionally to remove the old probably lead-based paint that was on there before. In the video I didn't see my son hiding under the blanket and happy at all - I just saw the mess.

I had put the camera on my dresser originally and tried to take a photo of us doing laundry. But a pomander we had made was in the shot and the angle was all wrong. Pomaders are wonderful, fragrant, delightful things. People should make more of them. But not when they are this old and dried up. So instead all you could see was the sorry-state of the room along with a three year old Christmas decoration that looked like a decaying testicle blocking a shot of my son staring out the window. At least you can't see the other one as well. Actually I'm not doing this justice. Here's a photo.

Oh that's horrendous. Please try and remember how nice the rest of my house looks and put that in context of what an utter dilapidated dump this place was when we bought it. So my only recourse for now is to clean the room properly and be satisfied with that. I probably should get a lot of cleaning done today. It's not just that it's easier to just ignore my son than both my son and daughter. Which it is. But he's entertained just being around me while I clean in weird places (stop imagining whatever it is you think I'm washing right this instant...) and I really don't have any reason to not do it if I can. So in a minute I'll stick on some good music and get cleaning the kitchen, then head upstairs to do the laundry. After that I'll see if my motivation is still intact to try and polish the turd that is that room somewhat. Although knowing me I'll feel all puffed-up and proud that I've washed the dishes and folded laundry and will award myself time to sit down and look at The Institute Of Official Cheer and gag at the insipid photos of food from the 1960s.

So I'll need something to help me stay motivated. I have my coffee. I have some loud music. Maybe there's something else? Quick Internets! Reveal that which I need!

Oh nice imagery there Big Pharma. I don't think today you'd see the stereotypical 60s/70s housewife chained behind her jail-bars of mop, broom and duster. I'm assuming by the language in that ad that this is aimed at the medical industry as opposed to husbands looking to medicate their wives into getting the oven washed and the Meatloaf done. Let's hope anyway. Certainly it's not aimed directly at women who feel imprisoned by their lot in life. Because the slogan, "Got to mop the kitchen floor? Then take a bump before getting down to it." is somewhat questionable. Actually in this country I'm somewhat uncomfortable with the free-and-easy notion that there is a pill for everything. Mind you back home every just gets pissed instead.

Actually that ad reminds me of a commercial I saw as well. It's not even subtle about it either.

Crap. All that's reminded me is that I need to clean the bathroom as well. Bah. Maybe I will (that means I won't - but I'll make myself feel better by pretending that I at least considered it). So to keep me working I've uploaded this to my MP3 player. Let's get to work!

Always At War With Eastasia/Eurasia

2012-02-20T15:39:00.000-05:00

This morning I accidentally snorted dishwasher soap.

Before any of you jump the gun - no this isn't me admitting that I have an addiction problem. And no - I wasn't ripped off by a dishonest local coke dealer. It was much more mundane (but infinitely smarter than snorting coke) than that. I was just filling up the dishwasher and over-filled the little tray with powder. That meant that I couldn't close the tiny door on it so had to get down on the floor and try and blow the excess off. But I blew much harder than I intended to and it went up my nose, into my eyes and all over my face. I looked like Bronson Pinchot in that scene in the movie True Romance before the cop busts him for possession. I took this as a sign that I shouldn't betray my Luddite sensibilities and wash them by hand. Except now I can still taste the chemicals in the back of my throat and it's given me a headache. I'm tempted to squirt a jet of water up my nostrils to flush them out. But that has Hospital Visit written all over it. I am bound to injure myself in some horrifying way by doing something like that. And my son has demonstrated already - with my foot injury - that if he were to wander into the kitchen to find my unconscious, bleeding from a head wound and with soap bubbles blubbing out of my nose that he will definitely be able to pretend that he's harpooned a whale and is now riding it (very slowly) around the kitchen floor.

My son hasn't played any different games today either. We played trains more than we usually do. Amusingly though at the time my daughter usually gets her stuff together to go wait for the school bus my son demanded we go out. I told him that - as his sister wasn't here - there wasn't really a good reason to go outside in 20 degree Fahrenheit weather to wait for a school bus that won't be showing up. But then he gave me the, "oh we only do things when the Princess wants to..." look, so I suited him up in snow clothes and we wandered around the back yard for 45 minutes. Which was enjoyable and all, but then he stuck his boots on and started bleating about going to pick his sister up from school at 2.45. I told him again that she isn't here and we don't need to go out. He didn't like that - I'm breaking routine and that's not on. He genuinely seemed - for five minutes - to think that I'd just decided not to bother bringing her home any more. I managed to reign in any urges to just tell him, "yeah - we decided she's to mental for us so I dropped her off at the SPCA last night when you were asleep. We have to have you tested tomorrow to see if you have the rabies as well..." He still is a little puzzled even though I've told him she's up at the grandparent's house. I think I might have to actually Skype them to prove it.

In unrelated events - my wife and I were watching TV (actually the TV was just on as background noise while we ate chips and dip and looked at Food Gawker) last night and there was a scene in a show where a kid was awarded a high school hall pass as a prize. This prompted me to ask what the point of a Hall Monitor is in US schools. My wife looked at me as if I'd just asked if I am the only person who sits facing the tank when they sit down to poo. So I repeated it - asking why a school would need to employ people to police the corridors in case of.....? Actually I couldn't come up with what it was. She then mentioned it was so that nobody would be in the halls who shouldn't be. And that those people that are encountered by the hall monitor have to produce a hall pass and therefore chaos is avoided and thus harmony is maintained. I pointed out that they don't have them in other places. Because it's insane. At my main high-school in the UK it wasn't just one enormous building (like the ultra-prison monstrosities over here) but a collection of large old buildings that kids had to travel between to go to different classes. And if you didn't show up for class without a good reason then you'd get into trouble. It would take about 90 seconds for the teacher to notice you weren't there and another 15 seconds for someone to reveal where you might be. If you ever thought you could get away with this silliness you'd get in some sort of trouble and then just not do it again. And yet here in North America they've created this strange Gestapo system where children have to show their papers to explain why they are wantonly meandering up a school corridor. So I asked my wife why this happened. All she could muster was, "so that people aren't in the halls that shouldn't be...."

I can't get my head around that. Why would there be people there who shouldn't be? I ended up quickly checking Wikipedia (I apolgize for the laziness of that - but this isn't all that important to get better sourcing) to see what they define one as and they use phrases like, "charged with maintaining order," and madness like, "monitors may also be posted to a school's doors in order to prevent unauthorized entry." What!? Children are trying to get into classes that they aren't supposed to be in!?? That can't be happening? Most hilarious though is the claim in that Wikipedia write-up that in the UK, "some secondary schools create prefects from the older students who may carry out some of the same duties." Not at any comprehensive school I've ever heard of. Boarding school maybe - and whatever freak show Harry Potter went to. But at every other school I know kids finished one class and went to another without being tempted to make a run for it past the guards, gun turrets and alligator pit that's been dug to keep kids from chancing it. So in other words - you don't need people parading the halls to, "maintain order" because - well - you just don't need to. And clearly it isn't a prevention thing because (after asking a few Americans and one Canadian) kids did arse about and wander the halls at their schools to stay out of class. I did find a few links to schools that hire security personnel or have taser-wielding monitors - but that doesn't really warrant mentioning in the same way because I looked for it - and the truth of the Internets is, "if you look for it you will find it."

Still - I'm somewhat uncomfortable with this new element of schooling for my kids that I hadn't considered before. It just seems to breed an element of mistrust and heavy-handedness that isn't needed in the first place. Mind you considering the ridiculous quantity of CCTV cameras spattered across the UK a syphilitic-camera ridden Oceania - which also have no intent to prevent anything either - perhaps I'm being unduly over-sensitive here.

Great - my son has now declared that his sister is likely just hiding upstairs and I need to go help look. Time to nip this in the bud.

Fish Nipple Dies In The Snow

2012-02-20T07:45:00.003-05:00

"Yeah - well you're a unicorn's bum-cheek."

My daughter called me Cheese Muff for much of yesterday morning. Serves me right. She likes playing a game where I combine two words that have no relationship and tell her she is one of them. It's extremely juvenile and bound to land her in trouble at some point. Basically we have a back and forth where I'll loudly mock her with, "Yeah!? Well - you're a horse-sandwich" and she'll come back with, "and you're a fish nipple." In the end she landed on cheese muff and though it was so amusing that she started singing/taunting me at the grocery store.

Actually my daughter isn't here right now. She's up at the in-laws until Wednesday. Which works out well as she's off school all week, the in-laws leave on their annual southern-pilgrimage in a week, my wife has been working solid 15 hour days for the last three weeks (weekends included), my son needs to catch up on some missed napping over the weekend and I need some sort of reprieve from wall-to-wall single-parenting. My son gets to play games on his own today as well. I'll have to get him to do things that aren't conducive to the possibility of being destroyed by siblings. We'll have to build something and do a little more reading than he normally gets in. Less trains too hopefully.

Speaking of which my son has started referring to Thomas The Tank Engine as, "Tommy." Yesterday morning he came bounding downstairs excitedly calling that name out. He didn't seem surprised when he found me down there before him either - so I know he wasn't coming down looking for a boyfriend with that name. I told a friend this yesterday and he excitedly suggested that maybe my son is a big The Who fan. I think he's only seen one performance on TV - and that was the embarrassing Superbowl performance from the other year. And I don't think I've played The Who in years to listen too. At the very least I'm hoping my son isn't getting up early in the morning hoping to get some private time online looking up pictures of Pete Townshend as a kid. "For research purposes," obviously.

On Saturday morning I also learned that if I was seriously injured my kids would be of no help to me at all. I know this because whilst chasing my son from the kitchen into the living-room I caught my little and the next-to-little toe on the frame bending them back completely the wrong way. It was one of those injuries where my body actually made an audible noise to announce that it was breaking. Good heavens it hurt. I collapsed onto the living room floor so that I could concentrate on not letting the pain completely wash over me. I didn't do so well and tried growling/muffled screaming through the sharp pain. My son thought I was pretending to be a bear and rode me for a good four or five minutes. My daughter surely must have seen (and definitely heard) that something was wrong - and yet still managed to bend down to make eye contact with me to ask if she could have something to eat. The two minutes that I had originally planned to lie on the ground slowly turned into almost quarter of an hour because it genuinely hurt that much. Obviously my first concern was for my country. I knew that I may have hurt myself to such a degree that I may have to rule myself out of Euro 2012. My second thought was that I needed to remember where my phone was in case I had to call my wife and tell her to come home. Then I vainly attempted to explain to my kids that I had actually hurt myself.

As soon as I had finished explaining myself (and getting absolutely no response from my kids that suggested they understood or were concerned) I watched my son dragging a blanket across the room towards me. You might think that's sweet and a genuine display of affection. It isn't anything of the sort. What he was doing was attempting to cover me up so that he could then run at me from across the room and jump onto me - or "Plaid Mountain" as I'd styled myself once - without me seeing what he was doing. I tried to convince him that now isn't a good time for playing that game. Which he took to mean that he should just beat me with a bean bag and then drive a toy airplane up and down my body. My daughter is perfectly capable of understanding what I meant when I told her I was hurt and she needed to give me a minute. After a minute (which she had timed to hold me to it - but also note that she thinks a minute is the same as counting to five) she started complaining that I hadn't gone to get her the potato chips I'd promised. And then she started asking me why I wasn't helping her play a game. I did answer her - which she ran through some kind of translator which came up with "because Daddy is lazy and selfish and wants you to be sad." She even moaned at one point saying, "Daddy why are you sleeping?" Sleeping! This went on until I finally got up. Twenty minutes later when I was hobbling painfully around my daughter tried to reminisce - with a real sense of melancholic drama - about that time when she wanted potato chips and to play a game, but Daddy lay on the ground like a hippo giving birth and, "talking." All I can say is it's a good job I didn't fall down outside or they'd have buried me in the snow and left me there to freeze. No doubt I would have heard my daughter yelling from the kitchen window - after eventually taking her brother inside when it started to get dark - about how I should get off my fat arse and come inside to make that hot chocolate that I promised her I'd make.

Actually speaking of snow - we finally had a quick burst of the stuff Saturday and there was just enough to make a real-sized snowman. I needed to show my son that they aren't supposed to be 6 inches tall so made a big one. Which he and his sister immediately destroyed. I then realized that he thinks that's what they are for. You build them - and then immediately you must destroy before they anthropomorphize and somehow take on the essence of life. Fortunately I caught the first destruction video.

I also caught this marvelous piece of sibling rivalry. My daughter calmly formed a nice fat snowball to chuck at me. But then I noticed - so she had to find someone else to pelt with it. Which she did.

He Must Be Destroyed

2012-02-18T05:30:00.001-05:00

What follows here is a photographic account of my son and I yesterday, "doing battle." I put that in quotes because that's what I kept saying to my daughter (as in - "I can't right now - we are doing battle...")during the whole thing when she kept asking me to help her learn something. Like that's important at all. If you're squeamish you may need to have another person present to support you while you read this. And please - try not to swoon.

My son first began our showdown by using his legendary ability to blend into the scenery. Obviously at the time I was just firing off photographs in the vain hope I could find him. Little did I know he was hiding in plain sight...

Suddenly from out of nowhere came his infamous Death Charge. I knew I had to think quickly.

So I scooped him up and attempt to crush the life out of him like a python-bear-mutant-beast crushing it's prey.

Soon we were grappling like two virile adult Congolese silverback gorillas looking to challenge for dominance of the herd (I realize that extrapolating this analogy out to my own family is quite disturbing - but for some reason I did think of the pure, raw animal rage of a gorilla when I saw myself....).

When the Legend will be written they will talk of the Man With The Fire In His Mouth.Although in the Legend the living-room we fought in won't have as many socks and shoes chucked all over the carpet - and I definitely will not have had to take a minute to recover from standing on that tractor.

Somehow he managed to wriggle free. Naturally he again attempted to hide in plain sight whilst I tried to draw him out by twitching like an absolute pillock.Yes - he is hiding behind a small handheld mirror.

After he was flushed out into the open I demonstrated my manliness by running through a pretty decent performance of the Maori war dance - The Haka.

After which I did this. I know what you're thinking - "was there any tearing." No - surprisingly my clothing and my scrotum remain intact.

Obviously this photo shouldn't be here. It's completely out of sequence. But I put it here simply to ask out loud - what exactly am I doing with my finger? And why is my son casually watching?

From out of nowhere my son pounced. According to this photo he must have been hiding on the top of that bookcase.

But my cat-like reflexes (obviously I'm referring to a big scary cat here - like one of the Thundercats - and not the sad, wimpish, eccentric effete cat we used to own that would bring plums home that it had "caught") allowed me to react like lightning. No sooner had he launched at me that I caught him and quickly tossed him off. I should definitely rewrite that if I want any chance of Google not sending evil freaks this way.

Before he could regain his footing I pounced! You should have seen the surprise on his face....

And he was crushed. After which he was banished to The Phantom Zone like General Zod was in Superman in that weird pentagonal thing that flipped through space. Or - in this case - he hid under the trampoline where he found a bit of dog treat and tried to eat it without me noticing.

View From A Mentalist: February 17, 2012

2012-02-17T13:34:00.000-05:00

So I coerced my daughter into more photography. I noticed that she's completely avoiding the television or taking photo-essays of parts of her body traveling around the house. Now she just takes six photos of everything that takes her fancy - and loads of books. I don't even look at the book ones now. Anyhoo - here goes.

First up - some Bath Bombs. My wife brought home these for the kids when she came home from her out-of-town work last week. You chuck in the bathtub that fizz and turn the water whatever color they are. I put bubble bath in too and then it's this insane cocktail of purple-laced bubbles and indigo-water. And not that I expect my son to sully his fine reputation, but there's no way I'm chucking these in if he hasn't proven he's completely empty. Why? Because there's a brown one of these.

This is also a gift my daughter got from that last trip. It's a pen with a light. It satisfies her once-a-week desire to hide in a cupboard alone for half an hour with a strobe light and pretend to be a doctor. I've peeked - that is what she's doing. She has a doctor's kit in there and will either talk to herself or will "treat" her brother - also attracted to the fluorescence.

This is the only photo that came out of one of the Valentine's cards my kids got this year. This one seems kind of cheeky. My daughter said the bug is hiding in case her brother bites it. Sounds fair.

Oh classy. If you really can't figure this out it's a closeup photo of a twenty-pack of toilet paper. My daughter didn't say anything interesting about this. But every time I see unwrapped toilet paper it reminds me of when I was at college and me and my friends wandered into a Spar store in Swansea in the UK. I can't remember why I was there, but we bumped into another friend of ours who was trying to flirt with the cashier. Except that the only item that he was buying was a single toilet roll. Quite clearly he had been at home and needed poo - realized he had run out of paper - and gone to the store. My friend Marcus then advised him very loudly, "you should probably have the shit first before you try and shag her." Classy.

I didn't even know she'd taken this one. I'd finished brushing my teeth and she was wandering around in the bathroom photographing books.

This would be the book. Obviously it's a pop-up book and this is the climactic end-page. I don't think this book has been read by either of my children without them having just urinated or defecated.

This is the Valentines Mailbox my daughter made at school out of a used tissue box. It's her favorite color. This is what was filled with strangely immoral cards from other kids stating vague romantic feelings, or were just cards that have absolutely no relationship to Valentines Day at all. Such as the 3 cards with a picture of a Power Ranger on them and then the words, "Valentines Day." Not even making an effort to market crap to kids there.

My daughter has neatly captured the absolute mayhem of the Thomas the Tank Engine books right here. Except when I just asked her what' going on she said that Thomas is trying to get that man's lollipop.

Something to remain burned into your cornea all day long. I made a gluten free from this NPR thing about gluten-free baking.They made a nice looking cookie. I made a congealed cookie tray covered in one massive wet slurry of deliciousness. So I emptied it into a bowl and it formed a massive edible ball of gunk that looks like it's already been eaten by a few people a few times. It is freaking delicious though.

See - now you're hungry.

Smegghead

2012-02-17T11:34:00.000-05:00

"Maybe when I get a beard I can teach you some things Daddy."

My daughter often surprises me. Lately it's the random stuff that she says that is factually accurate and - I had assumed - was above her capacity to understand. For example after her mother left for work at 6am, and I "hid" in the bedroom by turning the lights off so it was dark, she gloated that my attempts to hide were futile because she'll just use echolocation to find me. Apparently she mentioned it - with details on how bats use it to navigate - to both my wife and her teacher as well. The teacher also mentioned that she burst forth into some diatribe about how one of the other kids thinks something is stink because tiny particles - possibly chemicals - from whatever it was that was stinky (I believe it was one of the other kids..) travel through the air and then land on smell receptors in your nose. And that some animals smell with their tongue - but that it was unlikely the nasally-offended child was using their tongue to smell unless they were secretly a snake.

Randomly over breakfast this morning she also mentioned that the earth is rotating - but it's going too fast for me to feel it - and that the Sun is also rotating hence why it is almost daytime. She then attempted to explain that the Earth also tilts which would explain why it's going to be Spring soon as well. Her brother - desperate not to be outdone - showed me how he can squish his breakfast into his eyebrows. He won't be getting Nutella tomorrow. After I cleaned him up my daughter mentioned that her music teacher was explaining something about a musical instrument that she didn't know. The way she talked about it was as someone who was surprised and thrilled by the completely new avenue of knowledge. She had determined that he knew a lot about music because he had a beard. She's probably been watching too many videos of the band Clutch with me on Youtube. Then she wondered out loud if maybe she might get a beard when she's older than she can teach music stuff to me. I didn't feel like explaining that to her. I need her to go back to school and start saying she is planning on growing a beard.

My son actually is almost debilitated by his daintiness. He absolutely cannot continue to eat something if it leaks, drips, crumbles apart or leaves a residue on him or the surfaces around him. It is infuriating to watch him struggle anxiously to figure out what to do and then to always choose to beg me amidst oncoming tears to clean it up. All he has to do is drip a tiny minute droplet of milk (for example) and he's completely wracked with anguish and shame like Bill Murray in What About Bob? Last night I went for the old fashioned British Grandpa Made Dinner and we had some beans, a fried-egg and french fries for dinner. Within a few seconds of him jabbing his fork into the egg he got a little yolk on his finger. I promised myself that I wouldn't support his neurosis at all so tried to ignore him whelping about how he can't eat now until the egg is removed. But he ended up on the verge of tears. The same kind his sister does when I burst her balloon - where they lock their mouths wide-open like a snake trying to swallow a mouse.

I know this and yet like a fool this morning I gave him some chocolate in the car. The three of us had gone out to celebrate some good news about my wife (work stuff) by buying Creme Eggs - amongst some other stuff. I had picked up a tray of those cute tiny ones and handed him an unwrapped one. He bit the tip off it and looked inside at the goo. So I concentrated on rocking out to mix-compilation of cheesy 80s and 90s music I'd uploaded to my MP3 player, (Deee-lite's song, Groove Is In The Heart being the primary offending tune). Five minutes later I heard the anguished squeals behind me. He was still sat there holding the egg up to look inside it. Some of the goo had leaked onto his finger. Hence he had been paralyzed initially by the realization that some of the eggy-bit was touching him. Now - five minutes later - he was still clenched motionless wracked by the absolute horror and shame of it all. I gently told him to just lick it. This made him cry out, "noooo!" I then frustrated explained to him that he was going to eat it anyway so it was ridiculous for him to be incapacitated like this. He didn't buy it. Then I could see the thing that was distressing him even further. He had now been holding onto the egg for so long that it was now melting and his thumb and finger were stuck together in a chocolate glue. He had trapped himself in a perpetuating crisis that steadily became more troubling by the minutes. His behavior suggested that he actually thought he might not make it home alive. He was stuck in what I would describe (as did the minister who officiated our wedding when explaining what my wife and I had to look forward to) as a, "spiral of death and decay." I ended up having to pull over to deal with it. Annoyingly - as many parents can attest to I'm sure - the packet of wet-wipes I keep in the car had frozen into a useless solid block. I figured I'd sacrifice his spare underpants I keep in there too and wiped his hands with them. Nope - he didn't think they were clean enough. He could presumably feel the filth under his nails. So my only recourse was to take his melted egg and lick his hand clean. Which is slightly icky to me and was even more troubling to the twenty or so people all walking around the gas station parking lot I had quickly pulled into. He better get over this problem because it is driving the pair of us insane.

Anyhoo - I haven't posted this video here from yesterday. My son had been asking to dance in the kitchen and film it. It was a complete ruse for him to play with the camera though. When I confronted him he gave me the evil eye and legged it off around the house. I did chase him though and I can assure you that after I got him I tickled him thoroughly.

Cujo Says Go Away

2012-02-16T10:44:00.000-05:00

Daughter: Daddy - whine, whine, moan, whine, complain.

This morning I was lying in bed with my kids after my daughter woke up and they're fighting over who will lie next to me. Which is absurd seeing as they could just lie either side of me. But no - apparently my left side is the preferred place for them both to lie down. Then my daughter - after seeing it was annoying me for them to fight - says, "I know Daddy! We should cut a hole in you and then we could both get inside you!" Sounds like a top notch idea. And is eerily similar to my wife years back trying to express affection for me by saying a very similar thing. Perhaps it's hereditary.

After this confession of wanting to commit serious bodily harm my daughter said she wanted to lie in the window and watch the sun come up. Well - she more likely repeated what I usually say in the mornings when I'm sore from being jumped on. Whilst lying gazing out the window I remarked how the snow was pretty much all gone and that it was raining but still below freezing. I was supposed to just say it was sleet - but came out with that. I could see the wheels whirling in her brain. Then she said, "That's because there's a rain cloud and snow cloud stuck together. They were probably kissing - that's how things get stuck together. Wet snow like that is very sticky." Apparently I've been spending too much time listening to my wife's persistent neuroses about the idea her is just about to shack up with some strange boy. I say this because I was instantly reminded of the Valentine school party we attended - at which my daughter opened a card from the boy next to her. In an attempt to get everyone talking to everyone i mentioned to my daughter that she could show the boy what she had got. She quickly answered, "Yeah! I could show him my room!" Steady on dear.

For a large part of today my daughter has been continuing her annoying trend of exaggerating how much her brother is hurting her. As in she will wrestle him to the ground, chase him and knock him over, push him off the couch - all of it playfully. But then she'll be done and he'll be within five feet of her and she'll dive dramatically like Rivaldo at the World Cup.I have had about enough of this now - she just cannot accept that I know she's makign it up. So I tried to explain to her that whatever she is trying to articulate is wrong - because if it hurts then she needs to go to the doctor. Finally she seemed to mellow out after really liking my point that she is helping me keep the rules too - so she is also in charge of making sure her brother doesn't hit, grab and all that stuff he wants to do - but definitely isn't right now you big fat liar. Annoyingly as soon as she signaled that she liked her new role her brother started channeling Cujo - charging at her growling and trying to squash his face into her for some unknown reason. Which led to me having to have another weird patronizing conversation with him about rules, hitting and killing the local sheriff when he comes to the Camber's house.

My son though has been doing something else amusing. Well - to me at least. His sister has started sometimes complaining that she doesn't have privacy when she's in the bathroom. She won't close the door though. And if I'm in there no doubt she'll wander in and try and hug me or something else gross like that. She came in with Nutella smeared all over her face the other day making kissing faces which bothered me greatly. Anyhoo - my son will - probably every third time - wave me to get out of the bathroom so he can get on with business. Obviously I filmed it. No wobbly bit or emissions thankfully though.

The Valentine thing at my daughter's school the other day was cute. Although parents and 4 year olds giving out romantic cards to one another with, "You're a real catch!" on them is still unsettling. I did mention to a few Mom's in the school hallway that Valentines Day in the UK is effectively a means for people to tell other people they want to have sex with them. Hence why when I worked at a paper-shop in the UK years back we sold a Valentines Day Pack that included a chocolate, a card and a four pack of lager. The only thing not included was a condom, a balaclava and a chloroform-soaked handkerchief. You know - romantic. Therefore the whole thing makes me a little queasy.

Anyway - the kids all dressed in red for the day. At school they decorated a tissue box and then they all picked up cards they'd made for each other randomly. They had a party at the school which parents and grandparents could come to. The kids sang a few songs, played a game, shared the Valentines stuff and then ate the most frightening ice cream sundae you can imagine. Don't believe me?

Yeah - M&Ms, love heart candies, marshmallows, jelly beans, pimentos, sprinkles, chocolate chips and all sorts of other crap. And this was before the teacher helpfully drowned it in whipped cream. And at 3pm too so that it can interfere with dinner in the best possible way.

Actually this whole week the kids get to dress up in different theme items each day. Today is a pajama day. I'm not saying the principal wants to see all the female teachers in PJ's - but it is only 6 days since the last time they had a Wear-Your-PJs-To-School-Day. Yesterday was a day where the kids were supposed to dress like someone else. It was termed as Twin Day or some such thing - but the rules were very vague. It wasn't clear if the kids were supposed to dress as each other or as other notable figures. I figured it was best not to risk at and pick something safe. I can only imagine the uncomfortable questions we would all receive if - when asked - my daughter announced, "I'm dressed as John Wilkes Booth!" I actually had no idea who to dress her as - and she kept saying she was going to dress as her brother. And seeing as he's much smaller than her doesn't logistically work. But then fortune would have it that I accidentally picked up a t-shirt that she and he both have. It's an Ohio State t-shirt that the in-laws randomly bought for them both. This is the only photo I could get of them that wasn't blurred by violence -:

Okay - I have to explain once again to my daughter that I can't wear pajamas to school today to pick her up.

The Grocery Store

2012-02-15T11:45:00.000-05:00

(This is annoyingly long. If you have a life or a job that you at least want to pretend you are working at - I'd read this another time)

First I pull into the parking lot. My daughter has to get out first. Then - whilst I'm getting my son out of his car seat - my daughter will climb the shopping cart collection bay like a feral baboon. My son will then try to taste whatever weather is currently happening. Which is fine if it actually involves things falling from the sky - but if it's just overcast or sunny then it would appear that my son has early onset rabies.

Once I'm through the automatic door my son starts yelling that he wants the race-car cart. I've evolved to putting bot hthe kids down well away from where the carts are kept because they expect to climb into it even when it's buried six-carts deep behind all the regular carts. If you haven't used a race-car cart it's a bit like pushing a coffin around on a dolly. If it gets to close to anything on it's side it is almost impossible to steer it away from it without whacking into something. Inside the store where they keep these carts they squash them up snuggly to the wall. Just getting them out is a challenge on it's own without having to deal with two very enthusiastic children and other customers annoyed that we have commandeered the entire cart area. Which isn't very large and is sat between two automatic doors which now keep slapping open and shut as I wrestle the bloody cart free.

I always try and shove it into the store proper before sticking the kids in. But often they are so rambunctious that they attack it like sex-mad gibbons at a safari desperate to break in, molest the occupants and steal any food they may have. Once inside I grab my son first to throw him in the seat. My daughter will urgently insist for the entire time that she must sit on the, "English side." Which is in the right seat. Once they are both in she will clip herself in with the naff little waist-wrap seat-belt. Which is a challenge considering she's coming up on five years of age and once it is on she can barely move. She will also then strap her brother in whether he wants to be or not. Then I'll shove them around the fruits and vegetables. My local store has a pretty blah choice fo all of these things. But it's right near my house so we persist. The store three times as far has a nice big choice, but the positive is probably not worth the extra gas spent getting there. My son will want to poke various vegetables. If I'm not vigilant he may try to bite them. If there is anything - usually pineapple - stuck into a display of crushed ice then he will comment that there is snow inside the store. Which - judging by his, "oooh matron!" expression is very unusual and somewhat naughty at the same time. My son will also expect to squeeze a carambola before we get going. My store has a massive lack of lots of standard foods I want - but it always has one of these -:

Depending on the store we're in I'll hang around the main vegetable displays along the side until the recorded warning stating, "stand back - it's about to rain....." followed by thunder ends. My kids think this is extremely amusing. But then they want to touch all the wet leafy vegetables and the flick it at me. Also depending on the store I'm in my daughter will want to rub the tree that's been plonked next to the banana/apple displays just so she can remark that, "someone" has, "accidentally" planted a tree in the store. She will then remark that we have to go buy, "your favorite food Daddy!" - which would be apples. I eat apples all day long so that I'm not just consuming coffee and chocolate of some kind. At this time of year I'm beginning to feel fleeced by the price of the apples. Especially when it's clear that the type of apple they claim it is cannot possibly be accurate. Then we move on.

At my store the bakery section is next. Sometimes the kids will get a doughnut. Usually I hope that the bakery people have a sample cookie (also known as out-of-date) that the kids can be fobbed off with instead. If you aren't from the US - or your store is utter crap - then you have no idea what the doughnut displays look like. You might think you are getting decent doughnuts at Tesco. I can assure you that you're not. Americans can produce three things better than anyone else in my experience, and doughnuts are one of them (the other two being autism and war). The decadence involved in a simple grocery store doughnut display is astounding. At out store the whole display - including muffins, bagels and pastries - is about twice as wide as this one.

Someone is always buying a box of them. I let my daughter pick the one she wants (normally the stickiest looking one) and then grab any old thing for my son. Before we move on I casually point out that this doughnut will not be eaten in the car - knowing that this is the first of about thirty requests that will be made to eat it in the car.

We then zoom through the fresh bread. All of it is utter garbage and somehow costs at least $5. In good stores they at least do some kind of variety of weird cheese-breads with jalapeno stuff in it. Not where I live. It's all utter cack. Amusingly someone has insisted on a sample station amongst the bread wherein chunks of nasty, "Italian" bread gets staler and staler until some unsuspecting fool tries a piece and nearly dies from inhaling the dry, powdery shit they seem to think is bread here. I will usually chuckle to myself that in the UK and the US people are sold bread products based upon the idea that French (in the UK) and Italian (in the US) bread is the finest - therefore labeling any old crap as those things will get people to buy it. After the bread we go through the beans and normally pick up a bunch of cans of it. My kids will behave as if they are actually steering the cart. Which - if the cart actually controlled by the steering wheel either of them were spinning around - would mean we would plow into the feeble excuse for an Asian/Mexican display like Richard Hammond crashing a Vampire dragster.

At this point I'll become aware that grocery stores are set up by experts who know what people want. They want to go through the fresh things, then through the decadent bakery stuff - and then into the weight of what they are really at the store for to hide teh fact that they are only buying potato chips, ice cream and beer. I'll realize that I clearly live in the wrong geographical place for my culinary palette because I will skip through three entire aisles of food. One aisle contains the cans of tuna fish, things like Spam and that frightening potted chicken crap, and stuff that proves you suck at life - such as Manwich and what someone claims is an entire chili meal in a can. I will never fail to glance at the cost of a can of salmon - see that it is around $7 dollars - then a can of Spam - which is about the same price - and then shake my head as if this somehow affects me even though I will never EVER buy these items. The next aisle is the pasta aisle - which is generally a total waste of time for me seeing as I don't eat gluten. Again I'll try and figure out why anyone would pay only $1.45 for the crap that claims it's an authentic recipe handed down straight from Grandma in Naples, or $12.99 for the other crap that claims it's somehow magically more authentic even though the only ingredients in the jar are tomatoes, oil and some garlic. The last aisle I skip is the cookie aisle. None of which taste like cookies. No custard creams. No bourbon. No chocolate Hob Nobs. Just piles of sweet nasty crap and eighteen variations of an Oreo cookie. And no self-respecting American would prefer a store cookie over a homemade one.

Lastly there's a shelf in one of these aisles for people who don't eat gluten, or are vegetarian or want organic. In stores further away they do have the nice clean attractive sections where they have this stuff and it's as decent as it is frighteningly expensive. But in my store they only have a few bags of Red Mill stuff (plus ironically a bag of Red Mill Vital wheat-gluten - which has so much more gluten in it that it could literally kill a full-on Celiac if they ingested any), some offensively expensive rice-based pasta, a loaf of that horrendously expensive gluten free bread and some Rice Thins. I'll avoid this on principle.

I'll always go to the weird joint Asian/Mexican/Kosher section to get stuff. And that really is what this section is. Except the Asian section is mostly microwave noodles of some kind and doesn't have Rooster sauce, the Mexican section is mostly different types of salsa and Goya beans, and the Kosher section is a choice of cookie. Hilariously at the store I don't normally drive to (that has the much better choice of fruit) they have a sign in the front window that says, "We sell kosher and non-kosher products." I'll grab various cans of Goya beans and my daughter will - like clockwork - ask me if we are now done at the store.

Then we escape at high-speed up the makeup and shampoo aisle. I've never bought anything in this aisle. At the end we will breach into the main back aisle that has hotdogs, bacon and the butchers display case. I can avoid all this most of the year bar Summer when hotdogs are probably the cheapest item in the entire store. I will naturally weep at this point that America - a nation choked on the idea of choice - has completely passed up on choice of sausage. There will be hotdogs of varying quality (ranging from tastes-like-an-anus to tastes-like-a-princesses-anus), weird not-really-keilbasa-sausages that would shame a real German, and breakfast sausage. And then there are sweet and spicy Italian sausage patties/links. At a push there may be some scandalous turkey/chicken alternative that costs three times as much and somehow tastes much much worse. It's a travesty. At least in western New York they had Polish sausage as another option. But nothing that resembles the bounty of delightful sausages you can find all across the United Kingdom. Sometimes the scarcity of sausage alone in this country makes me want to leave.

Next we'll take a squizz at the lobsters. Which my daughter will likely refer to as crabs until she's an adult. My son will whelp at them. My daughter will pull a face. The old ladies and clearly-never-married old men will attempt to talk to my kids at this point. My son will growl. My daughter will glare at them like she's imagining their unpleasant death. I'll make some chatty over-smiling remark in a very very strong English accent. 9 out of 10 times the person who hears this will run away afraid of the unfamiliar. The other 1 will ask if I'm visiting. The rare 1 out of 100 will be a younger man/woman who will suddenly become magnetically sexually drawn to me based solely on the 8 words I've just uttered. All of the people who hear me will instantly assume I am much much more intelligent than I really am.

I will rapidly speed through the cereal and bakery aisles - uncertain as to whether I will capitulate and buy even more types of coffee, or bags of Ghiradelli chocolate chips that I will shamefully sneak handfuls of whilst crying. I may entertain the idea of actually reading the better brands of cereal to find out the ingredients and decide if they really are much healthier and more pure than the shittier brands. But then my kids will see a familiar cartoon character somewhere and demand that we buy whatever putrid unnaturally colored over-sugared filth that they're being conned into desiring. I'll glance at the meat - knowing I won't buy any. Then I'll shove my now-howling children toward the dairy.

By now any garments such as hats and gloves my kids had on are either scrunched up under their feet - or they are doing their best to leave in the store. My son will now have lost patience with the close proximity of his sister and will be attempting to drive his head slowly right through the side of her. She generally won't notice. If she does it will either be the most heinous act she's ever been involved with or will lead her to laugh hysterically whilst doing it back to him like two rambunctious moose. My daughter will - without fail - show me around this time that she can control the steering wheel with her arse.

Once past the vile table of Hostess and Entemann's baked goods we will see the milk. I seem to always need more milk. I'll grab whole milk - even though I should be grabbing 2%. 1% and everything else can piss off. I will feel a sense of shame at buying store-brand mass-produced milk. Then I'll grab some Half-and-Half and imagine the kind of grotesque pleasure of the kind of person who passes over milk entirely and exclusively chugs on that instead. My daughter will chance it and ask for, "super yummy chocolate milk." I'll say no. Then she'll note that the weird Almond and Soy milks - in yellow, purple and blue containers - are filled with yellow, purple and blue milk. I'll joke that someone must have milked Barney the Dinosaur. Then I'll picture it and wretch in my own mouth.

My daughter will then start requesting to buy yoghurt. I will let her pick out some cheaper knock-off Greek thing that is all the rage these days - simply because the $6.99 for a big Chobani thing seems exorbitant even though I'm about to buy 6 small ones for a dollar each. We'll speed onto the cheese where my daughter will remind me that if it isn't orange then it's demonic. Again I will cry inside at the lack of any kind of actual cheese worth eating. "Which one of the five types will we get this week?" I'll hate myself for saying. I'll look at the bagels for my wife and kids - well aware that the brand in the open freezers are not good. I'll also look at the frozen juice hoping they actually have something - anything - that is 100% juice and isn't pulp-riddled orange juice. Next I'll grab the only loaf of bread worth buying in our entire geographical area. It's a German brand called Heidelburg (with the funniest commercial for bread on local TV that features an amazed woman stating, "it's the way bread should be...") that has weight, substance and apparently flavor. My wife likes it enough so it must be decent. My kids are now spoiled on it that if I actually have to buy some other shelf-store brand they cannot eat it because they are all appalling. I may go to the Deli counter. But only if my self esteem is high enough to endure the clearly angry counter clerk who is very openly appalled that someone would actually expect her to do any work. I'll get 1/4 or 1/2 pound of salami. Nothing else - because $8.99 a pound of anything that I'm not actually going to eat is absurd. I'll then steer wide of the frozen allegedly healthy ready-meals that the entire workforce of central NY lives on. I'll have a nasal flashback to a coworker who would solely eat the rancid cheese Lean Cuisine/Smart Ones pizzas that smell like a removed toenail.

I might roll up the potato chip aisle on the off chance that the only real brand they have isn't full price. If it is on a good sale I'll buy a bag knowing will full confidence that my wife and I will empty it like crazed truffle pigs in a forty-five minute session after the kids are asleep. This will mostly be the reason I haven't eaten all day. I'm partly not hungry, but partly feeling uncomfortable due to the four apples and seven cups of coffee. But mostly it's because I know full well that not eating wheat flour of any kind means that I can actually eat an entire bag of chips, fistfuls of chocolate and a decent dinner and still have difficulty maintaining whatever weight I am.

Then we can go pay. There are only 5 aisles in my store. My daughter will count them quietly and then announce which number we are in. My son at this point is one of two things. He's either almost unconscious and staring like a methadone patient whilst leaning into his sister for support. Or he's gurning and gritting his teeth in energetic rage like a meth-addict absolutely convinced they are living out Grand Theft Auto 4 and are trying to kill people with their poorly responsive clunky red car. I will have to park the cart strategically between the impulse-buy chocolate/candy and the vile celebrity magazines so that neither of my kids could grab anything. Thankfully they have never once grabbed at anything because that's rude and unacceptable behavior. Which is why always stuns me when I see other people's kids grabbing Skittles and York Peppermint Patties and then crying at the absolute injustice of not being allowed to keep them. My daughter will insist on helping put things on the conveyor belt. Usually she'll attempt to do this with things she can't actually pick up.

There will be one of two cashiers at this point. Both know us well. One - a very kind older lady - will attempt to flirt with me and will giggle like a school girl at anything (and I do mean anything) I say. It took me a while to realize that when I innocently asked what time she was working till today that she behaved as if I may be asking what time I should pick her up. She's very helpful and nice and simply cannot believe that in communist England they force the peasantry to pack their own groceries. The other person is a younger attractive girl who will also attempt to flirt with me. I cannot tell if this is because I'm am worth flirting with (either because I am or because my Englishness has fooled her) or that she is like a the typical Generation Y female in central New York who simply must flirt with all men, and then later claim that she wasn't. She is wearing the same exact outfit as the older woman but has modified it in some way so to accentuate her chest and arse. There is sometimes a guy who bags stuff - he looks exactly like Jim from The Office. I'm assuming by the conversations that she and him have about drinking, parties and other people they find hot, that the chest and arse modifications are for him. She will ask me weird questions like, "do they eat potatoes in England?" I cannot determine if she doesn't actually know that's a silly question - or if she's just talking without thinking first. I will inevitably have to answer a question about a vegetable or fruit she's holding. It's usually a chunk of ginger that she thinks is either a sweet potato, squash or - most puzzling of all - a coconut. She may have worked there for the entire two years I've lived around here - but she still hasn't absorbed the knowledge of what a a piece of ginger is. I'll innocently ask her what time she is working until. She will never actually mention a time, but will mention some vague impossible-to-reach destination such as, "like, forever." Which isn't even an answer to my question.

My daughter will then attempt to put the bags back in the cart. Usually she'll attempt to do this with things she can't actually pick up. After I've paid I'll tell my kids to say goodbye. My daughter may or may not. It all depends on whether we actually bought doughnuts. If we did she'll be concentrating on asking if she can eat one in the car. My son will cutely grin and then wave gently with his hand. Either one of the cashiers will then melt and practically beg to come home with us at this point. Then I'll try and steer the massive behemoth cart through the narrow doors out into the parking lot. If it is icy or snowy in any way I know that I'll have to use every muscle I have (sometimes all three) to get the cart anywhere near my car. It's almost impossible but I've learned that almost sideways is much more accurate than trying to thread the needle with the thing. Once at the car I'll open the back door and my dog - patiently waiting for us - will stick his head out the back to look. My daughter will have released herself and will already be scrambling over the back seat like Jason Bourne. My son will calmly let me put him in his seat. I'll pack the groceries in - ashamed that I've either bought chocolate chips, potato chips, a doughnut for the kids or something I find somewhat unethical in some way - and get in my seat.I'll click on my MP3 player and pull off.

At which point my daughter will ask again, "can I have my doughnut in the car Daddy?"

Scream (II) Cheese

2012-02-14T18:36:00.000-05:00

My kids claimed there was Scream Cheese in tonight's dinner again. There wasn't.

Impressive stuff.

View From A Mentalist: February 14, 2012

2012-02-14T11:06:00.001-05:00

Once again I bribed my daughter into taking photos over several days. Except now I can bribe her with things like hugs and cuddles. And when that fails I can tell her I can simply threaten her with tickles and being sat on if she doesn't get photographing.

First up - this is a weird art thing she did with her mother. It's made up of stuff that she claimed to be deliberately taking out of her craft box - but was just really the stuff that came out next. Some of the petals are from a bouquet of flowers my kids gave my wife when she got back from Vegas. According to my daughter the big red leaf is a, "love leaf." Which frankly sounds like a feminine-hygiene product they might sell at a Whole Foods grocery store.

And this is my banana. I say it's mine because no doubt my son will attempt to annex it at some point. He won't actually eat it - he'll just strip it naked and put his big wet lip all over it.

.This is craft my daughter and wife also made a few days ago. When I asked my daughter to explain this photo she said it was a Medicine Caterpillar that sneaks in and steals all the medicine from your house. I asked what the hearts were for - which she explained away as, 'then it loves you." That may be the kindest daintiest description of a seriously contagious genital disease that there ever was.

.My daughter took a photo into a little mirror. She says this is how The World's Tiniest Man, "sees coffee and glue." Fallen off the rails it would seem.

This is me, apparently. She's really captured the true shape of my head.

.As can be seen here. Today at school my daughter is supposed to wear red. So she asked me to put on as much red silliness as I could find. So I have on two red shirts, a red hat and am even sporting a red ladybug thing she made at school as well. Clearly I look like a prize tit - so I won't be wearing the hat to pick her up today. Frankly I look like how I see the Beastie Boys. I know other white people think they're cool and edgy. But whenever I hear their childish monosyllabic grunting all I can think of is how they look like Steve Martin if he dressed up like a gangsta.

Timing is everything in a photo. After I showed her this I asked why the dog doesn't wipe his nose with a tissue, but instead uses his nose. Which - as I should have foreseen - led my two kids to try and lick their own noses for fifteen minutes. And then inevitably to my son expecting to lick mine. Bah.

Speaking of the dog - this is his Woofentine that we made this morning. It's a piece of printer paper that I drew a heart on in red crayon. Then my daughter put a Milkbone dog treat on the heart and carried it to him like a servant girl. So yes - I have just admitted that I wouldn't get my own kids Valentines stuff because it's creepy, or anything for my wife because I'm cheap and have dignity - but I did make one for my dog.

The Window

2012-02-14T05:04:00.000-05:00

Today I'm giving you a treat.

I'm sure you sit and read this every day (well - every other day judging by the stats for this thing) and feel that you have a window through to my family. That you catch a glimpse of not only what my family does day-to-day, but that you can take a measure of how my soul works. You've seen the photographs of my daughter - her dirty little face smeared with jam - engaged in whatever diabolical activity she's dreamed up and is unleashing on an unsuspecting but loving father. You've heard tales of my son - committed, driven and religiously focused on finding that right moment when he can launch himself across a room to sit on somebodies face. You've watched a man on video - a truly awe-inspiring man - decorated like a cheap-but-lust-inducing peacock, dancing and thrusting his body like a sexual gyroscope. All of which you think gives you a semi-complete picture of the simple life we three live while my wife/their mother/the carer is away.

But the fact is you don't. Not really. I go out of my way to mostly jot down random silliness and dress it up as the substance of who I am. I like to illustrate the chaff that's lingering on the edges of my mind as a means to get you to focus on that, and avoid seeing who I really am. It's a clever trick that allows me to dalliance with this side of myself in a safe forum while I can be a different me elsewhere. My kids though are actually mental.

I'm sure you add up all that you've learned about my family and think that we do live a thrilling, exciting life. Wee seem so busy, so creative and just so beautiful. That my children seem so happy to be allowed to express themselves without judgment our police intervention. And that I myself just seem so extraordinarily sexy. Like a mix between Indiana Jones and Jason Bourne - but who can also dance as if he's convulsing electrically as if suffering from intense strychnine poisoning. I know all this already.

But the truth of the matter is that our days are filled with challenges and unexpected moments that truly define who we are. Which is why I wanted to humble your view of us to a more human level. To show you how much of our day really is. Which is why I've decided to show you this video of me - as I've just sat down to enjoy something for myself - only for my son to bound over muttering, "....poo....poo....!" whilst grabbing his arse cheek like he was selecting just-the-right mango at the grocery store.

Phenomenal stuff.

The Valentine Creep

2012-02-13T14:04:00.000-05:00

"I'm still hungry, Daddy."

She has been eating like a monster today. She has eaten whatever I've given her and then demanded more food - but it has to be something different. We've been through oatmeal, bread and butter, fruit, cereal, a bagel with cream cheese, some pretzels, another bagel with cream cheese and a salami sandwich so far. She's like a sperm whale just hoovering up krill at this point. Her brother is woefully failing at trying to keep up. He's had a good dig into the bagel and sandwich. Everything else was stuff he had to at least ask for - but I knew he couldn't eat all that. So I would trick him by giving him a tiny bit of hers and then he'd accidentally finish eating what was already available on his plate. I'm hoping that for dinner I can fill them up anyway. Some sort of cheesy cauliflower thing is on the cards. What goes with it is a mystery at this point. It's either going to be a bean-patty type thing or some sort of rice-plus-something creation. Frankly I'm only craving chocolate and a big fat latte at the moment. Annoyingly I have this feeling that she won't eat her dinner at all claiming to be full.

I've also just realized that this is the first year that I'm supposed to engage in the insanely creepy act of buying Valentines stuff for my own children. My daughter didn't much care last year - but with the peer pressure of school I have to do it. Now - I'm not 100% certain that the UK has avoided this horrid practice still - but when I was last there it still hadn't invaded. But here - grown men can receive Valentines gifts from their own mother. Or mother-in-law even. My kids have already received Valentines gifts from various aunts. Tomorrow at school the entire class will give each other Valentines gifts. That's very odd to me. Mind you I still remember when I worked in a corner-shop that they advertised everything from John Smith's bitter to those awful beanbag teddy bear things as perfect Valentines gifts. And people would buy them.

Valentines Day was still very much a thing for nervous school children (with their hormones thrusting about inside them), young lovers conned into some odd pissing contest with their friends also in relationships, and lastly for old romantics. You may have guessed from this that my wife and I - as madly in love as we are - don't really go in for this. It seems really cheesy and plastic to me. My wife - bless her - is simply too cheap to bother with the whole thing. I did have the urge earlier to go out and buy all kinds of chocolates for myself and pretend they were for others for Valentines Day. But then I realized I would have eaten them all myself right now while my son naps - and then hidden all the garbage in my car until I could dump it at a distant far away location before anyone else found out. Annoyingly now when my wife reads this she'll assume that's what happened because I don't have any chocolate at home. Except where she wouldn't have cared at all before reading this - now she will be annoyed that I didn't at least leave something in the cupboard based purely on guilt.

Totally unrelated to this I was reading earlier - via a Facebook friend - about people I know from years ago who now have kids. And how they are doing very well - but that they are still somehow living as if their in college. So mostly sozzled of an evening, usually aided by an illicit substance and blowing off work the next day because they had a two-day bender. Their kids permanently in someone else's care - so as to not annoy their parents plans to go about their lives as if they didn't have children at all. Not much gets my goat but I can't bear those parents that plow all of their energy into not allowing their children become the most important part of their lives. I've had small periods alone without my kids and wife in the last 4 and a half years. It's a miserable time. I'm no longer a single individual entity now - I am my entire family now. Yes I like a break - maybe 90 minutes or so - when I can feel the natural urge to kill them all on a random Saturday afternoon. But if they go out for some Just-Mommy time and don't come home for two hours I'm terrified that they won't come back. I've already cleaned the kitchen and done the laundry. Now I'm alone. Please come home.

And yet I know people who are so concentrated on living as if their own children don't exist that it's vile. They insist on getting up late, going to bed late and are still trying to characterize themselves but the things they do for pleasure. They still spend all their money on shit and ask silly questions like, "What did you do this weekend?" Which is based around them wanting to just tell you about how they went out to a fantastic dance club and got so so drunk that come an emergency with their kids they shouldn't be around them, wandered home at four in the morning - and all the while someone else looked after their children for that and the next day while they slept in until two in the afternoon. Wankers is what they are. What did I do this weekend? I spent hours - maybe three or four - planning the perfect moment to try and have a poo by myself. Calculating the right moment when nobody else would be looking to make sure I was around. Telling my wife to do something that required concentration with both of my kids so that not one of them would suddenly realize that I had bounded off upstairs. And no - I didn't succeed. I can't even lock the bathroom door on the off chance my entire family are chased upstairs into that very room by banditos/bees/a savagely drunken hyena. But I don't find that there's a hole in my life because I spent long periods of time scraping dried oatmeal off the kitchen table instead of being out at a tailgate party somewhere.

Now if you would excuse me - I have laundry to sort out.

The Little Englander

2012-02-13T07:22:00.000-05:00

"Listen to me make an English sound when I bite my English salad Mommy."

My daughter went hardcore on the Englishness yesterday. After telling my wife that she isn't as English as her (therefore explaining why she is lame when compared) she tried to tell me I'm not pure enough either. I pointed out that she and I both have one non-English parent, and have both lived for considerable periods outside of England. I, on the other hand, lived in England for a damn site longer than just six months. I also didn't have another country demanding that I stick a flag in her so that she could be counted as one of them. After we sat down to eat my daughter mentioned that she was making herself an English salad. My wife misheard this as an "English sound" and asked her what this sound was exactly. My daughter then spent the next thirty minutes demonstrating some of these. When my wife told her that it sounded an awful lot like the kind of sounds she herself makes my daughter pointed out she couldn't possibly understand. Because, "you aren't English." My wife tried in vain to point out she understand both English-English and American-English (leaving Welsh-English by the wayside at this point - no need to muddy the waters). Didn't make a dent in my daughter's assertion that the sounds she was making were specifically English. It was if she had suddenly invented her own Pentacostal-English movement (shudder) and there was no-one around to translate. To the untrained ear the sounds she was making may just sound like someone eating, drinking and honking (yes, honking) - but no. When uttered from an English mouth and heard by an English ear you can hear the birth of parliamentary democracy in each resonating sound. You can sense an overbearing sense of shame at an insipid, dull, clumsy football team that is very much as big an embarrassment as it is confusingly inept. You can feel the lamentation for a lost Empire and fading greatness (not really...).

And that's where I can see the future. As in my daughter will inevitably go through a phase where she'll see Britain (extrapolated out from England) from the outside-in and notice all of it's weaknesses and failings. She'll then see that the country she lives in - that also claims her as it's own - is bigger, louder and claims frequently to be at the front of the pack. The appeal of that is quite intense. So presumably at some point she may switch her fervor from bleating on about how ace she is for being English to blathering on about how being American also makes her much better than other people. Which is why I wish she could sit down and laugh at Al Murray ripping the piss out of both of our own stereotypes. Amusingly I know lots of people who can't tell that Al Murray is very much making fun of the English first.

Anyhoo - she's bound to dalliance with the idea. And she'll likely join in at a time when the conversation about America's slipping place in the world is going to be extremely popular. A lot of Americans that I know are terrified at the idea that their country may not be "Number One" any longer. That it's greatness will fade and influence be lost. They can't imagine that Manifest Destiny as a concept is a load of old bollocks. But it's much easier for expats like myself. First of all it's easy to see the notion of the USA as number one as absurd. It's like saying Sweden is the greatest country on earth. Or that England is. Except if you could hold up measurables - like death rates, number of people incarcerated, equality and whatnot at least Sweden and England would be higher up the table for most of them. But the point is that Swedes and English people tend not to make that claim. Because saying things like, "England is the freest country in the world!" is a strange and weird boast to make. Not based on fact - but because it doesn't make any sense to say things like that. And as Murray mentions in that video - it's a little silly to be going on about being first when no-one else gives a toss - and certainly doesn't see things that way.

So presumably my daughter will encounter this feeling and likely will embrace it. Which is perfectly fine - but it will be every bit as ridiculous as claiming Englishness makes her superior to half of her own family. All of which is relevant to me today because I've been wracking my brain to figure out what snacks my daughter will get in her American school this week. The letter of the week is G. I can foresee, goldfish crackers, Gummy Bears and glazed doughnuts. I don't imagine there being General Tso's chicken and garlic bread. And I can't think right now f any cookies or Hostess products that begin with a G. No kid wants a Ginger Snap so they're out. I can though imagine a Grape-Jelly Candwich making an appearance. Not heard of them? Here -

You know it's more likely that will show up than just grapes. I'm excited to see what crafts and things my daughter get's up to that begin with G too. Although if she comes home today and says, "this is called glossolalia Daddy!" then I will be having words. Although - as previously mentioned it would likely be an inherently English version of it.

Rightn ow though I think I need to do some real cleaning. I've been keeping things tidy. But not actually clean. I have to clean the kitchen floor. And the stove needs doing in a minute. And it's been a fortnight since I actually scrubbed anything in a bathroom to sparkly white shininess. So my day is going to involve cleaning things like that. And cleaning coats. I can usually find a good reason to wash my kids main coats. Because they'll be covered in mud, chocolate or have some kind of unknown sticky substance living on them. So once that's been discovered (and it's genealogical makeup mapped) it goes straight upstairs to the washing machine. But I've just realized that I've let a few items slip. Coats and winter hats are beginning to smell a bit like a wet digestive. So I'll either get them early so they're ready for this afternoon, or I'll drag us all outside this morning to play in the snow.

Because it finally snowed this February. Only half way through the month and only two to three inches - but it did. I still haven't been able to make a snowman for my son that is impressive in any way. Last time we had a six inch dump of snow it was the wrong kind (yes, that really does exist) to make snowmen but perfect for sledding. So when my daughter and I tried to make snowballs and roll them it just didn't work at all. In the end we made a three or four inch high blob and made a face on it like a snowman. My son saw the face, giggled, and than sat on it.

And I'll have to come up with something tasty for dinner. That doesn't have meat in it. Because I didn't buy any. Leading my family to accidentally fall into a much less meat-centric diet. Oh how Mark Bittman would be proud. Not that we eat much meat anyway but now we don't have any. So there's no declaration of vegetarianism of any kind because if meat shows up in some way we aren't going to avoid it. Salami sandwiches for my kids are still on the cards. And my wife will likely buy lunch once or twice this week outside of work without any drive to avoid meat at all costs. But I do need to come up with a few more things to eat that we are all familiar with and look forward to. Some comfort foods would be nice. It's harder for me not eating gluten - but I'm more than happy to figure out some really tasty comfort foods that have gluten for my family. Any suggestions would be nice.

Right now though I have the kitchen to clean, some reading to do and then I might suit the kids up so I can throw snowballs at them.

The Scratching Post

2012-02-11T07:35:00.000-05:00

Any idea has flown into my funnel.

As you can imagine, my kids were quite happy to have their mother at home. I know this because my son kept saying, "Hi!" to her every 90 seconds for the first hour. My daughter also kept referring to the time my wife had away as when, "you went on your adventures." As if instead of sitting in stuffy committee meeting my wife had been chased down a hill in Peru by indigenous people furious that she'd swiped their fertility God for her rare artifact collection (if I can't be Indiana Jones I can at least pretend I'm married to a hot female version of one).

Anyway this brief time apart has definitely added more weight to a business venture idea I have had. That being an international chain of Scratching Salons. It's sort of like a cross between a chiropractor, health spa and massage parlor (the morally virtuous type - obviously). Because one of the most wonderful things in life is a darn good back scratch. It's a soothing relaxing experience that brings joy to billions on God's green earth. And yet I'm sad to say that not everyone can enjoy a back scratch. Please - take the time to forget international conflicts, genocide and our ritual-ignoring of mass starvation across the globe for just a moment. And try to imagine the living hell of not having your back scratched for an extended period of time. It doesn't bare thinking about does it? But it can and does happen. What if you're not in a relationship? And not just a consensual sexual one - but one in which two people who don't view this sort of physical contact as arbitrarily strange (such as with your dentist or coworker)? Or are temporarily alone for a period of time? Or (shudder) a single person? Your back could go unscratched for a period of up to (and perhaps even longer than) ten days. Shocking stuff. But no more! No - because I have the solution. A clean, clinical, attractive establishment staffed by trained, courteous, well manicured scratching experts learned in the ways of itch-relief. It would be wholesome and innocent. There could light meals served. A nice range of teas and coffees. There may even be some branching out into head and leg scratching. Not feet though - that's creepy. But best of all - it would be affordable.

I would never do it obviously. Because even though I know that, on the one hand, it is a fantastic idea that targets a specific niche need that many of you would pay to have. I'm also acutely aware that it could easily wander well over the line of decency and would be corrupted by vile immoral people using it as a front for sexual debauchery. And it would be cheapened and whored-out into some nasty cut-rate chintzy knock-off within a month of being launched. Imagine it - a Tesco Value Back Scratch. Ick. Within two months various races and ethnic sub-groups would be claiming that they are the true holders of "back scratching technology." Conflicts would arise. Wars would be fought. Rick Santorum would comment on how - when he thinks about it - his back is awfully close to a gay man's genitals for large parts of the week. It's just another way to corrupt America's youth.

In all honesty all kinds of people go get a massage. In the last two places I worked at over here they even allowed a masseuse to set up shop in an unused committee room so that employees could take fifteen minutes off to go get rubbed by a stranger. Sort of like an additional employee benefit - instead of a decent wage or health insurance plan that was even close to reasonable. Ironically I would never ever go to one of those people. That's just weird. One place I worked at did this in a conference room right off where everyone walked past to get coffee. The room had windows - only half of which had blinds covering them. Add to which the woman doing it gave out around forty to fifty free massages to people. Meaning that she had convinced a corporation to allow her to come into their building and touch random strangers without any money changing hands. Which is clearly strange. More to the point if I sauntered/moseyed (those are the two ways I walk) past a back scratching institution I would instantly assume the worst about the staff and patrons. So even though I may be the originator of The Scratching Post (that's my name for the soon-to-emerge biggest thing to hit America since smart phones ruined everyone's ability to judge between want and need) I would not frequent one.

So scratch this entire entry.

Home

2012-02-10T13:54:00.001-05:00

He's done it.

After five and a half days my son has finally taken a nap at a decent time.

Good man. My wife hasn't slept since yesterday either.

So they're both out.

Pajama Party

2012-02-10T08:57:00.000-05:00

"Well, where I come from the cows are special ones that are happy and squirt chocolate milk out of their gutters."

I made the grave mistake last night of briefly mentioning to my daughter over dinner that I'm considering drastically reducing our meat intake. Whilst serving her beef tacos. I did it in such poor fashion too. I made some quip that some people don't eat meat. She obviously asked why. So I mentioned that some people don't like the way meat tastes. "Well I do," she helpfully added. Then I said that some people think meat is icky - because it used to be an an animal that was alive. "I don't," she contributed. then I mentioned some people think it's wrong to eat meat that's mass-farmed because they think it's mean (which is mealy-mouthed). She stared at me. So I quickly added that not all farms are like that and some people also don't eat meat because they are cheap bastards (like me). She wasn't shaken off. Mean how exactly? She put down her taco.

So I tried to explain how some people (I was getting embarrassed of that phrasing and started to feel like those morally repugnant 24 hour news reporters who refer to "some people have said" about a story when those "some people" are actually them) view farming cows in sheds or massive chicken barns with thousands of chickens not living any kind of normal chicken life as abhorrent. She kept staring at me so I tried to look totally relaxed and slouch back in my chair like Hans Solo before he shot Greedo (which he did first - stop making crap up George). Then I tried to change the subject slightly and say that some meat just tastes bad - like the beef we were eating. It tasted funky. Then I made some silly comment about how meat used to taste good in the old days - unable to shake the image of the patriarch of the family trudging out to the family barn in deep February in 1900 to shave the green bits off the heavily-salted pig they'd slaughtered to last the entire year. I started getting vivid flashbacks to the depiction of peasant culture in John Berger's Pig Earth." My milk isn't an animal so it's okay to drink it" she added. So I quickly said that it's okay - in my view - to eat meat. I'm not saying it's wrong or anything. Just that some people think there are reasons not to. Which was when she claimed that when she lived in England cows shot chocolate milk out of their gutters. Ten minutes later I was chucking out a quarter-pound of uneaten ground beef. Not even my son wanted it.

My cooking has been terrible all week so I best sort that crap out if I'm going to be relying on more beans and whatnot. A prime example was that my daughter tried to interrupt my child-friendly diatribe about chicken-farming by saying, "Daddy this is the best rice ever!" She said this while eating the grated cheese on her plate that hadn't inadvertently touched her beef. Sigh. At least she ate her olives and the empty taco shell.

This morning my daughter tried to get up at 3am. I was in the bathroom and saw her run past the doorway and jot downstairs. I went to get her and she insisted it was daytime. I showed her the clock and carried back up to bed. She fell asleep and then got up again at just before 4am. Same thing again. At 5,15am she begged me to get up. Fine. Amusingly my son stayed in bed til a sort-of-reasonable 6.15am. I tried to do some reading while we sat on the couch but she didn't like me not focusing on her. She wasn't saying or doing anything so it was pretty strange. So I embraced my authority as a parent and pointed out that I will be reading and she can sit leaning against me and like it. So I tried to read through my Bible study of the day while she tried to distract me. After reading through some of Acts and then flicking all the way back to Leviticus I gave up. I don't know how familiar you are with Leviticus but every time I go through this section I am always amused that there are an awful lot of requests for Jews to make things out of sea cow. I had no idea. Add apparently God had a BIG problem with yeast judging by the number of times he demanded that none be brought anyway near him. It's almost as if he was allergic to it to the point it would cause him serious physical pain. A sort of yeast infection, if you will.

Secondly though is the fact that my daughter's protestations were designed to make me irritated. Which they did. So much that I couldn't read about Romans in AD 64 having difficulty swallowing the notion of Jesus as a servant of others whilst trying my best to block out my own child asking me to just be with her. Thankfully the strange black cloud she was trapped under this morning has lifted. It evaporated instantly upon her remembering that her dream last night was about how her mother bought her a chipmunk in Las Vegas. Then she became excited that her mother is coming home today. My son - upon hearing this ran off to put on his Thomas pajamas. Then he cried when I wouldn't let him. But I need to clean up and don't want either of them to be so relieved when their mother comes home that she assumes that I must have kept them in a cage while she was away. So I let him put them on. I need to point out he was already wearing other pajamas a the time. His sister was also wearing the Liverpool shirt I got for her. So this -:

Now they're both wearing different pajamas. This will end at 11.45am when it's time for my daughter to go to school. My wife should get home later this afternoon and I'm hoping this pajama silliness will be forgotten forever. Although I must stress that my wife has pointed out on the phone this morning - again helpfully - that there is a statistical possibility that she may be killed on the way back.

Thanks honey.

Digging In The Dirt

2012-02-09T18:11:00.000-05:00

Son: Oh you may be able to confiscate this bottle of bathroom hand soap from me now - most of which I have already emptied into the sink before you got here - but rest assured that one day soon you will be destroyed by your own demon seed.

Obviously my son didn't actually say that. Not with his mouth anyway. But I could see that's what he meant when he punched me in the leg half growling/half crying. He's been a violent little bastard these last two days. He's been repeatedly lashing out wildly without any real reason. We haven't done anything different - but I guess he's either in a "stage" or is at the end of his tether without his mother. That might be true because he has repeatedly gone upstairs every twenty minutes to get a pair of pajamas to put on. He will inevitably come back down stairs naked from the waist down. I'll tell him no - he can't put pajamas on like a failed unemployed waster who has completely given up caring about his own appearance - and then he'll get angrily annoyed and cry.

Because of that I did try a few different things. First off I thought if we spent some time sitting in quiet contemplation looking at pictures in old encyclopedias that may resonate with him that he may mellow out. But no - it just made him want to twitch around crazily like he was having a seizure. In the end he imitated a cat and glanced at me calmly before swatting at me, wriggling violently and then ran off upstairs for some alone time. Which he spent coloring in his sister's white board with a marker pen he'd found. All of which reminded me that even though not going to an office is nice I do miss the camaraderie and being with other people. Well - people watching anyway. Such as noticing that EVERYONE seems to be eating a Lean Cuisine at lunchtime only to then end up buying a King Size Snickers and a bag of Funions from the snack machine. Or watching people hoovering up those horrendous Walmart cookies that taste like a tampon dipped in Play-Doh. Basically I miss the frighteningly odd people in the American work place.

But then I wouldn't get to play all day. They love that. Like today - we got to do dig in the dirt outside for a good hour today. I had gravel to move and they had fun just goofing around as the ground isn't frozen.

You may have noticed the "News Man" tie for my outfit. It is Thursday so I was asked to wear it to get my daughter from school. Actually at school today my daughter made me a brown hearted snail picture. Then she surrounded it in purple so that her favorite color is "cuddling" my favorite color. That's quite sweet. Ironically if she was in her twenties that's the sort of behavior people would think of after they hear that their coworker has been arrested for physically eating their husband like a preying mantis. She isn't though so it's okay.

She has been extremely clingy today though. Actually the both of them have. They've been crowded under me all day like baby deer hiding under their mother. I am absolutely 100% touched out and need some alone time tonight. Sadly my daughter is already proposing alternative sleep arrangements that I know will delay sleep and prevent me from getting any of it. Maybe I'll have to grin and bear it.

Time to read now though.

Doctorpuss and The Squid Squirt

2012-02-09T07:46:00.001-05:00

"Daddy I know what an accident would be. If the ceiling collapsed and we fell into the living room."

Yes, that would be an accident. She said this while waking up this morning. This was because the evening before she kept doing things she knows she should not and then saying, "oh - it was an accident." Like riding the back of the couch like it's a pony. She can do that without much chance of accident. But her brother has a higher risk of screwing that up. So that's not allowed. So after I told her that accidents are things like trees falling down on the car and tripping over something she said she understood. Now this morning she's also told me that other accidents are if I fell down and then someone drove a car over me, or if I was beaten with a baseball bat. I don't like the connotation here. Actually the subject of "accidents" has been very prevalent the last 24 hours.

Right now my kids are playing The Adventures of Princess Bounce: Doctorpuss and Squid Squirt. Which pretty much involves rolling around on bean bags and yelling, "oh no he squirted me with his juices!" I am Doctorpuss by the way. I have the hand puppet to prove it.

Eww- that photo is terrible. The creepiness is only outshone by the amount of brown involved. Anyway - Doctorpuss has to help mend wounds and wipe off anything slimy that the Squid Squirt leaked onto Princess Bounce. Which is possible as my son is mildly snotty. Thankfully I've been sort of excluded from this game as my daughter quickly changed the game to some kind of floating thing that I'm not welcome to participate in. She just yelled, "oh no I'm a cloud!" and has been careful to tell me that, "I'm behaving like a cloud Daddy." Which apparently involves wobbling and looking at the ceiling. Fair enough.

This is a much better game than what we all played last night. My daughter insisted for 45 minutes that we play Baby. Except I had to be the baby. I relented for a very long time suggesting all sorts of other things we could do. But nope - I had to pretend to be a baby. And I couldn't phone it in either - she wanted a vintage De Niro performance out of me. I wasn't supposed to be a tiny baby though but more like a one year old who can talk in broken English. She kept telling me to call her, "Mommy" which I was very uncomfortable with. It felt like that very creepy thing that some Southerners do where female partners call their boyfriend/husband, "Daddy." If you're British and didn't know that - that really does happen. It's beyond odd. Anyway - I didn't do that but asked for food. My daughter was not happy at all with me saying, "I want food" and protested that I didn't sound enough like a baby. Ever the man to take the piss I actually uttered the phrase, "Put the munchy munch in the yum yum cave" assuming she could tell I was being snarky. Nope - she that I was so believable that I must be channeling a two year old. So obviously I stopped playing that game as quickly as possible. I do not want her saying that to anyone.

I think part of this regression to babyness was that she had an accident at school yesterday. The teacher told me that she had needed to go to the bathroom but put her hand up to ask (you can't just get up and go without permission). But that she asks a lot of questions so the teacher waited to get through saying something first before asking her. At which point it was too late. Which is sad obviously. But being four and a half neither her or the kids think it's inherently shameful to have an accident. Because it is an accident. Instead my daughter was absolutely mortified that she had to change out of her new shoes. The teacher thought they might be soiled (they were not) so took them off her. That's not really all that odd. More disturbing than that though is that she loaned her own sneakers to my daughter. Meaning her teacher has the same size feet as a four and a half year old. I'm hoping the teacher doesn't engage in Chinese foot-binding as a hobby. Because that is the only reason I can think of that someone who is twice my size physically can have feet three times smaller than me.

Anyhoo - this morning we are off to the pet store. Not sure if it's the very local one with all the lizards - or the far away one with ferrets and puppies. Today is our last day without my wife. So I'm going to use up as many hours as possible so that we can get to bedtime and they are both knackered. Because last night they were in my bed again before 10pm. And they wriggled around like drunken snakes for the majority of the evening too. I honestly don't care how tonight goes but I'd like to get through the day knowing that they will go to sleep and I can at least watch 30 Rock before turning in.

Uh oh - someone needs to get rid of Squid Squirt immediately.

View From A Mentalist: February 8, 2012

2012-02-08T20:56:00.003-05:00

Oh yes - she took some photos. These are over the last three days actually. All of which were taken with my camera as she loaned hers to her mother to take photos of flamingos, unusual lizards and any sudden police chases that the show COPS were filming on the Las Vegas Strip while my wife is there on business. I will admit that most of the photos were of me. So please don't think I'm just vainly picking myself out of all the actually interesting ones. Nope - they were mostly of me. She has become uber-obsessed to the point where at bedtime tonight she frantically yelled, "I always want to be with you Daddy." Not while I'm pooing dear.

Anyhoo - up first are the "Death Berries." Seriously - the careless violence that having a second bean bag has awakened from inside my kids is volcanic. I must confess though that I have mounted both children on their own bean bag and commanded them to joust.

A long time ago I bought these cards for my daughter so she would become familiar with how common items are spelled out. Then I forgot and put them in a drawer. Now my son thinks they are awesome. Not to read or for pictures - but in the classic sense of 52 Card Pick-Up wherein he flings them around the room like a Tasmanian Devil.

This is the only television photo on my camera. So it is eerie that she took a photo of the show Curious George where George is holding a blancmange cat (that he's clearly about to nosh on) while his nameless friend videos him just about to go to town on that pink bugger.

That would be me reading in the sunlight. In February!

My daughter wanted to take a photo of the, "not snow." It's just frost but it was 19 degrees Fahrenheit out. Which is pretty chilly but not the usual brittle skin-snapping cold we usually get this time of year.

I don't know what this is from. Which worries me greatly. Especially as earlier tonight I either heard my daughter's shoes bouncing around in the tumble dryer or (evidently) a monkey tap dancing in my bedroom.

I put this up because when I asked my daughter what I was thinking here she said, "you're thinking that you wish you were brown." Thanks honey - now all I can think about is a bath tub filled with gravy.

This is clearly the cover art for my daughter's collaborative Bill Laswell remix EP. Or it's a photo mess-up that looks sort of cool.

Last one - a dinosaur game my daughter likes to play. You pick one and then you can click a bunch of buttons to find out what kind of eater they were, where they lived and also to see an X-Ray. My daughter always asks me to watch her click the X-Ray one and then I have to act stunned that I can see it's bones as well.

Attack Of The Cow Pigeon

2012-02-08T10:37:00.001-05:00

Before we got going today we played Secret Cave. Which turned into this silliness.

All that showed me is that I need to clean up, shave and throw these jeans out. After that I made my son cry for an hour. By confiscating his Thomas pajamas. Apart from the fact they definitely need washing he simply can't do that. He's had them on and off (mostly on) since Sunday night. That's not only gross but neurotic. So it astounded me that he has cried infinitely more that he is separated from his pajamas than from his mother. Sorry dear. Add he was pushing his luck. Monday and yesterday I told him he had to put real clothes on if we were doing anything. Which I made sure we did a lot of. Then yesterday at dinner I had the idea of letting him eat pizza (my daughter officially - according to her and my wife - makes The Worlds Greatest Pizza) knowing he'd get it all over his shirt. Then he would see that he couldn't wear it anymore. Last night he and his sister ate the olives and pepperoni off their one slice of pizza and left the rest. Balls.

Anyhoo - this morning we were heading out to go run an errand and he did this -:

When I told him he had to get dressed he got annoyed and ran off. When I caught him and tried to get him changed he behaved like I was about to beat him. So now he's not wearing those pajamas until his mother gets home. End of that problem. Now he and his sister are eating lunch (they eat at 10.30 as my daughter goes to school at noon) in the living room (a compromise) and they're eating all of it. Next-day pizza included. I'm somewhat hungry but have run out of fruit so will have to eat some salad. Sadly I just saw someone online completely destroy the healthy nature of salad by emptying a 1/4 bag of Lays Cheddar and Sour Cream potato chips into the salad bowl. Good heavens that sounds like one of the best ideas ever.

Nah - I'll just have more coffee and wait until real lunchtime later.

The Grapes Of Wrath

2012-02-08T07:20:00.001-05:00

That title doesn't really make sense. It sort of does in this instance. I'll explain.

We've been up since 5.30am this morning. That's not horrible. But I had wanted to get up as early as 4am. Mostly because my son had been grunting, complaining and frustratingly fussing about in bed since about then. I would get up at 4am normally - but my daughter would try and get up too and that would not go well. So I stayed put. Luckily for me I'd thought ahead and had my MP3 player with me and used that time to listen to some new music. I tried to enjoy it in quiet contemplation but couldn't. This is because during that entire 90 minute period my son repeatedly kept angrily stamping on my testicles. It wasn't accidental in the sense that when I would move his feet he'd whine and then try and do it again. I even snidely asked him out loud, "I presume you think your squashing grapes to make wine?" Hence the the cheap angry grapes play on words in the title reference above. Add the fact that the power of his kicking may indeed cause a great depression in my nether region. Also if he kicked any harder he may smack them off all the way to California. Hopefully the analogy will end before I decide which one to name Tom and long before one flees to a cotton farm to escape being identified in a murder.

Actually to illustrate this whole grape-squishing thing I started looking for a good photo of it. After deciding against using one of the many buxom-women that are supposed to be sexily squashing grapes (not sure why that was so common) or the closeup of a foot-on-grape I found this one. I think it's suitably odd that I need not comment on it at all.

I'm not even going to mention that one of them apears to be enjoying that experience far too much. I'd hate to think what is in that cup of his. So we got up. Out of the three nights so far last night was the least enjoyable. I knew it would be because the bedtime routine didn't go the way it was supposed to. It wasn't awful or anything - it just didn't go to plan. I've been asking my daughter to stay downstairs and play a game while I put my son to bed. She has loved doing that. Last night we started that off by her reading a book with us upstairs and then I sent her off to go play. Then she came back upstairs straight away saying there was a strange noise and was scared. So I had her crawl into bed next to the two of us. She then proceeded to repeatedly ask when I was going to be done. Oddest use of the, "are we there yet?" question I've been involved with so far in my parental life. My son tried his best to ignore the whole thing but every time his sister wriggled around - which was approximately every seven seconds - he would glance up. Annoyingly too during this someone's car alarm went off and then a car was hurriedly driven away - the headlights shining right into my son's room. Which meant it couldn't be my car being stolen because that's the wrong side of my house. Obviously I still thought, "someone might have just stolen my car..." My daughter then helpfully said, "Daddy - I think someone just took our car." I still didn't get up to check though - nothing would get between me and putting these two to sleep (and incidentally my car is very much still outside).

Amusingly my daughter fell asleep almost immediately after that and I had to wait for him to conk out. Thirty minutes later I realized that I could get out of bed and not wake him up but that she would definitely wake - and once that happens it's like she's been given a shot of adrenaline and she tries to cling on to the rest of the day with renewed vigor. I got up - she abruptly stood up very groggily and I carried her to her bed. Then she started going on about how she needed to play her game. And then I needed to read her two books. And then tell a story about when I was a little cloud. And then do the usual Monday, Friday, Sunday routine. I was a little sharp about it and told her she'd already been asleep so none of that was going to happen. Five minutes later of her still asking for stories I relented and told her the story about when I was a little snake (apparently the cloud story I was telling was too boring). Twenty minutes later she was back asleep - with no help from the cat who was waving it's arse at me and trying to lick anything it could.

After somehow creeping out I came down and checked the car and sat down with a nice cup of hot chocolate to watch the cheesy nonsense that is NCIS. At which point my son got up. A few minutes of him wriggling like a captured piglet I realized that my night may be over and took him to put him to bed again. Then I woke up at just after midnight when my daughter climbed into the bed with us.

Fast forward to this morning and the nut-crushing. Actually we were all awake around 5.15am but I refused to get everyone up then. I had switched off my MP3 player and was listening to my kids ramble on about random stuff like they tend to do at this time of day. I often ask my daughter what she dreamed about last night right after she says hi in the morning. I didn't get the chance this morning because evidently she had lots to get through before I started boring everyone. For example she emphatically declared, "Daddy did you know there is DNA on the ceiling? There's DNA on everything in our house." Good Lord I hope not. Especially as it's all new. So if she knows something about the guy who helped hang the dry-wall that I don't then I want to know. Actually the only room where we haven't replaced the floors, walls and ceiling is the bedroom. Which we were in. That is one of the prime reasons why I dare not wander about it with a Wood's black light like they use in CSI. Because it's almost a safe bet that I'd find a pentagram drawn on the ceiling in squirrel's blood and possibly the neighbors semen.

After getting my daughter to slightly explain that she had learned that all living things have DNA she flitted on to the next powerful statement. Which was that she knew how to spell potato. Then she explained that the secret to spelling is that if you say all the letters quickly that is how the word is made. So I jokingly said that I also knew how to do that and potato starts with an F. Then I pretended to be confused. She didn't take this opportunity (like she normally does) to happily correct me and then wait for the praise. Instead she quickly said, "No Daddy that's silly. It's P - uke. P-uke spells potato." That may explain why didn't eat dinner the last two nights then. She rapidly moved on then to accuse her brother (via telling me) of deliberately trying to watch her pee so that, "he can learn how you pee inside yourself." At which point I quickly got up.

I don't want to know how to do that. Let's all move on.

Little Munchkins

2012-02-07T16:57:00.002-05:00

"Daddy - did you know donuts have a secret lung inside of them so that they can breathe - and that's why the box of Munchkins we bought this morning has a hole in the top?"

No - I was not aware of that. I was also not aware that a skunk in our back yard had apparently hidden tracking devices (I was as surprised as you are) in the backyard and she had to steal money from the "culfer" (that's what it sounded like she's saying but I honestly can't figure it out) so that she could, "win the game." But then my daughter has pretty much just been going for it this week with nonsense. The most recent thing being claiming that she doesn't want water to drink because it's made from green beans peeing. You should have seen her brother's face when he head that.

Speaking of vile food - yes I know I've confessed above to having bought something from what may be the most horrible doughnut chain I've ever been in. The only thing worse than their doughnuts is everything else they sell. I've had their coffee and it tastes like burnt flakes of paint chips. And years ago I had a sandwich there and the bread had so much wangyness (that's an ew word I'm using to describe intense elasticity - so please don't sully it by using it to describe what I know you're already thinking of) to it that I genuinely couldn't chew it. Awful stuff. But my daughter claimed to have had a dream about going there today. And frankly I thought they'd enjoy picking through the Munchkins. It's not like they'll eat them all. I don't eat doughnuts these days but I wouldn't touch anything but the chocolate ones. The ones covered in powder (white and beige - both of which just cause painful choking and I think are just different ages of crushed sheet rock) are clearly vile. And the ones with blue bits in them look like diseased testicles. But the kids enjoy them in spite of my upturned nose. There's still a good half a box sitting on the kitchen counter so maybe they like the idea more than the flavors involved.

Whilst picking up my daughter at school today I got talking to a nice lady who says she's just bought a "fixer-upper" and is slightly overwhelmed by the whole thing (incidentally she showed me a photo of her husband working in it on her phone and he looked exactly like Beppe DiMarco from Eastenders). So I told her where I live. Everybody knows about my house because it was a derelict collapsing behemoth opposite a cemetery that clearly had more life than it did. Instant realization from her that I understand her pain. Then she did what a lot of people do and started to get amusement via schadenfreude. But then I would say things like, "rotting dear heads" and, "then it collapsed and my father in law fell into the basement" and she didn't really know what to think. I suppose I should temper the anecdotes for the people and occasion better. Because this lady went from anxious to laughing her head off to wondering if someone had died. It was a bit like agreeing to watch a play like Cabaret for a nice innocent singalong - but then whammo - the Holocaust shows up. But you know, much funnier.

Anyhoo - I explained that we had no idea about our house. She said she did and her husband is quite handy but she didn't really anticipate the discomfort of not having a kitchen or knowing if the house is actually safe. I told her I totally understand that but that I could foresee the nightmare ahead of me. For example I remember looking at derelict houses in the area that excited my wife and father in law. They knew that you didn't have to actually pay for a house (or even have a mortgage) as long as you weren't afraid of getting your hands dirty and could take do things like just relabel awful situations as, "challenges" and things like that.

I told her I was a little more reluctant throughout the "let's buy a shithole - it'll be romantic!" project. Which was only reasserted when we visited aforementioned shitholes and my wife would get a glint in her eye. I told her how we went to one home with the entire lower floor missing. An entire external wall was missing. Inside everything was missing except the other three external walls. Some of the actual floor was missing. Two thirds of the foundation had also been removed to try and feed housing supplies in that didn't fit any other way (obviously they'd never heard of a door). Also missing was everything up stairs. The stairs were there but they went up into a fallen down house. Better though was that the idiot who had purchased this house built the support beam for the upstairs portion of the house in the basement. Which was why he'd knocked half the foundation down. Then he realized that couldn't get the support beam out because he'd BUILT IT IN THE FRIKKING BASEMENT and it was the entire length of the house. So now he desperately wanted to get rid of a useless house with a nice big huge spot of land. But really the kicker for me was the five gallon bucket in amongst all the rubble that someone had been happily shitting in for some time (clearly).

Anyway the point of telling this lady this story was that this oddly this didn't deter my wife. So I knew what the base point for fixxer-upper was. But that the house I ended up buying was astonishingly probably worse than that one was. But - that despite mental scarring and what seemed like an insurmountable project in front of us we now own a brand new house for far less than a comparable one would be. And that is what you have to focus on. And - most importantly - my kids love where we live. The fact that we can go outside and muck around is amazing to them. They get up to all kinds of silliness. Like chasing skunks with tracking devices. And sledding without snow -:

The Bean Bag Basheroo

2012-02-07T11:02:00.001-05:00

I may have completely misjudged a situation.

My daughter got a bean bag chair for Christmas. She loves it. So does her brother. At first they sat together on it, or just waited a turn. By the end of last week they argued incessantly over it. So as a solution I figured I'd get another bean bag chair. That makes sense right? One each = less fighting. Except I think perhaps I've just gone on and done the very thing that I sometimes see other parents doing that I can't believe they are doing. A prime example would be this -

That's wallpaper you can draw on. On it's face that's a great idea. But as soon as you actually think about it then it suddenly becomes a really bad idea in my eyes. First off the reason this came about is because someone's kid was drawing all over the walls. Instead of teaching them boundaries and suitable behavior they get this - encouragement to go bananas. Secondly that picture above looks really nice. But that's clearly not been colored in by a 2 year old. Because if it was it would just be a swirling mess of marker pen. And it would be all over the baseboards as well. And the chair. And the floor. And in all the other rooms of the house. Why? Because if you can teach a child to only draw on this wall then you can also teach them to only draw on paper. I get that this is cute and a very nice idea. But I've seen kids drawing on walls who were more than aware of the rules.

Anyway - I may have done that with a new bean bag chair. I may have seen violence occurring and tried to solve it by doubling the weaponry. After a couple of hours at home that's certainly possible. I was advised to make sure the new one was the same as the old one. It isn't - it's a different color. It's also much firmer than the old one. When my son tries to sit on the new one it has enough resistance to pretty much make him bounce or topple right off. He and his sister have been capably demonstrating too that a bean bag chair is also a really really good way to commit violence against one another and then claim that I'm being a killjoy when I complain. My son ended up going much to far and just started biting and hitting.After using the bean bag as a fun way to grab and tussle they ended up just jumping on one another. Which was initially cute (as you can see in the video below) but ended up with my son just going mental.

I managed to take a few photos of the progressive violence. It started off fairly mildly. Basically just squashing each other and building a, "tomato blueberry tower" to be champion of.

By the way you've probably noticed that my son is dressed in Thomas The Tank Engine pajamas even though it's day time. I am more than well aware of this. I've got him dressed twice today already. Here - this is what I made him wear out to the store to get the bean bag. You can see how dissatisfied he is with not being surrounded by Thomas's gurning face.

But when we got home he ran upstairs - just like he did yesterday and cried and cried until I let him wear the pajamas again. I'll have to change him later. I'm hoping he drops yoghurt on them or something so that I can show him they aren't available and are in the wash. Anyway - back to the mayhem. This tit-for-tat squashing and tower building quickly descended to flat out twatting one another with the new bean bag. What was silly about this is they each happily let each other do it.

Then they upped the rough -and-tumble but it was still pretty harmless and cute.

After this I had to put the camera down to hold my rabid son off his sister. Okay not quite that bad but I had to at least go find his muzzle. So yes - I think I may have exacerbated a problem by multiplying the cause twofold. The only comfort I'm going to take in this is that it wasn't as obvious as buying wallpaper you can draw on. And it may level out and become a success.

Oh - and while I was looking for the wallpaper I did manage to find what is clearly the worst toy idea in the history of all mankind. That might sound ridiculously hyperbolic. But if you carry through my above logic that allowing a behavior in one situation will lead to at least one occurrence of it in another situation then this is clearly the worst idea ever imagined. Just look at it.

That's like someone watching that chilling scene from The Firm (the good one with Gary Oldman - and if you're queasy at all DONT Youtube it because your day will be ruined) where the baby grabs the razor-knife and then thinking it'd be a great idea to make a kids carpet fitter play kit.

Shudder.

I Dont Understand Part Two

2012-02-07T07:13:00.001-05:00

I don't understand why when I'm putting my daughter to bed that my cat - who has been intent on ignoring everyone all day long - needs to come in and try and lick me. No amount of pushing her away or knocking her off the bed dissuades her. It only makes her grunt louder.

I don't understand why my son feels the need to check my face repeatedly during the night after getting into bed with me. Either he's deliberately trying to irritate me or he thinks he's Rutger Hauer in the ridiculous movie Blind Fury from the late 1980s. In which case later today I'll surprise him by throwing a watermelon at him from behind and see if he instinctively chops it in half with a concealed ninja sword.

I don't understand how I can have grown up knowing all about separating colors and whites in the wash - and that if I failed to do this all of my clothes would end up pink. And also that ironing was a simple fact of life wherein at least 60% of Sunday would be spent stood at the ironing board with a basket full of clothes to sort out. Now I just chuck them all in the wash at the same time and can accept the once-a-year incident of dying white shirts pink/orange/blue. And I haven't ironed more than one thing in one go since 2001. If two things I want to put on need ironing I'm just going to wear something else. And if a shirt needs ironing each time it's been washed then it's never being worn again.

I don't understand why a puddle needs to be disturbed. My daughter mostly couldn't care less about being clean so I understand why she will deliberately sit in a puddle (yes - she has done that more than once). She displays that same satisfaction as when you climb into a hot bath and it just feels completely perfect. But my son - a child who simply cannot go on doing anything until the offending filth has been removed - has somehow made a niche within his brain for mud/puddles far far away from all other dirt. He can stand for a good hour on the driveway just stamping up and down in a puddle. And why the two of them feel the need to pile rocks and sticks in them escapes me.

I don't understand the purpose of spending all the time and focus that my kids do on building a huge spectacular train track only to then smash it to pieces. Especially as they will then complain that their train track is a mess and will demand help in making it.

I don't understand how my kids nails can grow so freakishly quickly. I'm assuming that keratin grows at a standard rate regardless of the size of the digit involved - and that's why it seems to grow so quickly. But really I know it's just another sign that they are both actually wolverines.

I don't understand why my wife - when learning that I have hurt a part of my body somehow - will then poke it and claim she's being nice. If I've hurt myself I don't want anyone touching wherever it hurts. And I know that caressing and kissing seems nice - but this would be when it's mean. Which is exactly how it comes across when I've (for example) poked my eye with something and then my wife tries to lovingly touch it with her finger. No - that's just poking it again. Oddly whenever my kids hurt themselves if I don't touch or kiss it then it will hurt forever.

I don't understand how my kids can run across a floor covered in train tracks, little metal cars and other random pokey stuff and it doesn't phase them at all. It's like they have horseshoes on so can't feel anything. And yet I can't walk across the room without knowing that if I step on another bloody train I may never walk again.

I don't understand why watching television upside down is the most comfortable shape for my daughter to be in. She seems to prefer this just as much as standing two inches from the screen. Presumably she fantasizes about a harness system that suspends her upside down right in front of the thing.

I don't understand why my my daughter - after jumping in bed - will simultaneously try and kick me out (as in will exert every ounce of force and try and force me out by stomping me out) but if she succeeds will be livid that I'm trying to get away. I also don't understand what kind of inner motion detector she has that tells her that I'm no longer upstairs. I can lie awake for an hour with her in an entirely different room and she won't sense it. But if I creep downstairs she'll scream immediately for me to lie down. Which is now impossible because she's just woken her brother up yelling and he thinks it's a great time to go play trains.

The Brown Album

2012-02-06T11:49:00.001-05:00

"How did you convince your son that pooing isn't wrong?"

I was talking this morning with someone who is having a hard time potty training their kid. The kid is almost two and a half and the parents need her to start using a potty so that they can go to a really young day-care/pre-K thing soon. The place they are taking the kid to doesn't take kids in diapers. Fair enough. My friend also knows that my daughter was out of diapers pretty early on and so was my son. Sadly I can't help for two main reasons.

Firstly - I have never ever put a child on a potty. I don't understand why you would either as it isn't actually a toilet - but rather just a transparent bucket. I personally don't understand why anyone would want to train a child to take a poo in the living room whilst watching television. They can wait and do that in college like the rest of us did.

Secondly neither of my kids has thought that pooing is wrong. I don't know what that means. The only experience I have of this at all is that I personally cannot poo without great psychological trauma in places that are not my own bathroom. Not my kids though - we can be anywhere when they gleefully announce to all and sundry that they need to, "Deliver the Demon Sausage." I have some experience of my son - for a very brief period - hiding when he needs to go. But he hasn't really thought it through because as soon as it starts to occur he needs me to get him to the bathroom. And I've seen other kids deliberately hide and then continue to hide until the smell gives them away. And then fight violently to remain covered in their own filth. That's weird. And those kids are usually still in diapers too. When my son would go off he was in underwear and was telling me he needed to go for a long time. The hiding thing lasted a very short time and made no sense.

So I guess I'm not a good person to ask. Especially as I made point A and said he's been sitting on the toilet and never sat on a potty. At which point it was alluded to that I may have endangered my son's life. As in he could have either fallen into the toilet and drowned, or fallen off like Humpty Dumpty and smashed his head open. But - being the good natured person that I am I did refer them to the plethora books about kids frightened by their own feces. And boy are there a shitload (too easy?). Like this one -:

Even apples poo apparently. Actually that's a book that pairs an animal with the place and type of poo that it does. If you click on the Amazon page for the book you'll find that the "the text is merely a series of rather dull pictures of back ends of people on toilets and animals, with captions identifying them and occasionally posing questions such as "What does a whale's poop look like?" (No answer is provided.)" Sounds like great stuff. One reviewer even gushes (not literally thankfully) that everyone in here family now regularly shouts "It's OK, because everyone poops!" in celebration. If you do go to that Amazon page you'll see that there are hundreds of other books aimed at young kids (they all assert that babies poo in diapers, kids on a potty and big kids adults on a toilet) with poo anxiety of some sort. The worst one for me - as far as the cover goes - is this one -:

I can't help but describe that image without incorrectly applying the phrase, "gravy train" unfortunately. And if any of you reading this have some sort of multiple toilet bathroom where several people casually sit together conversing about their day then I want you to get away from this site and never come back. You disgust me. But anyway - the principle behind these books is anxiety solved by potty training. Which I don't understand because I've never handled it.

What I do understand is the other end of the issue. That being teaching a kid about using the toilet all by themselves. So teaching my daughter that yelling, "Daddy I need help wiping!!" is damaging my soul. I shouldn't have to come in and say thank you when she tells me it is my favorite color. Or that she should win a trophy because she's swirled together a two-toned monstrosity like a twisty cone. So we've been working on my daughter getting herself all cleaned up. She loves the hand washing part but doesn't really know what to do if the wiping stage isn't going well. Which is why I want a bidet (more on that later).

Same goes for my son. He can now sort-of climb off the toilet when he's done. When he's just in there for a whizz this is fine. The only downside is if he gets pee on anything he'll attempt to clean it with massive amounts of tissue (think those hilarious pranksters who threw toilet paper all over the school bathrooms - it's that sort of quantity) and basically polish urine all over everything. Including his own hand. He's trying though - and it pretty much makes me use a sanitary wipe to clean up like I assume I'm supposed to anyway. If he's been left alone to "un-peel the beige banana" then things are slightly different. Because now he knows he's capable of climbing off all by himself and trying to wipe. Sometimes this is fine as long as I hear him getting down. Then I can come in and take over and let him know he's done well. But sometimes he will leave a smear down the seat like a fudge-slug. He will though try and wipe himself up and fail - leading to utter dismay on his part. And mine when I come in and find him more covered in The Beige Beast than if I'd made him crap himself. Because the thing he wants most in the entire world - more than chocolate, trains or even Mommy - is to be clean.

Which is why I am somewhat saddened that the bidet seems to have fallen completely out of fashion. I have known people with one. But in 35 years that might be three or four people. And they had the side-by-side old fashioned one. I do know from a friend who lived in Japan awhile that this is quite common there. And that it is a one toilet/robot/best friend/Hal 9000 thing rather than two separate units. Japanese toilets are legendary for doing things like having seat warmers, cup holders (gag), built in MP3 players and all sorts of madness in them. My friend even told me once that the one in his house even had a "massage" feature on it where the toilet would therapeutically spray water at your undercarriage in a pleasing manner. And then once you were done it has a dryer (that works just like a hand dryer) to blow your chimney dry. Which sounds appalling and very very pleasant at the same time.

I don't really care about that. I just want a bidet so I don't have to be helping wipe other people's arses for years to come. Add it would save a fortune on toilet paper. And be environmentally better than dealing with all that waste paper surely? Lastly it would certainly work better than toilet paper. Quite how that is the most advanced the Western world has got is a sad indictment. But can you imagine the horrifying scenes if you had a bidet in your house and children? Right into their mouths. No question about it that's what would happen. Like the Japanese ones though I would be tempted to put an MP3 player in there. Not for music or anything. But just so I could add soothing commentary. Maybe the review Alan Partridge gives to the Saniflow 33 chemical toilet and it's mastery of handling mashed Dundee Cake. Personally I like the idea of syncing the audio-track of Kevin Costner repeatedly saying, "Back and to the left" from the laughably silly movie JFK every time the bidet came on. I think that would be amusing but I imagine guests visiting might find that tasteless. Of course if I have a nemesis anywhere on earth they would no doubt hack into the MP3 player and program in the notorious "Brown Note" idea that there's a magical sound that can make you poo on cue.

Lastly though - the reason we will never have a bidet isn't the astonishing cost (which is INSANE) but that Smart Toilets are scary as Hell.

I don't know what it's saying but I know it has something to do with genocide.

I Dont Understand Part One

2012-02-06T09:03:00.003-05:00

I don't understand how every single member of my family can remove their clothes and always have one arm/leg of the item of clothing be inside out. Not both. Always just one. I mentioned it to my wife (because sometimes my days really are this exciting) and she told me she does it on purpose. And yet my kids do it accidentally. Or - and if this is true divorce precedings will be drawn up immediately - my wife is going through the dirty laundry and deliberately fiddling with the clothes just to mess me about.

I don't understand why if I point out the car window and say, "Look!! There's a pig!" (obviously it can be other things) that both of my kids will look randomly around the car for this alleged pig, but steadfastly refuse to look in the direction I'm pointing.

I don't understand why my children will eat anything that I call a potato chip - even if it patently isn't one.

I don't understand how my wife can recall at will the tiniest minutia of a microelectronic governmental testing standards, but she can't make a decent cup of tea. "Oh no!" she'll giggle, "I accidentally put salt in it again. I guess you will still have to be the one who makes the tea just like you did for the last ten years."

I don't understand how my son hasn't seriously hurt himself in the middle of the night. Whatever hour he wakes up - be it midnight or 5am - he will jump out of bed and run like a demented horse in the pitch black across the landing until he hits the bottom of our bed to crawl in with us. How he hasn't run into a wall, furniture, a door frame or just gone straight down the stairs is anybodies guess. Mind you with his amazing throwing aim and ability to run through such a crowded unsighted space he may be the next Michael Vick. One unsullied by claims of knowingly giving someone genital herpes or having a prison record for dog fighting obviously.

I don't understand how my daughter can remember every single thing she's seen or heard in a book, song or television show, and yet still can go through an entire day accidentally calling me Mommy every single time.

I don't understand why my wife will gleefully ignore all of the neat separated piles of laundry I've made on our bed - set in rows for each individual and in piles for each drawer they go into - and just climb into bed and take a nap underneath them, thereby creating one giant but very warm pile of clothes on top of her.

I don't understand how I can now be too old to play football for a Premier League team but still feel a sliver of a possibility that I'll be called up to the England squad due to a national injury crisis. Although it is comforting to know that I would still be quite young if suddenly picked up by AC Milan.

I don't understand why anybody would want to read a book repeatedly fifteen times in a row when there are at least sixty other books piled up right in front of them that they also like. Or for that matter want to watch the same thing again. And again. Especially if it's utter crap.

I don't understand how my daughter can win a competition that she won't even let me be in - in fact won't let anyone else be in - and still gloat that she won and that I didn't. The parallel to professional American sports is uncanny mind you.

I don't understand why my daughter is currently in the bathroom yelling, "I'M POOING WITH NO HANDS!!"

I also don't understand why a child wants to stand 2 inches away from the television screen. You can't see anything. At all. The pain in your eye when you do that is quite powerful too.

I don't understand why my daughter woke up at 4.30am this morning and asked me if we have any chocolate eggs in the house. Surely that could have waited?

Winkie Hands and The Slow Cooked Squirrel

2012-02-05T14:37:00.000-05:00

My wife left at just before noon for a work-thing in Las Vegas. She'll be flying back Friday - going into work - and then coming home in the evening. It'll be the longest the kids and her have been apart. Which also makes it the longest amount of time one of us has had the kids to ourselves without any kind of relief assistance. It's not even close to the longest my wife and I have spent apart. We've spent two periods of longer than six months apart over the decade we've been married. One of those was for a year. My son wasn't happy about her going though. He's settled down quite well now but he was pretty cheesed off earlier.

My wife - in the way that only she can - casually told me the kids that she'll see them at the end of the week. Unless she dies, obviously. In which case they'll never see her again. I applauded her for the tact (and no she isn't being jokey). Then I then casually joked that she could come back and find one of us dead. Or all of us. In all likelihood it would be our son. He's the smallest and weakest. And the one we all like the least too, so he's a prime candidate and gets my vote. Apparently that wasn't funny. Double standard if you ask me.

Now I don't know what my wife and kids talked about regards this trip away. They had their own conversations about the whole thing. I had one with them too which was pretty much, "your mother will be back on Friday. Which is five days from now. So no funny business until then." That seemed to be all the information that was needed as far as I could tell. My wife will have likely told my daughter that I need her to be good and help at bedtime and all that. And I presume she told my son that if she does die - which is statistically possible after all - to not let me shack up with any of the weird women I know on Facebook. But to be honest I don't know how she framed her week away. All I know is that since my wife left around noon my daughter has been stood in the window yelling, "I AM THE RULER OF EVERYTHING I SEE!!" every time a squirrel climbs down a tree.

Actually she's been quite combative with the squirrels today. Earlier this morning she was pretending to call Mr. Red Squirrel on the squirrel phone (actually a hairbrush) to tell him to get off our lawn or Mr. Grey Squirrel and Mr. Other Grey Squirrel would be sent over to duff him up a bit. Then she kept telling me to let the dog out to chase them. And I went out to make the kids laugh by peering through the windows at them - at which point she instructed me to catch some squirrels for dinner. I took that to it's logical conclusion and showed her this recipe to show her people definitely do it squirrel and it made her more enthusiastic. I'm sensing a birthday meal in the making here.

But mostly my daughter has been in fine form this weekend. Like squealing this morning that her brother was after her and that he had a, "hand for a winkie." I want nothing to do with trimming those fingernails, I can assure you. She also randomly pointed out that - if she wanted to - she could fit a plastic swan in her school bag. Okay then. And right now she thinks we should take a bath so that we are clean for when we go, "to the banana volcano" that she claims to have hidden upstairs. I don't even want to know what that might be.

Anyhoo - bedtime should be interesting. They go to sleep easily - but I have to do them one by one as opposed to at the same time like my wife and I do. As long as my son goes out like a light we should be good. Then I can tackle her and get her to sleep too. The only danger is that I fall asleep whilst putting my son down leaving my daughter alone for too long and she starts to get feisty. Should be alright though.

Alright - it's suspiciously dry and just above freezing out so we might go run around in the back yard before my son tries taking a late day nap. The further away from the banana volcano the better.

Hurdling Ding Dongs

2012-02-04T05:43:00.001-05:00

"Think about it. Where are your underpants?"

I think some of my irreverent offhand behavior might be shaping my daughter more than I assumed it would. I'm sure you've read those last two sentences and are now jumping the gun and imagining me without underpants. It might explain some of the Google searches that got here. But no I don't mean that. I mean that I tend to say random silly crap all day long that I find funny with little care for the audience around me. I do it for me. Fellow users of a well-known British Expats online forum can support that notion. But my daughter has said two things this past week that I don't remember saying, but that sound very much like the kind of silly guff I would say.

First up she actually said to me - about her brother - "look at his dirty little face - it's almost as if he understands." Which is a Lee and Herring gag line from years back. Well actually she kind of mashed it up and said, "look at his dirty little face - he doesn't even understand." Which sounds more like John Terry. And there are few people hoping their kids behave like John Terry. Hopefully anyway.

The second thing is something she's done three or four times now. And that's she'll be doing something with a lot of focus. Like crafts or picking her nose. She will suddenly see this little ballerina doll thing that she owns. She'll pick it up and do her best "what on earth is going on!?" face (with hand gestures to boot) and say, "think about it - where are your underpants?" Then she'll just drop it and carry on with whatever she was doing before. Presumably I've done that. It certainly seems like the sort of randomness I would find amusing. I hope she does that sort of stuff at school.

Speaking of which she got her report card Friday and is acing the whole shebang. Top of the class and all that so that's good stuff. Not sure what that really means at Pre-K level as an indicator but I'll take it. I'm sure the parent of the kid in the class who can't count past ten or color inside the lines isn't all that concerned either though. I'm sure there's a measurable that can be looked at in this class to see how things are going - but quite a lot of time is taken up playing games, running around and eating scary abhorrent things. Actually I'm now beginning to think that the copious amounts of Hostess products that are thrown at the kids are a sort of comparative study into how they may perform later in life in the common workplace. In which case I'm glad to see my little one has hurdled the Ding Dongs and is thriving. And as we all know hurdling ding dongs is something a majority of women have to try and focus on during college and for a long time afterwards.

Yesterday though there was no school so we went to see the in-laws.The kids got to run around on the frozen lake, go for a tractor ride, eat tacos (guaranteed lunch at grandmas when we visit), go sledding and play with different toys for a day. My daughter also got to sneak out with Grandpa and not come back until way after I was supposed to leave to come home just so they could wander around stores in town eating Jellybeans. And I got some time off as well. I zoomed off into town to plow through their champion thrift store (which was oddly poor on this occasion) and had 25 minutes to myself. It also got me two hours of driving time. Which means two hours of the kids strapped in - sometimes napping - while I sing along to whatever I've put on. Quite why it's unacceptable to strap the kids to the furniture for hours while I prance around dancingis beyond me. Perhaps if I find some Youtube video of someone driving across country and randomly hand the kids bananas and Pepperidge Farm snacks it'll be more socially acceptable.

My wife and kids go out for the day today. Because she leaves for Vegas tomorrow for a week. Originally we were all going to go. But my wife will be working 10 hour days (probably more) schmoozing and whatnot so we wouldn't see her much anyway. And the hotel we'd be in is downtown. And it's in Vegas - which may be nice and all but when I'm thinking of a family vacation I'm not thinking of neon pink, gambling and my favorite episodes of the show Cops. Actually to be more honest I figured spending money on a family vacation would be better if my wife could be there as well. Anyhoo - the kids will go out shopping for stuff (Burlington Coat Factory being the prime target) this morning before going out to lunch. I'll probably do not much of anything exciting but make sure I do whatever it is alone. Sunday through Friday it's just me and the kids so I'm embracing lonesomeness wholeheartedly. I'm hoping we all make it to the end of the week anyway. Quite how single parents do it I don't know - and I'm quite determined not to know of my own accord and am well aware that six days/five nights of me and the kids does not compare. But I can pretend it does and whine about it like I'm some sort of trooper.

And not the car-park humping stormtrooper kind.

And yes I'm well aware that a large proportion of you have no idea what that means.

Offski

2012-02-03T08:19:00.000-05:00

So we're off out for the whole day to the in-laws house. My daughter has a day off school. So she's declared it pajama day. I've told them it can be pajama day until we leave and once we get back. Which worked but only if I got ready to leave and then agreed to change them. My daughter wanted her mother to see photos of us "on vacation" so this is what we got.

First off we took a Splat photo. The kids got up at 6am - which is the latest they've done that in months. My daughter immediately started askng when we are leaving so I told them we had to play Splat and then Pyramid Mountain.

This would be Mountain. It's basically people standing/crawling on me. It's quickly followed by Timber. Or, "people falling down."

My daughter then wanted to play Dog Lick. I'm not a fan of this now as my dog is very determined to use his skills, and the kids don't actually let him have a go on them. Frankly it's mean if you ask me.

Then my daughter dealred that no-one else has ever made a human pyramid like us. I couldn't let that stand I'm afraid. So I broke out Google to show her some impressive things. Obviously I had to skillfully manouver around Google's suggestion of, "The Razzle Stack" o find clean healthy wholesome pyramids. Then I remembered friends of mine seem to make on all the time. So I showed her that.

And we're off! An hour up north gives me an hour of them napping too. Note how I pretended to be dressed to leave by putting on a hat and scarf. Now I can get them out of their PJs and into real clothes. It's frikking freezing out so no way are they staying in them.

Enjoy the day.

How To Make Brain Soup

2012-02-03T06:08:00.002-05:00

Hmmm.

Some days I try quite hard to not have my kids want anything to do with television or the same songs on their MP3 player. So I'll leave the laptop on and just poke in different things into Youtube. They don't sit there and watch them but we let it sort of happen over there while we get on with farting around. It also helps to promote other silly games we may be interested in. So yesterday I copied the URL of the one's we plonked through. In context all of this is fine. But stirred all together like ingredients in a soup and this is actually quite horrifying in hindsight. I am quite aware that most people aren't going to play 99% of these videos but it is what we listened to yesterday.

First up an old favorite of my daughter's and mine. It's the band Man Man clearly "off their tits" bouncing around with strange facial hair and kazoos.

This is a lot more normal. It's not as old as it sounds either but some 90s Liverpool retro thing. It's a band called The Big Kids. I've never heard a single other thing by this band and kind of don't want to. All I know about this is the guitarist/singer allegedly wrote it in half an hour (or some other silly short timeframe) to prove he could write a catchy song.

Years ago I got into Taraf de Haidouks via a music forum I was wading through. They're a Romanian folk band of sorts. Yeah. Good heavens these people can play. This one actually is on my daughter's MP3 player. Abandon any pretense of how pompous you might be for playing this and play it to your kids and watch them go bananas.

Cats - it's what the internet is for. And apparently porn and Facebook. My daughter cries with enthusiastic laughter at the first part of this. My son laughs too but wanders off after about 90 seconds. After playing this video my daughter always wants to play cats on the floor.

Thsi is perfect for getting my son to sleep. It's the singer's cadence that knocks him out in seconds. It's a band called Clem Snide and the singer has a way with words that I like.

This is my penance. It's called Nuki Nuki and is flat-out Eurotrash/Europop.

I wish you could see the beards. Anyhoo - this is a favorite band of mine called Clutch grunting along to a nice groove.

If you thought the above Europop was bad this is evil. Ukranian Eurovision madness from 2007. It's so appalling and yet I defy anyone to not dance to it.

This is quite lovely actually. It's Andrew Bird playing a 10 minute instrumental called Ethiobirds. The man can play a violin.

This is a weird Russian thing from 1922. Yep - that ridiculous. It's called Symphony of Factory Sirens and apparently was a huge celebration of the October Revolution that involved an entire sea port all working together to make this one painfully choreographed noise. You've seen the Chinese Olympic opening ceremony - you know what Communism can make people do in sync.

Marvelous - this is a live video from a band called Tomahawk. Basically a bunch of my favorite alternative musicians farting around on stage in masks and screaming.

There were some other things too. We watched a thing about Meer Cats - I remember that. And there were a bunch of other songs but you get the idea. Basically it's whatever random stuff comes up throughout the day.

Beef Cakes Taste Like Chicken

2012-02-02T14:21:00.000-05:00

Beans, beans - good for your heart.

A friend of mine was teasing me this morning about posting one entry about healthy eating only to follow it up shortly with another about my family guzzling a massive bag of Cadbury's Mini Eggs.So I figured I should point out the guilty truth that is I was definitely the majority egg-snuffler in the family. For every one egg my kids had I probably had six. Outside of those I ate a few apples and not much else. My kids ate meals and had good snacks. I ate all the eggs. So yes - I do care about what my family eats as far as nutrition goes - but I measure my own health by how many pounds I can lose in a week alongside how much chocolate I can eat at the same time.

Mind you my daughter went to school yesterday and the teacher actually gave a room full of innocent children Ho-Hos. Not kidding at all. That would be these (to those who don't know) -:

So not real chocolate, not real cream and not real flour either - but 400 calories of instant diarrhea for the little ones. Yay! Amusingly I was actually looking up what they are made out of. Apparently they may have beef fat in them - which is a horrible thing that might accidentally get in a cake. What exactly is occurring that it might get beef fat in it? Anyhoo I Googled for the ingredients and one of the first things that came up was this oddness. Which (if you can't be bothered to click through) is a weird angry little forum that introduces the news that the parents company Hostess is filing for bankruptcy with the lead, "More great products destroyed by Obammy, his Communist trolls and Wide Load Moochele on her health nut crusade." Amusingly this is followed up later with, "only the Obama's are allowed to eat cake." Really? You think people actually eat these things? And this is another arm of the liberal war on "Real America" now? No school prayer or Twinkies? When will the totalitarianism end?

Speaking of eating I'm having a real dilemma of late about meat. I may actually turn vegetarian just because I'm stingy. Every time I go to the store to buy meat I either can't stomach the idea of buying it. I tell myself that it's partly knowing how mass-farmed meat is handled. But really it's just because it's so freaking expensive. Even when it's on sale I can't do it. So my cheapskate nature may lead my family to subsisting on even more beans than we already eat.

The problem with doing that is people will expect me to explain myself. This is America and people run on coffee and steaks. They will certainly expect me to explain what weird militant craziness has forced me to brainwash my kids into it as well. Seriously - people I know that think Christianity is putrid crap think it's more acceptable to teach my kids about Jesus than it is to make them be vegetarian. Add being vegetarian has so many connotations to it. Almost everyone I know who is vegetarian is pompous about it. Especially vegans. I've actually had a guy show me in an old job why he's vegan by showing a Youtube video on an iPhone. Really? Showing me using a pointless toy made by kids in China to sanctimoniously point out why I suck? Not seeing the oddness of that then? But more than that I already don't drink alcohol. People that get to know me find this out and immediately associate it to the fact I'm a Christian. Well - no. I just drink anymore. I used to drink. I don't even remember one year of college. No idea what happened for most of it. And my old church in Bristol has it's Monday night meeting group at the local pub to the church. Mostly I just don't drink now because I don't feel like it. Can't drink regular beer with a gluten problem anyway. And no one is getting most wine into me. The stink of it is awful. But being a tee-total, Christian, vegetarian stay-at-home-Dad would automatically nominates me to everyone that gets to know me a little as the sort of person who makes clothes out of women's skin.

I'd also have to avoid the lure of other vegetarians desperate to recruit me to some moral crusade. I'm pretty sure in the Western world - amongst families who earn decent money - that there isn't a large organic cohesive group of vegetarians who's singular common principle is that their tight-fisted. I'd also get all sorts of people expecting me to be a lover of food that tastes like crap. I used to love Boca Burgers. And we already eat tofu and stuff like that. But the replacement food is horrendous. Tofurkey is an abomination. An old friend of mine used to eat Yves bacon strips - which look like the tongue from a Mr. potato Head doll.Look at how rancid these things are -:

Why would a vegetarian want to eat bacon anyway? I don't understand that at all. I don't drink wine and haven't felt the need to replace it with fake-wine products. Same goes for donuts. I'm not eating some wheat-flour-free crap called Noughnuts! that slightly looks like a doughnut but tastes like a tampon. And the number of shitty not-chicken things is astonishing. Mass-produced weird pale white blobs of stuff that is made from wheat, soy, cheap grains and cellulose. Which is actually wood. But hey - it isn't actual chicken right? It sort of looks like chicken. But it doesn't taste anything like it. It costs a lot more than chicken usually too. All I can think of when I have tried these awful things is firstly- you've clearly forgotten what chicken actually tastes like. Secondly - why do you need to eat fake chicken? And lastly - how did they make this taste so completely unlike chicken? If everything - including dead people apparently - taste like chicken, then how does this stuff taste like spice-rubber? It's appalling. Avoid that stuff at all costs - there is plenty of other stuff to eat.

Anyoo - I have to clean up and get the girl from school. Today she's dressed me up like a cross between Richard Hammond and insert-random-Rnglish-middle-aged-jeans-and-tie-person-here. My son doesn't notice really and is preoccupied with his frozen-juice. He has an evil uncomfortable pain in his throat from coughing but one of those frozen juice things and he's all smiles. Like this.By the way - the camera is wonky. The picture on the wall is actually level.

oh - and I am definitely buying another bean bag chair. The fighting over that thing is doing my nut in.

View From A Mentalist: Feb 2, 2012

2012-02-02T06:55:00.001-05:00

Amusingly right after deliberatly not taking photos for a long time - and being shoved into it - my daughter started taking some on the condition I give her chocolate eggs.So here are five mini eggs worth of photos. I had 10 myself just for writing this.

First up she took a series of photos of different things that her hairbrush was in. Most confused the camera by having it not really focus on anything. But this one came out. It reminds me of the 1940/50 movie depictions of Mars to me.

The aforementioned eggs. Evidently she is now worshiping them like a golden calf. Which - if I'm following the analogy correctly - means that they were being worn by my wife and children as earrings before being gathered. I'd wear chocolate-egg earrings.

My daughter says this is a sweater she owns. And that the picture should be this way and not the correct way. I can't figure out which sweater but she insists the sweater is getting ready for Valentine's Day. Presumably in that creepy way in which Americans mothers and grandmothers give their own kids Valentines cards.

Oh nice photo. There were actually two of these. This one where my son is doing the open-mouthed bit-of-a-div look. And then another where he looks really cunning and has my hat on (he looks like Rick Dangerous with it on) - but you could also read the sole of his slipper where it says it's made in China. I chose this one.

While we were out after school yesterday we saw a nasty car accident. Very nasty. I saw quite a bit of gore because it was very hard not to. But my daughter - who sits on the side of the car where you can see the other side of the road - says she did not see anything. Although earlier on at home before she went to school she made her own car pileups on her brother's ramps.

A jigsaw my son is obsessed with at the moment. Again my daughter insists the photo should be this way up. My son is actually really good at doing this - but when my daughter was taking photos of it she just jammed in random pieces to make it, "look better." And then parked a cart on it as well.

I caught my daughter taking photos "up the faucet" of the water coming out. As in she was about to get her camera very very wet. This isn't my real, "you naughty little bugger" stance but my daughter thought it was pretty amusing.

I made beef tacos the other night. My daughter loves them. Me - not so much.

We were playing Hide and Seek yesterday (the real one) and I tried this as a hiding spot. My daughter thinks it's hysterical when I hide really really badly. I've also hidden on the stairs (with a coat on over my head) and in the bathtub with a blanket (my favorite but also the most uncomfortable place).

I Am A Chocolate Egg Factory

2012-02-01T14:22:00.002-05:00

"Take me to the Chocolate Egg Factory Daddy."

In between my kids perpetual fighting over a bean bag I had to go out and run some errands this morning. I was hoping to convince my kids to go to the playground in the damp but then it started raining. I thought about taking them anyway but then my daughter started excitedly bleating on about The Chocolate Egg Factory. Which isn't a euphemism for anything that Google probably has especially tagged for this blog (you bastards) but is actually just a naff name for the bag of Cadbury's Mini Eggs that I bought last weekend. I'm proud to say that I and my two kids have plowed through a 32 ounce bag of them without much difficulty. My wife had a handful but she didn't really take part in it. Today we finished them off while I pretended to be an owl. Not a real one - my daughter made me wear this necklace she made at school and then "lay" the eggs so the kids could eat them. Thankfully not directly into their mouths. Basically I just strutted about and then gave them an egg. I'm not squatting eggs into anyone no matter how much they ask me to.

I'm impressed that I ate so many yesterday that I couldn't actually face the idea of dinner. Which was good because I was making a pinto-bean thing (cook beans with onions and add lots of cheese - that's pretty much the whole deal) that I really like. But after three hours the bastards still weren't cooked. So in the end I had to throw together a beef taco thing and the kids ate that while I lay in a bath (all by myself!) awkwardly bloated from eggs.

It's pissed it down with rain all day today but we went out and tried to repair our driveway. The plow guy seems hell-bent on digging the entire thing up and dumping it on the back lawn. So I shoveled some of it back before the hail got too ridiculous. I instructed my daughter not to do things like roll in mud or jump in puddles while I did this because she'd be catching a school bus shortly. I didn't want the school teacher asking if we she'd been locked in the back yard tied to a chain all morning. My daughter duly obliged by kneeling in the mud as the bus came right to us to stop. I brushed her off while she said we'd have to go in and change and stuck her on the bus anyway. Take that dignity. You don't run my life.

When we went in my son did his little ritual of making sure he has his slippers on. He doesn't bother putting them on till around 9.30/10am usually. After that he won't fail to have them on until we go to pick his sister up from school. You'd think he'd want them on in the wee hours when it's only 58 in the living room. Actually I'm bemused that mymy kids don't complain about cold feet. I'm almost permanently annoyed all day that my feet are cold. I have socks and slippers on half the time and I'm still irritated that I can't keep them warm enough. And it's 69 degrees in here too. But my kids will run around barefoot - poking their toes into snow and ice my dog brings inside with him. If they can get off whatever their wearing above their ankles too they'll run around naked. Good Lord my son is giddy when he's naked. If I spend longer than five minutes in the kitchen cleaning without checking on them my son will be nude from the waist down and aggressively sitting on everything he can like a cat claiming it's territory. My daughter is a little more nuanced at least. She likes to take everything off except her underwear and then complain about the injustice of being cold. I just throw a blanket at her now.

I suppose I should do my chores before picking up my daughter. My son annoyed and impressed me at the same time by hiding a chocolate egg inside the flap of my Bible cover without me knowing. I hadn't read the study I'm doing yet today so when I picked it up I go a nice blob of scary brown botheration all over my hand and smeared it up the polyester cover. It's a neat present I got years ago from my wife. It's this if anyone cares -:

Or I could spend an hour online looking up amusing condescending parent-related content like this -:

Nice work newspaper in getting her to fall for that one. Nope - I need to at least get the chicken in the oven. And the clothes in the washing machine. My son can sleep off his egg-hangover while I get that done.

Twit-woo.

A Better Class Of Loon

2012-02-01T07:37:00.000-05:00

So far this morning my daughter has not only claimed that her brother is singing, "please squeeze my cheese" but also that he, "poked me in my Harold the Helicopter." I quickly tried to move on from there by asking what everyone dreamed about last night. My daughter - without the slightest hesitation said, "muffins." Sounds like a decent dream. Unless she was being pelted with them. I checked and she wasn't - but she did crash a car into a really massive one so it may or may not have been scary.

My son is somehow sneezing and snotting on things. I'm 95% certain it isn't an allergy to anything. I don't have a cold. Neither does his sister or mother. Which means he must be getting up in the middle of the night, nicking the car and driving down to the Black Stallion for a few pints with his mates. He's taking it in stride though. And he's become quite a champion of going to the tissue box - removing one and delicately dabbing his snotty upper lip - and then trying to stuff teh sticky damp tissue back into the box. He's not quite understanding the concept there yet. I have asked him where he got the cold from and he actually pointed at the front door. So maybe he did go out for a few pints and is now under the weather. At least he isn't using the excuse of, "oh I must have had a dodgy pint" when he starts feeling lousy. Nothing to do with the nine pints of Kronenbourg, three whiskey chasers or the six week old sausage roll that was inhaled. If he starts whiting out later then I may suspect otherwise.

Yesterday at school my daughter started a new letter - which was H. So obviously for snack time they had hotdogs. So outside of Ho-Hos and horse-meat all that comes to mind is haggis as potentials for later this week. Maybe I should send on in and strongly urge them all to tuck in? Anyway - they only have today and tomorrow to fill up on H-snacks as they have Friday off again. This after this Monday off for a snow day. The days it does snow it cacks down - we had 8 inches on Monday - only for it to rain off the next day. So it's now become very apparent that the school is going to use up all it's snow days every time it actually snows. We live in a huge snow belt here so normally they are more choosey with this - but by God they are determined to at least have as many snow days as they planned to use before the Winter began.

My son is also driving me up the wall with his kleptomania. It's quite specific though. If I am in the kitchen he will come in - wearing my hat (presumably a clever disguise) - and point up at the snack cupboard. I will open it and look up into it. While doing this he'll quickly steal my wallet and run off with it. I've even let him get away with it and hide in his fire engine. He doesn't empty it. But he'll just hide in there and gloat by yelling, "POCKET!!" over and over again. Little bugger. I suppose it's better than a few weeks ago when he'd charge at me and try grabbing my crotch to dangle off. And I mean when I'm dressed by the way - this isn't some odd Tarzan role-play we have going on. He would run at me and leap at my leg - but instead of wrapping himself around it like a monkey he'd just grab the material around the zipper and use that to hold. Once he was confident that he had a good purchase he would then bite whatever was in front of him. Endlessly annoying that was. But that's been wholly replaced by this thievery.

Right - I'm off to make paper airplanes with my daughter. She steadfastly refuses to have me make her a good one with triangular aerodynamic wings. She is much happier with some odd square thing that I made when I did it wrong the first time.

View From A Mentalist: Jan 31, 2012

2012-01-31T14:19:00.000-05:00

I literally had to walk around the house with my daughter a few times over the last few days to get her to take photos. And I'm sad to say 99% of them were utter junk. She has totally lost the desire to do this now that she's just clumsily pointing the camera near things and clicking while still moving. Annoying. But if she doesn't want to I guess I'll not push her into it. But these are all the ones that are decent for the last week.

My daughter took this today. She didn't want to take photos or play anything with me because she was busy playing PBS Kids. I'm beginning to dislike that. So I told her she could photo Clifford as a parade float and got 10 minutes of time out of her.

This is a cardboard crocodile thing that came with a Dora toy. Now my kids use it as the Pond Of Death when they build train tracks. Inevitably one of the trains will crash into the water and everyone will be mauled to death by the crocodile. But in a nice way obviously.

I like this photo. My daughter stuck the camera against the mesh window of the fire-engine toy and got a shot of Owen in his cage.

My daughter's current favorite story is called But No Billy. This is her favorite bit where the kids mother calls him her little bear.

My son has worn this hat religiously every day around lunchtime. I don't know what ceremonial thing he's up to but it makes me nervous how he runs out to put it on and then a little while later goes and puts it back. All I know is that while he has it on he chases me and tries to take my wallet.

Last one - my daughter wanteda photo of her brother's hands. Apparently so that if he does anything she will have a copy of his fingerprints. Welcome to the totalitarian state that is inside this house the last few days.

The Civet-Raisin Boy

2012-01-31T07:14:00.000-05:00

Drip, drip, drip.

My daughter displayed two pieces of logic yesterday that make no sense to me, but apparently make perfect sense to her. The first one is that I am somehow the biggest person she knows. So I'm bigger than her. But I'm also bigger than other people she knows who are very definitely physically bigger than I am. This was revealed to me when my daughter - trying to be kind to me - told me that I'm bigger than her teacher. Which I am not. I'm taller than her I think. But two of me would still be smaller than her teacher. So I started asking her if I was bigger than other people and it turns out I am massive inc comparison to these peons. It was difficult seeing as most of the people I actually know are small women, but when I remembered a bigger man that we both know she still says I'm biggest. But then I asked if I was bigger than her Grandpa and she said I wasn't because Grandpa's are the biggest. Interesting logic.

My daughter also explained that she summarizes her behavior for the day by the number of times she went into Timeout. First off - if you don't have kids then the very concept of Timeout sounds ridiculous. I still think it's ridiculous. I hate saying it out loud because it sounds completely absurd. but it works well and all kids know what it is. I still it should have a much cooler name like Kiddie Jail. Secondly yesterday she was an arsehole at times. But not in the way that would cause her to go to Timeout. She moaned and whinged about her brother being near her all day long. But she made absolutely no attempt to do anything by herself and insisted on playing whatever game she was playing right where he currently was at that given moment. In other words she was looking for a complaint. I obviously knew before having kids that the weapon of victim-hood is a powerful one to wield. But now I see it on a daily basis. She complains that her brother is purposefully crushing her with malice right after lying down directly underneath him on the couch. She did go in Timeout once very early on in the day (and didn't care) but mostly a good day with these little annoying episodes. This sort of small grievance-wielding happened all day long until her mother got home. At which point she randomly decided that I was an annoying prick and she wanted nothing to do with me. So I would ask a question and she'd blank me. I got her pajamas ready by laying out three to choose from - and she opted for a totally different pair. So come bed-time when her mother asked her to explain her attitude she pointed out that she could not have been mean at all because she hadn't been in Timeout. Oh she will feel the wrath of my iron fist today if she wishes to measure behavior that way. Mwahahahahaha.

Lastly I've declared a ban on raisins in my home. I had been pushing much healthier snacks for my kids and my son thought that raisins were the greatest thing on earth. Which on the one hand was annoying because I've been giving him raisins and he's been fobbing them off for ages. On the other hand him rediscovering that they are exactly what he wanted was handy seeing as we had a ridiculous surplus of them. But after a week of him inhaling huge quantities of them and rocketing them out the other end somehow un-chewed I'm vetoing it. He's been phenomenal about going to the bathroom for months now - and raisins tried to sabotage that. If you'd like to recreate the experience all you need to do is mix a cup of raisins, some Elmers clear school glue and a tablespoon of cumin. It's not the nicest. Especially when my son points at the sorry mess and announces to me that he's just found some raisins. And not just any old raisins - but some sort of human-civet raisin demon-drop blob. I - like a crude racist - assume that some Philippine tribe somewhere would eat them as a rite of passage. Or more humorously - sells them to naive Westerners who have been duped into believing they are a rite of passage or virility medicine. Free range and organic - mmmmm. I'm tempted to send some to Prince Charles on his next birthday with a note declaring that he likely doesn't own them, nor want to.

Okay - time to shovel more snow.

Crash, Bang, Wallop

2012-01-30T13:46:00.000-05:00

I realized I haven't put up any videos in a little while. So here you go.

First up - here's the dog asking for a drink.

And then there was this at lunchtime today. Madness.

Shredded Wheat and Jellyfish

2012-01-30T08:18:00.000-05:00

First off - my daughter made me this for dinner the other night.

How fantastic is that!? I was moaning about Scotch Eggs, and my wife was looking to get my daughter to help with dinner so they came up with this out of a kids cookbook we have.

Secondly all my kids have wanted to do lately is play a game called Ants. It pretty much involves unfolding a play fire-engine thing ( a toy unusued for well over a year) and putting a blanket over it. Then we all get in it and pretend to be ants who go out to find food, avoid wolves (my son's wolf licking-aid) and then hide back in the fire engine. They can play this game multiple times a day for a good 45 minutes each time. My son practically lives in it during the day at the moment.

More importantly though, my daughter has started writing the alphabet out over and over again on sheets of paper. She'll then write her name - maybe draw a picture of something - and then give it to someone as a "certificate to my party." It's pretty cute. At least it isn't like those creepy kids in movies who write thousands of pages of binary code on various sheets of paper and then lay them out on the floor - then the parent carries the kid off to bed and glances behind them to see a picture of Satan revealed in the numbers at a distance.

Anyway, she likes to do the alphabet thing at school too. In fact lately her teacher told me that she's been very impressed with her for this sort of thing. And also that my daughter is able to see things like the letter F on the next month of the year and say, "oh that's February." So comprehension, recall and application basically. When I asked if this was common in the class the teacher said not really, and the point is the focusing and taking information available and figuring out an answer. I saw some of this myself when I picked her up Friday. The teacher had given the kids Oreo's again and asked them to draw one and then eat it. Some of the kids scribbled a bit and then ate it. Some just ate it. The one kid that my daughter likes to play with started saying that he couldn't control his crayon and started scribbling on other people's paper. Then he pretended to eat the crayon, By chewing it. My daughter drew an Oreo - a brown one - and then wrote the word Oreo. So what her teacher says is lots of the kids can draw an Oreo - they can even pick the right color. And a few might be able to write the name. But only one or two of them can concentrate long enough to do it when there are snacks and other kids going on at the same time. So yes she's doing well. Of course this morning she's been repeating the phrases, "ooooh powder!!" and, "you go zoom on my womb" over and over again, so I'm not sure what to make of this.

Obviously all of this has led me to start joking about her going off to university. I was joking with a friend online about it and they joked that I should send her back to the UK for school because then she'd get a real education around smart kids. And avoid sororities, frat boys, beer pong, hardcore Ultimate Frisbee nuts (seriously) and crippling amounts of debt. Which burst the bubble somewhat. Also this weekend an old coworker of mine mentioned her husband would be at a pub playing beer pong and would likely bring home mononucleosis from sharing spit and dribble around all the beer pong cups (And definitely not from all the kissing they may allegedly get up to - it's like the defense was already nailed on).

Suddenly this reminded me that university isn't really about smart people and learning. At least not for most people. It also reminded me that worrying about swapping spit via beer pong was a million miles away from the degraded filth, debauchery and flagrant abuse of one's own body that my friends and I witnessed during college in the UK. When I did my MA in the US it was as an adult. I was married and everyone else in my classes were adult History and English teachers fulfilling their requirement to have an MA to qualify as a teacher in NY state. And never before or since have I met such a large group of people who couldn't write to a 5th grade level before. Shocking stuff. But everybody took it seriously and was unashamed in wanting to enjoy learning the stuff as much as possible. It was fantastic in that regard.

But when I went to university in the UK it was a fine line between the glorious altruistic beauty of imbibing knowledge, and sheer and utter madness. Leaving aside the fact that it was like a cross between Wipeout, Fear and Loathing In Las Vegas and Caligula (the dodgy 1979 Italian velvet-porn movie Gore Vidal wrote presumably just to have Helen Mirren shake her spaniels about in) - it was also where perfectly nice reasonable people turned into into dribbling nutters. When that many young people get together around that many mind-altering fluids/substances and with no adult supervision chaos tends to descend like a black cloud of arseholery. Add that college in the UK (and presumably the US as ewll) is filled with people who have no business being there. As in they clearly have no intention on getting a degree - or are flatly unable to actually do so. So my daughter showing smarts at an early age of four and a half is fine. But the thing that will get her through college and all the sorts of stuff my wife and I hurdled is more about having a good smart head on her shoulders and the ability to hold back a little.

What do I mean? Well - two weeks after getting to university my mates and I brought a dead jellyfish home to our student house and put it in the bathtub. Oh how hilarious we are. We found it in a haze on the beach at Caswell Bay on the Gower in South Wales. Beautiful beach by the way. All you people wondering why anyone would want to endure 8 solid months of skin-removing piling rain should know that the four months of not-rain that the Swansea area (political geography there) provides are freaking glorious. Anyhoo - as idiots tend to do we thought it would be amusing if other students in a cosmopolitan city came across (not literally - we weren't that nuts) a jellyfish in a place it shouldn't be. so we managed to get it into a garbage bag and get it home (on a bus too, no less). At which point I relinquished all responsibility for it and my housemates took it upstairs and dumped it in the bath. Where it rotted for three weeks. I seriously doubt that you can imagine the smell. Especially when, in those heady first few days of having it, "live with us" that my strange housemates did things like pour milk in there as well. I didn't live on the floor that this was on but I can assure you it was not a mystery down on my floor either. After three weeks it had mostly dissolved and one of the girls on the floor tried to wash it down the plughole. Without touching it obviously - it is still a jellyfish. Evidently that didn't work and it just made a deeper pool of dead-jellyfish-amnd-milk soup. I don't even recall how it was removed now - but I do remember how quickly the, "aren't we AWESOME!" vibe turned to sheer horror at the whole thing.

The other story that came to mind instantly was about a guy named Ben that my friends and I lived with. He may be the simplest and most socially dangerous weirdo I've ever met in my life. And all dressed up in that familiar visage of a 6 foot 4 lanky long-haired NWOBHM computer nerd who claims to love Star Trek and String Theory - but actually knew loads about the first and understood absolutely nothing about the second. Ben was also a sociopath, and a violent horrible misogynist. At the beginning I liked Ben quite a lot. But once Ben was filled with alcohol and whatever else he could sniff, lick or inhale into his body his intellect and sense of morality got much smaller whilst his flagrant ability to be a colossal prick got much bigger. Quite how he was at university in the first place I'll never know. Frankly I was astonished that he managed to find his way downstairs every day. He did and said things that defied any explanation. I didn't see Ben for six months at the beginning of my BA and when I met him again it was when I moved into the house he lived in. And he was a completely different person. Still capable of being nice at times. But also rude, angry and shockingly simple. I mean, we've all done and said stupid things, but have you ever realized that you'd forgotten to take out the wire coat-hanger from your trousers before you put them on? No - because that's nuts.

But I am absolutely certain that none of you have met anyone who has done anything as moronic as the following. I am not embellishing at all with this story - I promise that this is 100% true. About a week after I moved in to that house he said he had laundry that needed doing, but he didn't have any detergent. He asked me if he could borrow some and I said sure - just go into my cupboard and you'd find some laundry tablets in a box on the bottom shelf. About thirty minutes later I went to get something to eat. The washing machine was on but I noticed that my box of detergent tablets hadn't even been opened. I asked Ben if he'd borrowed them from someone else and he said no, he'd taken them out of my cupboard just like I said he could. So I asked him to show me. What followed was one of those moments where your brain simply cannot compute the information being provided so attempts to shut down because the new knowledge gained may damage it. Ben opened up my cupboard and pointed. Even he became slightly confused when his brain also realized something was amiss. Why? Because for some reason Ben had gone into my cupboard, opened up a box on the bottom shelf, and proceeded to put two Shredded Wheat into the washing machine with his clothes.

So my daughter being quite smart now doesn't translate into a smart eighteen year old. And a smart eighteen year old can make shockingly poor choices. The person I was in my early years at university (and I was already 22 when I went) is not who I am now almost a decade and a half later at all. So I should cut out this whole over-thinking thing immediately. Especially as some of the smartest, sharpest nicest people I know didn't go anywhere near college.

And because my daughter is still yelling, "EVERYONE! GO ZOOM ON MY WOMB!!!" whilst pretending to be an ice skater.

I Remember When: Jan 28, 2012

2012-01-28T06:13:00.000-05:00

Continuing on from last week - here are some photos from the last few years on and around this date. It's actually annoying me now that there are so many gaps in the years.

Here's my son today in 2011 watching the birds outside. Or contacting aliens. One of the two.

And here's his sister pretending to be a hippy. Although I suspect she had a bath that week so maybe not.

My living room January 29, 2010. Ugh. Not the most comfortable looking room.

And my daughter this weekend 2010 at an indoor play place near us.I keep meaning to take the kids back there but so far have not.

And her drinking out of a fancy china cup too. Note the raised pinky-finger. That's innate that is.

One more from this weekend 2010. My daughter fell asleep playing with her cousin. Who also fell asleep. Sleeping kids look kind of gross. They have a weird punched-in-the-mouth-fatlip look. Actually that sounds ominous. Ignore that.

2009.Get your Kong, get in your cage, lock the door and don't bark. Only kidding - we didn't lock it.

And this is two days from now in Bristol, 2008. Note no snow and the weird angle of the sunlight. I'm going through a phase right now of pining for Not This.

And this weekend 2008. Easiest way to clean a baby, I promise you. He reaches the places that a cloth simply cannot.

Another one. You can it's in England because she's suffering from Foot-n-Mouth disease (snare, snare, cymbal crash...).

Here's my wife happy as can be 2001 on the beach in Swansea, South Wales.

The Pay Off

2012-01-27T18:47:00.000-05:00

They managed to hang on.

My kids waited until 6.45pm for their mother to get home. And by waited I mean at 6.50 this happened.

So everybody won.

W.O.O. (With Out Oxygen)

2012-01-27T09:33:00.000-05:00

Both my kids got up today at 4.25am.

Not me though. I got up at 3.55am. With my son. My daughter also got up at 4.25am. She asked if I could go back to bed because she was tired. So I picked her up, lay her in her grunting mother's arms and buggered off knowing that wouldn't work. It didn't and she came back down five minutes later. Needless to say by the time my wife went to the three of us were not the best company for one another. My son fell asleep within minutes of his mother leaving. In a shockingly pathetic way as well. As in he had toast in his hand and fell down and didn't wake up. My daughter - now over her desperation to not be alone - demanded we don't go in the room she was in. She was hiding in a kitchen cupboard (on the ground - it's okay we gave them one so they'd leave the other one's alone) with a tiny green strobe light and her MP3 player. Which was playing the really trippy part of a Black Moth Super Rainbow song when I cracked the cupboard door open, only to have her howl like a feral coyote and for me to leave her get on with it. Either she's having a breakdown or is on pretty interesting heroin bender.

Obviously I've been delightful. I absolutely did not yell at everyone about banal tiny pointless things that definitely need to be discussed right fucking now for some reason. I definitely did not kick anything or wait excitedly to use the phrase, "oh - it threw itself on the floor all by itself did it?" (at which point I reached Middle Aged Parent: Level 6 way ahead of schedule). After my wife left I caught myself in mid-sentence sharply rebuking my daughter with, "HOW MANY TIMES HAVE I TOLD YOU NOT TO LEAVE YOUR OWL IN THE SINK," and that seemed to burst any bubble of annoyance I had. Because that's too absurd a thing to yell at kids without being an avid owl fancier with unruly children desperate to drown it in the house.

After which we've all actually been in a suspiciously happy mood. Now I'm beginning to wonder if there isn't a gas leak in the house. Or if we're unknowingly involved in a CIA test of airborne viruses that make you homicidally insane before making everything seem quite nice actually. I actually just needed something to eat apparently. I've eaten pretty much nothing but dinner, apples and pots of coffee for three days. Or what I'm now dubbing Arsehole Fuel. Apparently all that coffee and nothing but apples to soak it up with can make people with certifiable mood disorders quite temperamental. Who would have known?

Anyhoo - my daughter got to go to school in the morning today. She was quite excited by that assuming that meant she got to play with the all the morning class kids. I assured her that wasn't the case only to be proven wrong when I got there and a whole bunch of parents had dropped their kids off when they should not have. I'm actually really excited to hear what cack the kids get as a snack today. I thought they'd exhausted all possible options for the letter O before yesterday but then the teacher brought a steaming communal bowl of Spaghetti-O's. It's probably been some time since you've eaten anything like them so let me shake your guts to the core.

Blaargh. My daughter - thankfully - told me she didn't like them at all so left them One kid had three bowls. That kid is probably in hospital right now. Actually he's probably related to this lady who actually posted a recipe to a forum that consists of mashing 2 cans of the orange puke together with a pound of "hamburger." Mmmmm. I bet she just plows gin-dipped Vienna sausages into that and sets them on fire for birthday parties.

Actually this reminded me of when my wife first visited the UK in 2000. She and a bunch of American university students who were studying overseas arrived in Swansea, South Wales at 4am on a Sunday morning. Not exactly a good time to get there. The university didn't want them checking in until 9ish so my wife went off looking for something to eat. She wandered up and down the Kingsway - reeking of milk, piss and stale Fosters no doubt - looking for something that was open. She found a greasy spoon place that taxi-drivers were all hanging around in and went in. At which point she ordered the spaghetti off the menu. Sure it's Stupid O'Clock, but some pasta, sauce and maybe a meatball or two would hit the spot after travelling 3000 miles over a 24 hour period. At which point some bloke plonked a big white plate of spaghetti on toast down in front of her. Which she heroically ate anyway. Welcome to culture shock, dear.

Now - I have to actually eat something or me and Mr. Flibble might end up in a gingham dress chasing the kids around the house (+1 Internets for whoever knows what that's all about).

Me Too

2012-01-26T09:00:00.001-05:00

I might be one of them. Uh oh.

Someone just asked me - after that earlier post about food foibles - if we land on the pretentious side or the lard-and-Wonderbread side of things. Then they remembered we eat a lot of beans. But that we also have Fruitloop Friday. I reminded them why I have Fruitloop Friday (to contain evil in one space). Then I confessed we eat at both ends of the specteum - a nice dose of pretentiousness drizzled in couldn't-give-a-shit. So they asked what I ate for breakfast this morning. Normally it's a lot of coffee and an apple. That's it. But today? This -:

So I ate a tiny bowl of lemon-quinoa, chick pea and feta salad and my son ate crayons. Yeah I made the salad. Actually I ate one spoonful of mine and then he ate the rest. And while we ate we listened to a Senegalese freedom song. On top of that I'm currently dressed liked a landed-farmer and have spent the morning listening to Rev. N.T. Wright talk about Ephesus.

Yeah I might be one of them actually. Best eat some Walmart-brand pork rinds immediately.

Apple Of My Eye

2012-01-26T07:54:00.002-05:00

"We ate an octopus at school Daddy!"

The letter of the week at school for my daughter this week is the letter O. So on Monday - after the kids got orange fruit roll-ups - my daughter and I sat around trying to think up snacks that begin with the letter O that they might get this week. Other than orange slices and Oreo's I couldn't think of anything. My daughter did think of an octopus and her brother (which actually she got slightly worried about initially - as if she'd have to go through with eating him due to peer pressure even though she didn't want to) but that still only made up half the week. Less if you got rid of the octopus and her brother. It's Thursday today so I can confirm that so far they had the fruit roll-ups and Oreo's (which my daughter said had apple filling) and Oscar Meyer hot dogs. Which is bending the rules somewhat by including the brand name. Better though is that when the teacher pulled out the hot dogs and asked why they were a food beginning with O my daughter told her the big long story about when she went camping in Maine and her Daddy made her Octo-dogs over the camp fire. And for anyone (which is pretty much non-Americans) who don't know what that is - it's when you peel a hot dog to look like this -:

They're usually called spider-dogs, but we were in Maine so I made it more relative to the ocean and the locality. And as Maine is mostly only famous for lobster, blueberry ice-cream, weird-voiced Senators, Whoopie pies and aggregiously claiming the New England Patriots as their football team even though they reside three states away - it was the best I could do. I'd move there in a heartbeat too by the way.

Anyhoo - with all that in mind - and the current story about Jamie Oliver's healthy lunch program being chucked in the garbage in the Los Angeles Unified School District (which feeds over half a million kids a day by the way) my wife and I were wondering what food the school here gives their kids for lunch. We were hoping that the stuff given to 4 year old pre-K kids wasn't indicative. But I also recalled my wife's tales about how her high school raised money by signing contracts with fast food and big soda companies. Yeah - soda machines in the school to help get extra money to piss up the wall on football.

So, we got the menu. I hope you like fried mozzarella sticks!

That's not as terrible as I thought it was going to be. But it's still very very bad. Fried cheese? Followed by pizza? And there are an awful lot of not-healthy-thing-on-breaded-thing meals in there.

Fortunately for me this week the wonderful people at NPR ran this story in which they state, "the first major nutritional overhaul of school meals in more than 15 years means most offerings — including the always popular pizza — will come with less sodium, more whole grains and a wider selection of fruits and vegetables on the side. Sounds good.

Of course everywhere is a cultural battleground these days. And nowhere are people more prepared to point out why they are ace and other people suck than online. Especially via a media entity like NPR that many conservatives see as a tool for elitist liberalism, and liberals view as a bastion of elitist liberalism. I jest of course. I love NPR. But Patton Oswalt is beyond correct when he points out that it doesn't do itself any favors by playing 4 hours of weak imitation white-man jazz before interjecting with stories about trust fund students research scream singing in Tibet.

Anyway the point is that I first came across this story on Facebook. The very first comment underneath it was, "We only eat organic and antibiotic and hormone free foods." Presumably they all breast feed from a wet nurse. The second comment was, "Why is the federal government involved in local schools in the first place. Our republic disappears more every day." I thought that perhaps I should give the actual NPR page a quick glance to see if that was filled with similar stuff and lo and behold it starts off with the comment, "I heard this story on the radio twice this morning. It jumped out at me that multiple time you said fruits and vegetables. Now that I find the written story, it is written that way too. I believe the proper English way is to say fruit and vegetables, since plural for fruit is fruit." I knew this was going to be fantastic.

Go find it on Facebook. You'll spend an hour reading the most absurd, pretentious, deliberately-argumentative, pissing contest you will have read in a long time. And I say this as someone who reads a blog called Food Renegade - written by a home-schooling nutritional coach who - in response to brand name food companies declares, "I want us to shout a collective and resounding “NO!” to the killers overrunning our society." But the NPR Facebook page has more comedy gold in it than you could ever hope for. Nowhere on earth is there a more concentrated congruence of vegetarians. Or - ironically - other people who hate vegetarians. I joked to a friend about how the comment are all very, "Tarquin suckles from a unicorn. Pardon? Yes Tarquin is my husband. I spit-feed my children pages from Gloria Steinem's seminal work on Transsexualism like a bird feeding it's young." But they are. I'm going to liberally cut a paste a bunch right here for comic effect. I swear these are real.

- After reading these vomit inducing comments, one would get the impression that mcDonald's and Kraft Mac N' Cheese should have gone out of business years ago. I've never read so much bullshit in one thread in a long time. "My 5 year old chose to eat vegan.." "I only feed my child organic sushi for school lunch.." "My kid gets organic snow pea pods and free range chicken breast every day and he loves it.." "we would never shop anywhere but Whole Foods.."...Upper Middle class do-gooder white limousine liberal moms and dads who think that by spending 5 times more for a tomato than they need to somehow makes them the good Obama supporters they so wish everyone would believe they are. Go back to your Chevy Suburbans and your whites only schools, and whites only tennis and swim clubs tomorrow. Now I remember what I hate most about NPR, THE FUCKING LISTENERS!

- We lived in France for a few years and that was the best education in dining my kids could ever have asked for. Four courses, salad with chicken gizzards, rabbit stew and boiled tongue.

- ugh stop the wheat madness.. wheat is terrible for you. stop feeding your kids wheat and low fat shit.

- Smoked turkey & provolone on soft wheat cut into a Tie Fighter or Millennium Falcon.

- Fuck ur soy products that cost 3 to 4 $ for a little less than a quart. If the gov. Wants to have people healthy make organic food accessible to the 99% fuckin yuppies.

- Maybe Obama can come over and pack it for me too. Perhaps he can do the grocery shopping and laundry while he's at it. I'm so grateful for him running my life.

- Please stop the madness! (that's the whole comment.)

- Our two-year-old generally eats more healthily than we do. He loves tofu. We can only hope he stays that way...

- I pack my little one potent, fresh marijuana brownies. He's all tuckered out by the time he comes home from kindergarten. Marijuana: The modern day pacifier.

- A meat sandwich. (this is my favorite comment - not even a description of what the meat was)

- Homemade Miso soup with tofu and seaweed in a thermos every day.

- My child's school has 2 organic gardens and chickens. Every day groups of kids cook lunch for the entire school.

- My three year old is a vegan so he often has to inform his friends that Lunchables are not real food.

- Obama and administration can just get the fuck out of my lunch box.

- I only provide my children organic whole grain foods from Trader Joes.

- We are raising our 7 year old as a vegetarian - although she's more of a fruitetarian. (Future school-punching bag there.)

- Bread, and sometimes water. (Evidently a prison school of some sort.)

- I don't have kids but if I did they'd eat the same as I do. Lentil pancakes and vegetable cornbread.

- Oh no Obama!! You are doing yet another awesome thing for America. I'm sure republicans will find something to complain about with this too!!!

- I usually pack a big tupperware (12x8 inches) of "who really gives a shit", topped with "fuck that". For a tasty beverage, I fancy a brand named thermos filled to the brim with a luke warm fluid that is white in color, has the consistency of semen, and goes down smooth. After I let my milkshake chill out in the fridge, I remove it from the cooling unit and allow minimal loss of temperature. After my classmates experience the unique taste of my milkshake, I retort with a "My milkshake, it's better than yours", which is of course followed by their response of "you're damn right, its better than ours". Due to the superiority of my milkshake, it brings all the boys to the yard.

And lastly, my contribution - There's only one rule in my house - don't eat anything that smells like it has a yeast infection.

View From A Mentalist: Jan 25, 2012

2012-01-25T10:01:00.000-05:00

I haven't been able to convince my daughter to pick her camera up in a few days so I thought if I did this and showed her she might get back in the mood. So here goes.

Her brother two days ago doing his Gangsta thing. Actually not Gangsta at all - he likes trying on hats and clothes and prancing about. Make of that what you will.

I was using popcorn as a reward yesterday but neither of the kids ate it. Either it's a junk brand (new box) or their current state of mind of not eating anything even if it's in the Treat category is stronger than I thought. My daughter told me that a boy at school cried once when they all had popcorn because his parents had told him they were small rocks and he couldn't eat them until he was much bigger or they'd hurt his teeth. Madness.

My daughter's "difficult 7th album" - a death-reggae jazz-fusion remix album of Miles Davis numbers called Blue Spain. Possibly.

When my daughter makes her bed (I'd say that's about 50% of the time) she always puts this duck in there. She doesn't sleep with it. And she has lots of other stuffed animals in a toybox that she snubs regularly. But apparently this is part of the process.

I've been meaning to put this card back in the box for over a year. Which is shameful.I think her Blue Spain album should just feature her yelling/crooning answers from Trivial Pursuit cards like a Mike Patton word-salad spazmotic thing.

Why? Why did she take this photo? Anyway this reminded me of the fact that seemingly everyone I know has told me at some point that they have dropped their phone into the toilet. Which I think means they were trying to take a photo. Which is unsavory. On the plus side I now know I don't have to clean this right now.

Me and the Oboe. He's miserable because he's not wearing my hat. Lately unless he's wearing some kind of accessory he behaves like he's completely under dressed.

Last one - my daughter took this and started going the Princess Bounce adventure time route. But after brainstorming and airing Princess Bounce and Daddies Bleeding Beans as a story title I suddenly became afraid for my safety.

The School Of Death

2012-01-24T14:05:00.001-05:00

Apparently I'm giving my kids diseases via the institution of schools.

Someone I know online elsewhere (who definitely won't be reading this) asked me if I think my kids are sicker because of my daughter being at school. I said yes and they gave me the, "so you see - there is literally nothing that home schooling wouldn't improve." Granted it is often annoying to have a perpetual cold. But the notion that germs = bad is flat out weird. It's not as if' I'm trying to give my kids unnecessary diseases by sending them to school. But this sort of suggests that just by sending my daughter to school and her picking up illnesses that I am being mildly abusive. Or at least neglectful. Which sounds like a thought process that Joseph Fritzl had at some point. I realized I was in a pointless conversation when I mentioned my wife brought this cold home. Then my friend hinted that I would have been the reason her children were harmed. Bizarre view of life that.

What was more amusing about though is that lately I've been fighting with my daughter about her ignoring me and the massive amount of talking-back that she does. Yep - both ends of the spectrum there. I get either nothing or an explosive reaction. I'll do something very normal and without the slightest hint of meanness like ask her to help pick up the toys and she'll angrily respond, "NO! - I don't want to." Which is rude. Obviously this is just a testing phase and somewhat related to her own character and my parenting. And yet still as soon as she responds I still get the thought in my head that she's learned this off some snotty little shit at school. Probably while they were explaining you don't have to listen to your parents and sneezing all over her and giving her a stomach bug.

Moving on from getting my kids sick, I taught them a game this morning that I was very much the champion of. Basically it involved getting my dog all excited by giving him the signal that there's going to be something very exciting to lick. Once he was ridiculously jazzed up I then gave him free reign to lick the inside of my ear. The point of the game then is to see how long I could last before I couldn't take it any more. I got 28 seconds. My son couldn't get him to lick his ear at all and often ended up presenting his open mouth - which my dog was all for licking inside of. Leading me to draping my body over him like a human shield. My daughter managed about a second before rolling away. I realized that maybe this whole thing wasn't appropriate after my fourth go at a record time and the kids had buggered off to play another game without me noticing. Possibly around my second go.

Later on when I sent my daughter off to school my son - hitting some kind of record now - stepped in dog poo and then tried to wipe it off with his hands. Absolutely everywhere. Smudged in between his fingers like he was squashing plasticine. Last time we went outside when he could wear sneakers he stepped in it as well. So while I've enjoyed the temperate odd winter we're having I'm annoyed that my brain hasn't adjusted to compute in mud and dog shit.Now I hope it freezes so that cannot happen. Which it will by about 4pm.

All of which proves that we'd all pretty much be riddled with diseases, home school or not.

My Eye Looks Like a Philly Cheesesteak

2012-01-24T08:04:00.000-05:00

Balls.

I didn't escape. Apparently during the night someone tried to melt cheese in my right eye. At least that's what it looked like when I got up. Oddly it doesn't itch at all. No pain really either. It just looks like mozzarella. It's not making more though - I've been up a fair while and I'm not oozing cheese tears - which is a good thing.

My daughter is having a sensitive morning. So this will be brief. She doesn't want to be awake. Or out of bed. She won't stay in bed or try to sleep though. It's quite frustrating because she clearly just needs to sleep some more. Hopefully it won't quickly descend to that thing she did yesterday where she was trying to tell me something - got confused and forgot what it was - but definitely remembered that she was unhappy with me - therefore kept crying she was unhappy with me but had absolutely no idea why. That was not fun at all.

So now she just wants to lie on me. So I'm off to let her do that once she comes back from getting pillows. And keep her brother off her. He's in the OBOTRON SMASH!!! mood this morning too. When I got up early with him this morning he ran right through the living room into the kitchen and asking for crap to eat. That's never happened so who knows what he had in mind.

Alright - it's cuddling time.

Captain Cheesestick and The World's Stickiest Birth Cake

2012-01-23T13:21:00.001-05:00

In spite of being sick we have still tried to play.

Most of the morning I admit to having the TV on too much. I tried in vain to feed my daughter things. She kept saying she was hungry but didn't want Oyster crackers - which was what I was giving her after puking this morning whilst asking for breakfast. It was quite odd actually - she took a sip of her drink and then just started emptying her stomach all over the floor. She didn't regurgitate or cough-puke - it was just all happening at the same time. I was standing holding her hair and she was still trying to ask what was for breakfast. After that she still kept asking for food. She wanted an English Muffin. Didn't eat it though. Same with some toast. Then she asked for dessert. Erm - no. We tried an apple and a banana but she gave it a courtesy nibble and then left them to rot before I salvaged the apple (for me) and the banana (for her brother). I cut the bit off her gob had touched on each first. So she asked for a hug and a Salami sandwich. It was only 9am by this point but she needed to eat something else. Especially as she'd completely gone in for being told to drink water and had 5 or 6 glasses.

She at the salami and didn't eat the bread at all. Her brother didn't eat his bread either. Although he did make a total mess of munching his salami and bit his own finger. To be fair I wouldn't eat that bread. I haven't been to our regular grocery store for a bit so haven't picked up the decent bread they sell. It actually feels like bread and - my wife assures me - taste like it as well. Instead I bought one loaf of Nature's Pride and one loaf of Arnold. Utter garbage they are. The US can claim it's way of life is superior over any other nation that it feels like - but I can assure you that bread here is terrible. There's no point having an entire aisle of choice when every single thing in it is absolute junk. When we lived in western NY there was a bakery that sold decent bread. A store 40 minutes from here also sells half-decent bread. And the stuff at my local place is decent. But the brand name stuff is complete shite. Think of the cheapest nastiest stuff that you can buy in Britain. That is still far far better than this stuff. Worse than that when it isn't on sale it's at least $4 as well. So you end up forking out $5.50 for crud. I bought these two loaves on sale granted, but I'm tempted to chuck the lot in the garbage and make a loaf of my own. Except with all of us possibly harboring a shitting disease I'm not too keen on that idea.

So after chucking some peanut butter on the old toast I'd made my daughter ate a third of it and said she wanted to wash windows. So my son and I sat around watching television and playing trains. In the middle of that my daughter asked with a little hope if we were going outside to play in the rain. Her attitude and whatnot is as perky as it can get. Which is weird. With that in mind I figured I should stop being sluggish myself - turned the TV off and we went upstairs to play Hide and Seek in my bed. My daughter - clearly driven mad by lack-of-sleep and having a completely empty intestine started screaming out storylines about Princess Bounce and Dr. Bonk. Dr. Bonk - normally her sidekick - had been turned mean when he got The Tickle Touch (probably a Catholic thing) and was now after me and her. Sadly I - Captain Cheesestick had been turned into a dog - now named Captain Woofstick. Which was thought of when my kids pulled the duvet back to find a very annoyed but stubborn dog who refused to get off the bed no matter what chaos occurred around him. Due to me being a dog Princess Bounce became my sidekick to fight off the evil Dr. Bonk and his Tickle Touch. All of which pretty much involved me hiding under the duvet and my kids wriggling around all over the place until I tickled them and then they ran away into a different room. Disturbingly my daughter kept yelling, "he's trying to get your birth cake!!" whilst fighting her brother off. I tried to get some more detail about what kind of monstrosity a birth cake may be and all she could muster was that it was, "very sticky." Well it would be wouldn't it? I'm declaring it as The Second Worst Cake Ever after urinal cakes.

My daughter had run off with her brother at one point into his room. Not feeling 100% I just lay in my bed under the duvet promising myself I wouldn't fall asleep. A few minutes later the kids came back in and my daughter started saying how she and Dr. Bonk had been making plans to get Captain Woofstick and steal his Birth Cake. and we played a little more and spent ten minutes just lying around looking out the window at the slush. After a little while my daughter asked if she could go downstairs and watch Thomas with her brother. Sure - he'll likely fall asleep and I can sit doing sod all at the same time.

Before we went down she took me into her brother's room to show me "the plan." I assumed she was just talking nonsense to be honest. But no she was dead on. In my son's room is the chalkboard easel my daughter got as a present. It's on rotation at the moment and will go to her room next month before probably coming downstairs in March to make it seem like a new thing to play with. My daughter showed me what she'd drawn/written on it and explained the plan. On it was a poorly drawn circle with an X through it. She told me, "the blob is a blueberry" - which apparently represented me. To top it off she explained the X was how she and her brother, 'plan to get rid of you today." Okay then. I'm a little annoyed that my vanity is stronger than my wish to remain alive, in that I'm more upset I'm depicted as a giant blueberry blob than them planning to eliminate me.

So I'll have to stay on my guard all day now. Right now my son is desperately rolling around on my lap trying to nod off. He could just stay still and do it but that apparently is too easy. My daughter is coloring in the kitchen. Hopefully she hasn't unknowingly vomited all over the place. Although if she did it would probably win this year's Tate Modern prize.

Captain Woofstick needs coffee.

The Common Cold, Ayahuasca and The Brown Beelzebub

2012-01-23T07:16:00.000-05:00

We are all sick at the moment. Nothing particularly gruesome personally. But my wife is sick. She has the kind of cold where it actually feels like your head is decompressing and may implode. She still left for work just shy of 6am mind you.A real trooper she is. She doesn't want someone bringing plague and evil into her place of work. But she thankfully isn't one of these people that simply must see a doctor and miss work when the cold comes around. So she'll no doubt be charging around (or oozing about like a snail - complete with mucus trail) reading amusing empowerment slogans that are written on her throat lozenges and telling her employees that a missed day is a missed opportunity to kill the enemy. Well no - not the last bit. This isn't Britain circa World War II you know. This is America, where very little is going to stop the enemy - whoever they apparently are this week - from being killed.

My son is on the down-slope of his crusty eye thing. And he also Stage One of his mother's delightful cold. He didn't sleep after 1am (hence my wife didn't sleep - although she assures me she would not have anyway) and I got up with him at 3.45. He fell asleep at 6am but woke up about 20 minutes later. He's surprisingly spring-heeled this morning.

My daughter has the eye thing, but not so much. She is also embracing with open arms Stage One of the family cold. That must have been boring to her, so to make things interesting she spent part of the night and some of this morning projectile vomiting. And having violent attacks of diarrhea. The correct parlance for her would be the delightful, "coming out of both ends." Strangely though her mood is better than it's been for weeks. She's positively beaming right now. She's like those indigenous people of South America who give themselves psychedelic vomiting concoctions that cause them to hallucinate and vomit for 8 hours straight. Which frankly sounds terrifying to me. But they view it as a spiritual and physical cleansing and apparently are as joyous and jovial as my daughter is this morning. In between pooing, anyway.

I somehow don't have the eye thing. I do have the cold but am fortunate to have suffered through the most insanely evil cold of my life last year so am finding this one mild in comparison. Of any of us I'm probably prime candidate for catching a contagious vomiting illness seeing as after my daughter threw up (all over my bed) I lay down with her in her bed to comfort her back to sleep. Which she'd also thrown up in. I'm actually not certain if she threw up before and after I lay down with her. As in I lay down with her and my brain said, "you might want to check this bed too you know" and I didn't.

So mostly now I'm hoping the vomiting/pooing thing a) doesn't continue, and b) no-one else starts doing that. We've always been fortunate to have a short delay when a stomach bug works it's way through our family allowing someone to look after the rest of us. I've heard awful horrid tales from friends and acquaintances of entire families lying prostrate around their houses vomiting into towels, sheets and piles of clothing simply because there are just too many people currently vomiting and squirting The Brown Beelzebub into things that are more appropriate. I don't want that. My son though is rubbing it right in his sister's face (not literally thankfully) by calmly and causally pooping his well-formed not-sick-at-all concoctions into the toilet with a smile on his face. Let that continue please. When he gets that kind of sick it's horrendous.

Anyway it's time to explain - again - to my daughter why her logic that because she's sick she should get candy makes no sense at all.

Googly Eyed Weirdos

2012-01-22T08:58:00.000-05:00

As some of you know Google seems to think that this humble blog is a hub of sorts for degenerate weirdos looking for all sorts of filth. People will search for something relatively simple and Google will shake it's little algorithm up and down and say, "what you want is this blog about raising kids." Which is ridiculous when you consider the number of people who have come here via the search term, "arse crack." Now I'm no detective, but I'm thinking that they were after something else. And why would Google send them to me? For the purposes of research I would like to point out there actually is website simply called arsecrack.com. That would seem a more likely candidate to throw their way surely? Weirder still is that I'll see a search that is bizarre and I'll Google it myself and I cannot find it. How deep into the searches did they go? I filter for images and blogs specifically and still nowt. It's very worrisome.

Of course people have said to me, "well maybe you should think about the types of things you're writing about and you wouldn't get weirdos." Well, yes I do hear what you're saying. But more, no - that's ridiculous. Me writing about something shouldn't lead to Google to deciding that because an entire post includes the words "cat," "finger," and "bottom" that this website should be offered as a prime candidate for curious feline botherers Googling late at night.

But that's not actually the thing that gets me. No - its that aforementioned pervs and nutters Google filth, Google gives them no doubt hundreds/thousands of matches including this site and yet they click on this instead of the ones they were clearly going for. I have only recently changed the name of this blog. It was very obviously not a shadow-front for degenerate filth before with a clever name designed to throw off The Fuzz. It was a Dad blog. I could forgive someone clicking on this title, but not before.

Anyway - some of it is genuinely odd, amusing and makes me laugh out loud. Some of it is just disgusting evil crap as well. I'm not reprinting what search terms those people tapped right into their Google search bar, but rest assured if I saw that if you lived with someone and found that they'd searched for just one of these things then you wouldn't live them for much longer.

Anyhoo - let's keep it light. Here are my favorite searches so far.

- Giraffe licking their snot
- Horrifying cat luggage
- arse worms
- where are my cheese nips (probably a Google Map search)
- "NCIS" and "puking"
- how do i get my daughter to stop telling me to stop interrupting her
- poopin site.blogspot.com (really? I'm a top search here?)
- Wife taking off pants
- snot toothpaste
- why the mother turtles cry when laying their eggs
- gypsy moth caterpillar (a real jackpot for Attenborough types apparently)
- peanut butter dog lick (a frightening number of people search for this)
- cow vulva
- boner being made
- is steve buscemi sick?
- rabies awareness magnets (actually I completely understand this one and have probably Googled that at least 20 times myself)
- between my daughter's toes (how vague a search is that?)
- Dan Savage son
- mommy has nice boobs (how old was the Googler here?)
- shitty sausage tackle freak dad lactating (yeah...)
- hot dogs with spam
- having an orgasm
- surprise show dog lick peanut butter
- bicycle going nowhere
- balls bashing/ball bashing (very different searches - same Google outcome)
- mix and match animal flip book template
- bicycle repair
- clean up on aisle number nine
- girl with collar sucking on a banana (I'm guessing a religious vegan search of some kind)
- mentalist dec (I think that's someone's actual name)
- pic of charlie brown hula hooping
- i want my russian teacher (to do what exactly?)
- thrift (really? that's one word - how does that get here?)
- things people have never done
- beef twinkies (you're picturing something right now and I know what it is)
- boob/boobs
- daddy frankenstein
- the wrong kind of eggs
- daddy makes the dog lick (I'm thinking they hit enter too early here)
- rabbit bendy toy
- my inlaws Asian fish needs a shit (okay then)
- do santas reindeer like carrots and ranch (that might be my daughter now I think about it)
- little people pooping octopus
- large pictures truffle shuffle boy
- look at that frosty goat
- "mark harmon" (what am I - TMZ?)
- bap bad
- chocolate milk and zoloft (a fine breakfast let me assure you)
- buckley balls
- grandpas nuts
- "clint dempsey" (boy were they disappointed)
- dead hand
- demon inch worm images
- santa claus degrading the school bike

and my current favorite

- Mexican chocolate stream

Princess Bounce and The Finger Robots

2012-01-21T10:18:00.001-05:00

"Daddy, I like when a snack doesn't taste like a finger."

Everyone got up sick today. I got up at 4am because my son was rattling. I thought if my wife wanted a few hours of noise-less alone time in the massive bed she could have it. Instead my wife got at 4am as well to take him to the bathroom, and then went straight off to work 5 minutes later so she could sneak in a decent 7-8 hours on a Saturday and still be home around lunchtime-ish. My son got up at 4am because he was awake, and being awake is a really great time to do stuff with trains. My daughter got up at 5am because no one else was in bed. Then I lay down with her (her brother came in and out a few times) and she drifted off but in the end got up at 5.40am. At which time she complained that her throat hurt a lot, that she had a nasty cough (yep), crusty eyes and - perhaps worst of all - The Monster That Licks Armpits was hiding in the bed with her. "No he isn't - he's gone" I tried. She kept it up. "No really - he isn't under there." He was though.

Anyway - we all got up and did the usual. Which was eat oatmeal. Today the kids chose Peaches and Cream. Although my daughter insisted on calling it cow's milk all morning. Being a breastfed girl she hadt o learn to differentiate between types of milk, so not sure why she was calling it cow's milk. Anyhoo - they had two bowls each.

After that a terrible event occurred. My daughter alerted me to the fact that Wiggle and Waggle - two pet fingers that she has (bare with me here) were missing. Their bed - where they should be sleeping at this time of day was empty.

If you're having any difficulty at all picturing Wiggle/Waggle nestled up in bed - here's a recreation we made when we alerted the police.

Obviously we'd all like to thank Nigel the Nostril Fiddler for playing the part of Waggle in this recreation. Anyway - the police were hopeless. They seemed to think we were wasting their time. Presumably they had mailman to arrest or some such madness. While we searched everywhere for Wiggle and Waggle my daughter came up with some evidence. Which was this -:

I assumed it was a The World's Tinniest Man's biggest ever snowball. Apparently not. My daughter informed me it was actually the pupa that finger's lay before they turn into robots. Seriously - she came up with that. Hallmarks of a serial killer or someone who tries to start a cult in Joshua Tree right there. Or - and this is unlikely - someone who just read a book about butterflies ten minutes before we started playing this.

Anyway - moving on. We searched everywhere (on this side of the living room) for Princess Bounce and Dr. Bonk. But the only person we found was a little racing car driver named Levar who told us that he would tell us where they were if we gave him some pink milk. So we did and he told us they were at The Other Couch.

Obviously here we plowed on across the room to The Other Couch. First though my daughter had to take a break and go to the bathroom. Where she unfortunately informed me that she'd "made it your favorite color" and I had to express some sort of gratitude for it. Shrugging off questions about if there's a name other than light-brown for a that color poo (I offered beige and tan before realizing I didn't want to carry on with color-coding my daughter's feces) I managed to get her focused back on the notion that we were looking for Princess Bounce and Dr. Bonk so they could - in turn - help us find Wiggle and Waggle before the Finger Robots get them.

Before we'd even stepped a foot we met resistance. That being Derrek the Banana Giraffe (not a giraffe - as you can see) and Henry the Overtly Flamboyant Lion.

They didn't offer much of a test for us though and we simply hit them with a book about Pinocchio. At which point the lights went out (I threw a blanket on my daughter) and we realized it was a trap. When I came to my daughter was missing (giggling behind the chair near the front door) and my son hd run off to the toilet. I managed to take this photograph before passing out again though (also known as realizing my son usually runs off to the toilet alone to attempt doing the whole thing alone and - not being big enough at all - ending up commuting a Browncident that he can't cope with).

I'm still unconscious now (for the purposes of continuity of storyline). Or - more accurately - my daughter has buggered off upstairs to play with her Dora The Explorer cash register and try on dungarees.

I Remember When

2012-01-21T05:55:00.002-05:00

I thought maybe once a week I might put up some photos that my wife and I took around about this week over the last few years. Probably most of these will be of my kids because I don't recall ever taking a photograph before I had children. Now I realize that a few people have told me, "Dude - nobody is coming to your blog to look at photographs of your kids." Oh really? You should see some of the search terms that people Google to get here. Some people can't believe their luck when this stuff comes up - trust me.

Anyway - here goes.

This would be this morning at just after 5am. I'm dressed quite a bit like a bloke (ha!) in a towel ready to wash people's feet from a book I put up here awhile back. Ridiculous to compare - he didn't have a pink sweater - but there you go.

So this is January four days ago 2011. This says everything you'd need to know about my kid's personalities.

Again this time last year - my daughter learned to ice skate in a shockingly short amount of time. Her Uncle taught her on the frozen lake out back of the in-laws house. She learned to ski as well last year.

This was January this weekend 2010. This was the first Winter my daughter really liked. There was a TON of snow that year. This is at the in-laws house again.

Same weekend. Oh yes - free icicles. My son now wears all these clothes outside and I get flashbacks.

This weekend in 2009. My daughter had thwacked her lip on the floor so had that going for her. She was also showing that she really liked dressing up. We were living in a rental in Floyd, NY back then.I think I should put my son in this kilt and photograph him.

And same time 2009. After this we made her clean out the septic tank and shovel the driveway.

Speaking of which - this was three days ago 2009. Look at that smiling face - it's almost as if he understands.

Knowing how much people like photos of babies dribbling on things - here's my daughter today in 2008. We were still living in Bristol in England when this was taken.

Most of the photos before 2008 that I have are in the Spring and Summer. And I have lots of oldero nes that are around Fall. But this onehas a date of Jan 2, 2006 on it so it's a real treat for you. I'm hoping to get lots of Google traffic for Sepia Englishman's Arse after this.

Doing It Wrong

2012-01-20T14:39:00.000-05:00

We saw the mailman get arrested today.

Well, confronted by two police cars and asked to get out of his own. He was my mailman too and hasn't been yet. I'm going to assume he won't be around today. I was driving my daughter to school to talk with the teacher about her ear problem yesterday. And there on the next street over I saw the flashing lights and they pulled over in front of the mailman's car. It's very recognizable - partly because it's bright red with a light on top (for some reason) - but also it drives up the wrong side of the road delivering mail. Which evidently it was at the time. Another police car pulled up behind him to box him in. That can't be good. One car is a traffic violation. Two is a planned thing. I dearly hope the police officer said something like, "don't even think about touching your package," during the skirmish.

That's about as exciting life has been today though. Other than paying taxes and water bills today I've realized I was achieving the very opposite of what I was intending to. I've been foolishly trying to schedule things a little more this week. It'd be good for all of us if I could do that. I have things that I feel compelled to do, would like to do and need to get done. My kids like rules and plans too so it seemed like a good idea. But with illnesses and different things going on I haven't been all that good about it. I know some Moms who do all sorts that I couldn't begin to think about. I feel like I've achieved something if I made it out to buy milk and home without losing anyone.

This may all sound a little odd but here goes anyway. In the morning after the wife leaves and the kids eat I like to finish up anything I wanted to online. This is usually alright with the kids because they want to play with things or do crafts. After that I clean up the kitchen with my headphones in. I'll either listen to some stand-up/radio show or singalong to some music. When I'm done cleaning I'll play for a bit with my son and help my daughter make whatever it is she wants making. Then I'll either do a little more singing in the kitchen or do the laundry. It sounds somewhat silly but a good sing while you get stuff done makes you feel pretty good. Then I'll sit down and do some reading. At the moment I'm divvying up three books. One is a historical literature book, one is a theology book and the last is a Bible study book we got from our last church. I'm not really making much traction with any of them though. I missed the time to do this Wednesday and Thursday due to illness and arguing, and today I didn't do it due to going out to pay bills. In fact I could be doing that now. So now I feel like I'm behind on reading so get irritable when I pick up a book and my children rightly ask me to take them to the toilet or pretend to be a pony.

After my daughter goes to school I play with my son and sit with him and read. After he either conks out or wants alone time I try and play some guitar. I've been telling myself I need to learn again. I used to be alright but I can't remember half the stuff I used to be able to play. Mind you the stuff I want to play now isn't the same stuff so maybe that's good. After that I'll fart around online for half an hour - which is what this is. But at one point today I realized I was doing it wrong. I was trying to play and sing along to a song called Doubting Thomas by Nickel Creek. It's a very pretty song with a very nice vocal melody. It's not particularly complicated but I'm cack-handed today. The point of the song is one that I like too and fairly self-evident by it's title. The more I plucked along the more my daughter demanded that I don't play because she can't hear her own game. She has a Leapfrog pen-book thing and I'd stuck the headphones on it so she could hear it and her brother could not - which would attract him over to steal it from her to lick/smash/ooze discharge onto. But she also insisted on sitting next to me which meant I was too loud. So the more I tried to play the more I was told not to and the more irritated I became. Now you can listen to any music you want and get whatever you want out of it. But it's generally not the case that you listen to tinkly acoustic guitar/mandolin songs with biblical themes in them and get steadily angrier and angrier. That seems to be the opposite point of it.

So instead of cleaning, or reading, or planning dinner, or making treats (I always plan that), or playing guitar, or playing with my son (he's not interested) I'm doing this silliness. I briefly thought about going out and getting a haircut, but no way my son would allow that. Add I'm too cheap to give someone money to cut my hair. I'm compelled to do it though after last week telling my wife that a character on Parks and Recreation (Ben Wyatt) was being used in a very public analogy for someone who looks like a foppish weakling - and then her yesterday telling me I look like him but not as frail. Which seems to be based around the fact my hair is absurdly puffy and I like wearing this shirt -

Whatever. Here online I'm a giant of a man. Or at least a massive pillock.

View From A Mentalist: Jan 20, 2012

2012-01-20T09:26:00.001-05:00

So - not much photographing going while we leak on things.

Pretty ingenious this. My son tended to let his apple roll all over so my daughter plonked it in here for him. Now he tends to keep it in here when he's not munching on it. She also pointed out that this way he gets an apple and apple juice.Nice work.

This may surprise you but this is actually a toy. That doesn't look anything like Mr. Flipover - my daughter's bus driver - either. He doesn't wear a hat that I think only Equestrians wear.

This would be my daughter photographing her mouth to show me that isn't too sick for chocolate eggs. Unfortunately after I showed her this photo she panicked because there are holes in her mouth where the eggs might get stuck.

The Megaball family. They tend to live out of reach (although clearly she can get to them judging by this photo) because the kids just chuck them all over and go mental at how bouncy they are. And before anyone goes all Arthur Conan Doyle - no that isn't a real angel behind them.

Some dried pineapple rings. My daughter would not stop going on about these once my wife brought them home. She knew they were candy-like so just kept saying, "So who are these for? Why are they in the house? What are we going to do with them?" I'm using them in a rice dish but oh no - she wouldn't let it lie.

Last one - It's the letter of the week at school. Let's test the purity of your mind shall we. Last time I picked my daughter up I sat in the class for five minutes. During which time the teacher said to the whole room of children, "Your absolute favorite thing begins with F everyone. Can you guess what it is?" Go on - think of it. Actually I think you'll find it was friends. The teacher said it may have been family. I thought that maybe for Generation Y it might be either Facebook or Farmville. But you - oh no - you had to make it lewd and sexual didn't you?

Crusty Oozing Eye Discharge

2012-01-20T08:29:00.002-05:00

I hope you're comfortable with discharge.

My son has a double eye infection. Which obviously means we all do now. After dragging him off to the doctor very early yesterday and making him cry ("It's HIM!!! The bastard with the needles!!")I got the all clear that it wasn't Pinkeye. Because his eye isn't red. At least not yet. The doctor told me that his wife's biggest bugaboo (as an eye doctor herself) is that people see crap oozing out of their kids eyes and then insist on getting antibiotics. Well - I don't. My concern was that my there was a huge amount of crusty green crap (obviously it comes out like apple sauce originally - although I am currently unable to verify if it actually tastes like apple sauce) chuffing it's way out of my son's face and now seemingly out of my daughter. So something icky and clearly contagious. 99 times out of 100 I would just go to the pharmacy and get something and see how it did for a few days. I'm not the type that zooms off to the doctor at the first sign of something. Nor the second, third or eighth sign. I'm also well aware that most things wrong with people can't be treated by anything at all other than time and loathe the fact that people go demanding antibiotics that they don't need for problems that are about to resolve themselves.

But my wife had mentioned that I might need to take my son to the doctor. Which in my wife's language means take him to the doctor or be prepared to show me all your detailed research into why you did not take him. She isn't alarmist either and never goes to the doctor. But she will know everything about whatever it is that is likely wrong with whomever. I don't like to bother anyone really. The other issue also is that now my daughter is in school I had to rule out the possibility that my kids somehow have Bolivian Monkey Fever. Which as we all know exhibits itself with a mild eye discharge before escalating rapidly towards paralysis, skin loss and painful evil death. Could happen. Actually that's absurd - but it drives me up the wall when I pick my daughter up from school and the teacher says, "oh you should probably know that three kids went home with a horrifying shitting and puking disease. So you're kid definitely has it now too."

First off, the teacher actually said stomach bug. Which is American for shitting and puking. If she had said shitting and puking I'd have some reservations about her professionalism. Which reminds of the Sean Lock joke that if your doctor uses the word, "bell-end" at any point then you should leave. Secondly, if your child is emptying out of it's anus or mouth then don't send it to play with others. I'm all for kids getting on with it all with colds and whatnot. Not doing that is weird. My wife would tell me that she couldn't go to certain club and group events when she was at home with the kids because they had rules wouldn't allow children there if they had a cough or visible snot. That's just alarmist. But parents who swing the other way and don't want their annoying puke-box interfering with their lives are worse. They're usually the parents who insist on carrying on with life as if they didn't have a kid - with the drunken weekends and refusing to get out of bed until 11am on their days off. A good case in point being once my family and I spent about 90 minutes with someone and their child before they accidentally let slip that their kid has a very contractible skin disease. Oh yay - you just gave everybody mange. Thanks.

Anyhoo - the doctor and I agreed to just let it go on for half the day and see how it went before giving any antibiotics. My daughter had helpfully not shown any signs whatsoever of having it now either. So she was shipped off to school with my e guilt free. An hour or so later I got a call from the school nurse that my daughter has an ear infection. So I trundled off to go get her and she was out of sorts. The teacher pointed out that she'd sat with her hand over her ear and hadn't participated at all. knowing that an ear infection is even less likely to need antibiotics we went off to buy some kids Tylenol for the ache.

Once at RiteAid - not somewhere I go very often - I tried to let my annoyance at the fact their Easter stuff was out not throw me off. I got the medicine and then stood in the cashier's line behind the row of people buying boxes of Lite beer and massive amounts of cigarettes. Slightly different medication route. My daughter noticed at this point that they sold Cadbury's Creme Eggs and (to my amazement) Mini Eggs. Unable to contain her glee she started bouncing up and down and yelling, "The Chocolate Chip Chicken laid eggs all over the store!!" I could see the confused looks on all the other people's faces. So I said that yes, he did appear to have done that. Obviously I bought some. At which point my daughter began to explain in detail the intertwined complex story of Easter - featuring the Easter Bunny, The Chocolate Chip Chicken and Jesus. She was quite proud of the fact that she could knew that Jesus and the Easter Bunny were real - but that the Chocolate Chip Chicken was made up.

Normally when stuff like this happens you'll get a coy look from other people with a smile. They may even say, "oh you've got quite an imagination!" Not today though. Instead it was five people - the cashier included - desperately trying to avoid eye contact. My daughter was speaking at normal volume but everyone else was eerily quiet. I could sense some relief when I gave her the Mini Eggs to hold and she stopped talking for about fifteen seconds. Of course, then my daughter loudly said, "Owen looks like those people that Grandpa doesn't like." She was referring to his squinting I think. His eye-crud had rapidly tripled so I'd rubbed on some antibiotics at this point. He didn't mind much but it did make him squint a little. Obviously as three seconds had passed without me responding to my daughter she said it again. With everyone now a)checking to see what my son looks like, and b) wondering which type of people Grandpa doesn't like I feebly asked, "pardon?" To which my daughter said, "On that TV show he watches with the angry lady."

Fearing she was about to make some revealing comment about Asians or some such I quickly racked through my brain the list of TV shows that Grandpa watches. Luckily this is a very short list of a few minor shows and one major show. That being Judge Judy. Yes - she would seem quite angry to children or adults who don't find her laughably ridiculous. Of course now I'm also completely confused because there isn't a type of people - physically at least - that go on that show. Though clearly at some point Grandpa had said that he "doesn't like these kinds of people" - probably meaning what he thinks are idiots. Now my daughter has assigned that categorization to certain types of people who look the same. Ugh - I'm going to have deprogram her in the car now. I hate doing this - it's very annoying.

Obviously this all took about two seconds in my head. I was already preparing the, "you know everyone is pretty much the same you know" conversation with her. We'd done that before with the ironically opposed point that because there is no one type of person that it's weird to think that everyone should be all the same. My wife had even done the, "there are white people, brown people, black people, blue people - all different kinds of people!" thing to illustrate the point. To which my daughter had helpfully pointed out, "not at my school." And then pointing out that there are no blue people. Touché.

Anyhoo - I again managed to only feebly deal with her point about the Angry Lady Show by saying, "who doesn't he like?" To which my daughter said, "he doesn't like those people who look like elephants." All those people who had half-turned to listen in were now even more committed to not making eye contact or addressing our existence in any way again. Oh good - we're not racists - we're just mental. She flat out refuses to even return to this conversation now.

Here - I hope you haven't eaten breakfast.

And the Doodle comforting him after his tiring day.

Flicking The V's

2012-01-18T15:32:00.003-05:00

Like a rookie.

I made one of the cardinal parenting mistakes today. That would be asking my daughter a question that only has one correct answer and millions of wrong ones. It was around noon and time for my daughter to get ready to get on the school bus. So, like a novice I said, "do you want to get ready for the bus now honey?" Which is very stupid. That shouldn't be a question at all. Obviously as soon as it came it I realized what I'd done and she pounced on it. Immediately she said no. Then realizing that was also silly she said that she did, but that she wanted me to drive her to school instead. Which she has never once asked me to do. Now our day had been utter guff most of the morning. After going out in the snow and pretending that all the ice we could find were actually secret jewels that needed collecting she had cheered up immensely. But I also knew that saying no to this might thrust us back into the deep dark despair of the earlier part of the morning.

So I told her no because going on the bus is part of the whole process. But I told her I would dress her up in all her snow-clothes and that she could roll about in the snow out front until the bus showed up. Which she liked quite a bit. But the good thing about it was that it reminded me that it isn't just the swearing, sarcasm, piss-taking and deeply inappropriate humor that I have to keep an eye on. No - I have to also keep an eye on innocent little questions like that. Thinking back over the morning and back a few days I realized I've been asking some very silly questions lately. I've asked whether she wanted me to brush her hair when it clearly needed doing. I've asked her if she thinks her clothes were too dirty to go out in. Obviously they were - hence the question being considered. I've repeatedly asked her if she needed to go to the bathroom before we had to do things. I should have told her to go. So I have to cut that out.

I'll also have to be diligent about reminding my wife not to ask Yes or No questions because my daughter always ALWAYS says yes. An example would be when my wife will ask, "do you want to do that first?" (it isn't important what it is) which is always met with a, "Yes." But more than that it highlighted that lately my wife and I have tended to think that because my daughter is a little older and my son not old enough to verbalize a lot of things that we don't have to have a slightly different behavior around them. Like most parents we'd behave differently in many ways when with the kids than without. I'm not referring to sex or the TV watershed either. I more mean poor habits and subtle behavior that the kids will pick up on and emulate.

Obviously here I should talk about how often I pick my nose and how my daughter also seems to enjoy that pastime with an equal amount of enthusiasm. But as I'm writing this it's much funnier to talk about my wife. You see she does things that make no sense to me at all and I would hope our children don't take after. For example my wife asks some of the most ridiculous questions on earth. A prime example being that every single time I leave the room that she is also in she'll ask, "where are you going?" like I'm a fugitive on the run. It's particularly odd when I'm walking into the kitchen. I can't be going anywhere else. If I'm obviously going to the downstairs bathroom my wife will vary this question 50% of the time with, "what are you doing?" Really? Either she's keeping some sort of bar chart of results or she truly suspects I have the world's most creative anus. Needless to sayt hose two questions hint that she either thinks I can mold fecal balloon animals or she is undercover with the INS. Worse than that though is when I come out of the bathroom she will often sincerely ask, "how was it?" as if I've been on a wine tour. Now obviously I understand that she is immensely proud of any poo she produces (often regularly shouting throughout the house for me to come see whatever ominous horrendous toffee-sausage she has created) but after a decade of marriage surely she knows I'm not answering that one.

Anyway, with all that in mind I'm going to monitor the situation more. Hopefully we haven't ruined the girl with our bad habits, poor behavior and inappropriate actions. Speaking of which - when I picked my daughter up she was quite happy except for an injury she claimed to get from, "poking cupcakes." Everyone else in the classroom was oblivious to the behavior she was displaying but I was chilled to the bone.

Yes - I really am going to have to make some changes.

The Black Cloud

2012-01-18T10:09:00.001-05:00

"He's trying to hurt my back."

These days don't happen very much. But today my daughter spent a portion of this morning yelling and crying. This was initially because she claimed that her brother was deliberately trying to hide English Muffin crumbs underneath her. As in - she sat on his English Muffin (not a euphemism - he apparently isn't English remember) and then was appalled to find a crushed English Muffin stuck to her buttocks. She was genuinely upset and no amount of explanation could convince her he hadn't planned the whole thing out. Especially the genius of choosing a food product that had the word, "English" in it's name just to make it ironic. Apparently he'd strategically placed the crumbs so that they would poke her in the bum cheeks and hurt her back. Which I think is the first claim that someone has combined bread-based acupuncture and phrenology of the arse to commit bodily harm to English people specifically.

She's been ludicrously conspiratorial this morning actually. She claimed that her mother wasn't at work but was hiding somewhere in the house. She spent a good twenty minutes looking everywhere for her. And by everywhere I mean in places no human could actually hide. So she checked in my sweater drawer, under the bathroom sink and - best of all - under he bean bag chair. When she couldn't find her she got a touch upset and asked me to tell Mommy to come out. So I pointed out she wasn't home - she was at work. At which point she said, "well I don't think it's very nice that Mommy did that. She shouldn't go to work in the middle of the game and not tell anyone." No way I could win her around on that one.

I would dearly like to know what my wife has done in the past for my daughter to even come up with that idea. Especially the part where my wife is so committed to hiding that half an hour can pass and it still could be feasible that my daughter might find her if she just keeps trying. Presumably when I go out for 45 minutes alone time on the weekend my wife pretends to play Hide and Seek, but really goes out to a diner for breakfast. Then my daughter will wander back into the living room after checking in the basement sump pump well only to find her mother feebly hidden under blanket on the couch. "Wow Mommy- it took me half the time to find you today!"

I should have known though. Once downstairs my daughter began making the annoyed, "people are touching me" complaints that she clearly was hoping could be made. As in she sat next to her brother and then complained he was too close to her. After I said I'd caught a cold - possibly from her mother - she also claimed that she had caught a stomach bug from her mother and couldn't go to school today. So when I confirmed that if she did have a stomach bug she should stay home she accused me of being unfair by keeping her out of school for no reason. Sensing my daughter was upset in some way (I'm good like that) I asked what was wrong. To which she stuck out her quivering bottom lip and said that she didn't get enough sleep last night. She could have stayed in bed of course, but she decided to get up. She could also lie down and take a nap this morning too. But judging by her reaction to that it was a bit like I'd told her that the only thing we had to drink in the house was cat urine - and we were definitely going to be drinking some.

So I cuddled up to her under a blanket and told her she could rest on me for awhile and maybe some good quiet time would help her feel better. She wasn't done though - she wanted me to know an injustice had been done. And that I should apologize for it because I was the one who kept her awake by stealing all the covers and trying to push her off the bed - which was why she had a poor night's sleep. The two fundamental problems with this accusation are -:

1) Those are the very things I complain that she does nonstop from when she climbs into my bed at 3am and when I get up irritated at 4am.
2) I didn't sleep in my own bed last night.

So that was impossible. My wife had gone up to bed a bit before me - and when I showed up she pointed out that I could always go sleep somewhere else thereby giving her a massive bed to roll around in until the kids showed up. So I did. Could not convince my daughter of that this morning though. Pointing this out seems to have ignited the torch-paper of arseholery too. She has been unrelenting in her, "you are mean" silliness and talking back constantly when told not. She argued with me and her brother over and over and refused to listen to anything said to her. This all culminated in her practically painting a chair in the living room with yoghurt. She didn't drop it. She didn't have an accident. She dipped her hand in it and wiped it on the chair. Then she kept doing that. She's well aware that's wrong and when I told her off for it she became even pissier and back-chatty. Any mention that she has done something wrong has been met with an instant claim that I'm not being fair. I'm well aware that she's doing annoying shit to get attention for something - but she doesn't seem to know what it is. She wants something from me. It isn't spending time or being nice because I've impressed myself with how calm I've been so far. Which has pissed her off even more. More importantly I'm sticking to my lengthy punishment of being in her room for 30 minutes. That's what she gets for not sitting in the chair for two minutes and accusing people of ruining her day.

So now she's upstairs yelling about how she has to go to school right now (3 hours early) and that she doesn't even want to be downstairs anyway. So there. It's amusing and sad at the same time to hear her yelling threats about how I better let her down right now or she'll do something mean, but then backtrack and say she'll hug me if I don't let her. And can we go play in the snow outside. And make pizza. Obviously I asked if we could do these things already before the hysterics got this far. So now I'm suited up sans gloves and finishing this before I start battering her with snowballs in a cathartic way.

That'll learn her.

Frowny face.

View From A Mentalist: Jan 18, 2012

2012-01-18T07:04:00.000-05:00

Morning. I think I've convinced my daughter that taking photos is lots of fun again. As opposed to handing her the camera 3 or 4 times a day and her taking five photos just to be nice. She took some half-decent ones though.

First up she found this old bib somewhere. My son didn't use a bib once so no idea where it was. Anyway she gave it to me and said, "we can give this to a baby with no job." Yes let's do that.

She took a lot of photos of the stuff that lives under the kitchen sink - probably because she doesn't see that stuff very often. She knew this was Ant Killer too. Not because of the photo - but probably due to marching around the kitchen last June and July threatening unholy massacre toward the little bastards trying to get in.

Doodle. How much of a tit is he? Yesterday while I was getting my son dressed he nicked some apple chunks and then went on to lick the cinnamon that they were being dipped in. Which he then instantly puked out. He seems to think he's on canine Fear Factor.

I own three free sweatshirts (given by my father-in-law) that a plumbing supplies store in western NY gave out to their contractors. They have paint spattered all over them and instantly make people who wear them look like they know what they're doing. I put them on when I don't know what I'm doing. My daughter helpfully photographed my pocket here so that if I forgot where I'd put an Alan key I would be able to remember.

These are the dog sheets my son has on his bed. You'll notice that they are wearing hats and scarves. Which my daughter now thinks our dog might want to wear around the house now. She wither really likes playing dress up with him - or she is trying to garote him in plain sight but is dreadful at it.

Part of my lunch yesterday. I still don't understand why people don't eat beans. Cheaper than most things and pretty bloody tasty if prepared right. I made the mistake of telling my daughter I was eating a bowl of pickled belly-buttons and she wouldn't try some. My son had no worries and seemed more eager after finding that out.

I love how my son has moments of the day where he just wants you to bugger off and leave him alone. He makes this face and makes a low grunting noise to go with it. Without words he basically says, "Im not even going to look at you so you might as well go away." Sometimes he will have been playing by himself for a good hour when I'll lie down on the ground to play too - and then he'll do this. He doesn't do this when I take photos of him but tends to when his sister does.

Last one. I'm putting this up because she took over twenty of these so that I could put one up. At least she understands that she can photograph her reflection and it's different from pointing the camera at herself.At least I thought so - when she looked at this she said that her head had exploded.

Thomas Goes Mental With A Drill

2012-01-17T16:27:00.002-05:00

And you thought it was just a train.

I may have mentioned that my son is quite excited by Thomas the Tank Engine. He has books, trains, toys and even underpants based around the books. He will play with the trains for hours. He dare not sully his wonderful underpants and frantically rushes to the bathroom to get them off before he empties untold evil inside them. But what is feverishly exciting to him are the shows by Britt Allcroft. We have a bunch of the DVDs and he freaking adores them. When he gets up early in the morning he will often weakly say, "Thomas" before he says anything else. -Meaning he wants to sit on my lap and watch some or he fully intends to go get his mother up - and we all know she would not be happy about that.

Anyway - my daughter was into Thomas too around this age. But she was also into tractors and (annoyingly) the crap show Super Why for a bit. She has had a few other fleeting fascinations as well, but mostly we managed to avoid having kids obsessed with things that are clearly just marketing ploys. But not like my son. His intensity for Thomas is almost at the same level as those weirdos that went on about how hot Emma Watson was when she was still fifteen. Which is a bit odd at times but it's not like he breaks down and sobs if I turn it off or pack it away. Most importantly - as frequently seems to be the case - I'll mention that my kids like/dislike something (with no details involved) and a strange number of people will tell me that's a possible sign of autism. Which according to this news story has a sliver of merit to it, but not in my case at all.

I have mentioned in the past too that it is an odd set of stories. The logic behind it is pretty weird and the morality tales are often quite unpleasant. Mostly all the trains act like absolute childish dicks while the guy in charge acts like a ludicrously flamboyant tyrant. But I did pick up a compendium of all the original stories and it's not as if the tv series was unfaithful. It does really seem to be the least safe railway in the entire world. So obviously I thought I'd write about that a little and what other people thought about that.

To which I can only say, once again, what the Keith Chegwin is going on? I spent half an hour farting around online and found page after page after page of nonsense about how Thomas is up there with the Marquis de Sade as one of the most depraved socially corrupting lunatics ever to be foisted upon children. There is nothing unwholesome and downright evil that Thomas apparently hasn't dipped his dirty sordid little fingers in before sticking right into all of our children. Don't believe me?

First off is this Daily Mail article from December 2009 - based on a paper by a political science Professor Shauna Wilton from Alberta University - that claims that Thomas is a Good Old Boys club that not only insults the working class in vulgar terms, but that it is strikingly demeaning to women. Not just by the lack of female trains, but also due to the frequent massive phallic like thrusting of big tube-shaped objects into welcoming open tunnels. Firstly, I love how there's a strain of feminism that looks at everything and sees a huge erection in it. Might want to see a doctor about that. Secondly, I could have picked any newspaper - it was in all of them - but I picked the Daily Fail in particular for the inevitable barrage of people desperate to make comments about how this is typical left-wing PC bollocks. Really go read it. Apart from people missing that this Professor is in Canada and lamenting the collapse of the once great British Empire (cough), one person actually holds Harriet Harman personally responsible. At the time this study caused such a kerfuffle that it seems to have appeared on every message board and forum the internet has coughed up so far. Which was probably partly the Professor's aim. My favorite that I found was this forum which includes the fantastic comment of, "Isn't Thomas the Tank Engine a giant cock disguised as a train that penetrates the minds of our youth like a real locomotive plunging and steaming through a dark tunnel? No? Oh, sorry. I must be mistaken."

Of course that was only the tip of the iceberg. I ran across people hysterically warning others about how Thomas is not only mentally toxic, but that he is also physically toxic as they are allegedly all made with lead paint. Cue a rush of scared mothers wondering if their children are likely to have suffered lasting mental damage after sucking on James funnel. I was also kindly reminded (quite how I forgot I don't know) that "Tommy Tank" is slang in parts of the UK for masturbating. Stop - I know you've begun to picture that. I bet you're thinking of Gordon right? Shame on you.

Carrying on with the shocking sexual theme of Thomas I ran across this Facebook group that recognizes the apparently clear sexual tension between the man in charge and his number one engine. Not convinced? How about this report that Thomas was sued for sexual harassment after, "thrusting his caboose" at Sir Topham Hatt's wife. No? What about this realization that one of the trains (Harvey I think) looks an awful lot like a Fleshlight sex toy. Actually that one is uncanny.

Yeah - your husband could be visualizing that right now. I know you will next time you see that train somewhere. And you'll definitely hear the phrase, "you'll have someone's eye out with that thing" when you do.

Anyhoo - feeling somewhat dirty (in a good and a bad way) I plowed on finding evidence that Thomas truly is a harbinger of Communism - another classic Daily Mail Fail that one. But they're not alone. These people claim there's clear evidence as well. As do these. Whilst wrapping my head around that (and the first two really aren't kidding either - they go into LOTS of detail) I also discovered that Thomas is also brazenly anti-Semitic. Oh - and there's this now famous Slate article about how Thomas is a perfect reflection of British Imperialism.

Which is all quite worrying obviously. A Communist, misogynist, pro-Imperial, anti-Semitic sex fiend that may kill you if you suck him? Sounds an awful lot like James Bond to me. Which makes Thomas suddenly quite sexy actually. Seriously though - this is all mental. I mean come on - it's not like Thomas is some mad guns-and-death story about a runaway nuclear bomb threat that can only be stopped Denzel Washington with an automatic rifle?

Oh wait...

Alright fair enough.

View From A Mentalist: Jan 17, 2012

2012-01-17T09:41:00.001-05:00

While we farted around cutting ourselves whilst plumbing my daughter took some photos. She did the same thing this morning whilst I went through my daily ritual of washing dishes with my headphones on.

My daughter says that this looks like lips. I'll leave that to ferment in your brain.

The is The World's Tinnist Man's wife and/or mother - depending on when you ask. Quite the beauty. My daughter claims that she is, "eating toffee." Nope - no idea. Although it does like a bit like Sean Bean in a dress to me. That's probably a more latent problem about myself that I've identified though.

This is a fleece my wife bought when she was overseas during her BSc. degree all those years ago. It's my fleece now.

Our wedding photo. It has been in a drawer for the last four years because if out one of the kids would inevitably grab it and drag it around the house. My daughter muddles this and thinks we are in a wedding hugging, but not that it's necessarily our wedding.

My daughter's quilt. My aunts are nutso for this and can make anything. Years back I worked in the historical society in Buffalo, NY and people from all over the country would call about quilts. Those people are psychotic. I had one old woman yell at me down the phone that I was wrong about a quilt in the collection and that because it didn;t really have the kind of backing I said it did that I was trying to spread lies. A nefarious dark world is quilting.

This would be the Fudge Man I had control of yesterday. He was supposed to shove the fudge (oh yes indeed) towards my daughter's finger-bang cranes so that she could make sandwiches. It made sense to her so that's all that counts.

Grapes we got yesterday. Most of these are gone now. I loves a good grape, me.My son goes bonkers for them as well.

Okay - last one. This is from a Thomas book that had fallen lost down the side of my son's bed before he got his new one. Now he wants to read it incessantly. It's apt because it's about how it's now starting to cack it down with snow so Thomas should wear the right stuff out. In this photo though it looks like Thomas does not want that strange man touching his bits and bobs thank you.

Finger Bang and The Spillage In The Village

2012-01-17T05:26:00.001-05:00

"I'm going to finger bang you first!"

My daughter wanted me to do lots of voices yesterday for trains her and my son were playing with. After getting initially excited that both his father and sister were getting involved in his trains, my son now wanted us to bugger off and leave him to play with all by himself. This was because my daughter - taking after her mother one would presume - began to delegate tasks for all of us to complete and assigned specific toys to each of us that we could use. My son feels that he is very much in charge of all of the trains (how else could he possibly make the eerily phallic train-snake and repeatedly ram it in and out of the tunnel for an hour straight?) and didn't like that very much. So while he got annoyed and whined, "mine!" his sister commandeered the magnetic crane, the old broken plastic crane and annexed a good third of the train track to play a game she had in mind.

After lining up cars, trucks and trains in a neat line she told me then that she was going to make fudge sandwiches. Which pretty much involved dropping magnetic logs onto each train and then pushing it around the loop and back. At which point my son would try and hijack them. Not wishing to miss an opportunity to take the piss I began to voicing the trains as if they were involved in some sort of massive fudge heist attempt by a giant boy. My daughter loves playing pretend so destroyed any pretense of the laws of physics and began to fly the cranes around like demonic alien spaceships. The broken one doesn't actually have a winch or anything on the end of it anymore and just has a short stubby plastic nub. So she would swoop the crane down to each train and began yelling, "FINGER BANG!!" and stabbing them with the nubby end. You have no idea how annoyed I was that my camera battery was dead at this point. After declaring that she had finger-banged Gordon and finger-banged Percy (who clearly would like that sort of thing) I couldn't resist any more and took my train to the skies and claimed that I would finger-bang her with him. So as I flew Salty (that's his real name - though my daughter assures me he isn't actually salty) toward her she yelled, "I'm going to finger bang you first!" Which was slightly uncomfortable. But not as much as when my daughter helpfully told me, "you've dropped your fudge Daddy!" and I had a very strong desire to immediately leave the room. My son - the only voice of reason - just kept rambling, "no no no no!" at the sight of it all.

Earlier in the day I had taught my daughter the song, "I must, I must, I must improve my bust." She had no idea what it meant but liked that it rhymed. I don't know if that's even a pithy semi-amusing phrase here in the US but I do hope she stands up during school to perform that little number. I had taught her this song because after getting back from the grocery store I walked into the kitchen to find a nice pool of water on the floor.So I ended up on my back under the sink trying to figure out where it was all coming from. My daughter manned the flashlight and notified me that, "it's leaking onto your nipples Daddy." So I made some meandering nonsensical monologue about how other words for the breast area include the chest, breasts and bust - which included me teaching her that song.

Actually yesterday was a particularly moist day. It seemed that every half an hour or so I was involved in wiping up some kind of liquid from where it shouldn't be. I stopped keeping a list after around 4.30pm but I did manage to wipe up -

- Spilled apple juice.
- A full pot of Greek yogurt dropped from mouth-height. That managed to hit the floor, the kitchen door, the cabinet and the refrigerator. I didn't find the fridge one until around four in the afternoon when I had forgotten all about the yogurt and began to panic that some odd light-green ooze had invaded like Slimer from Ghostbusters.
- About a gallon of water from the kitchen sink. Then repeated puddles whilst trying to locate the specific place it was leaking throughout the day while being jumped on by my son. My daughter very much liked that I dubbed this incident the Spillage In The Village.
- My son's second "fudge transfer" of the day. I left him in the bathroom for five seconds too long and he wiggled himself off smearing shame like a demon snail. This barely qualifies as a liquid. I need to point that before my own explains that really there was a solid phase and liquid phase present and then goes on to explain Le Chatelier's Principle.
- Peanut butter splatter from a sandwich that fell face-down onto the floor.
_ Dog vomit from the dog (duh) who ate the sandwich while I cleaned up the splatter. He will never learn.
- The nasty week-old run off from a chicken-lentil meal I had in the fridge. I was throwing it out and misjudged the weight of the dutch oven by quite an impressive amount and drooled it all over the floor.
- A quarter of a bottle of hand sanitizer that my son squeezed out onto the bathroom floor.
- An abnormal amount of toothpaste after my daughter attempted to clean her teeth before dinner because (and I quote), "she didn't want the poop germs to eat the food first." Quite.
- My own tears.

Anyhoo - the Spillage In The Village was solved once my wife returned home and we fixed the plumbing via Skype with her father. It blows my mind that we can do that sort of thing nowadays. He sat at his laptop at home and we wiggled our camera around he told us what to do. And it worked. The Spillage is no more! Although I think I'm planning on having Princess Bounce encounter it again (this time just pretending the blue blanket is a puddle of some sort) this morning.

I just hope she doesn't threaten to finger-bang Captain Cheesestick.

View From A Mentalist: Jan 16, 2012

2012-01-16T12:07:00.002-05:00

The girl finally picked up her camera. And took over 100 blurry photos that I could barely make out. Thankfully there were about 15 of them that did come out. So - back on track at least.

Did I mention it's cold? It's almost noon and it's 2 Fahrenheit. This icicle stretches from the roof down below the bottom of the window. My daughter is extremely excited at the prospect of being able to bite it without actually it needing to be pulled off the roof. Which frankly seems like a potential death scene from Final Destination 5.

Yep - one of those banging hack-sack things that says one of four pre-programmed hysterical things. My daughter took this at her grandparents house over the weekend. This is the sort of thing he finds so funny that he'll repeat them with genuine glee. That singing fish thing? Yeah they're still playing that. Every 3 hours Grandpa will play the Ultimate Dog TeaseYoutube clip of a talking dog that isn't funny. No doubt I'll get a photo of a DVD rewinder meme in my email soon enough.

My wife shaved the little boy's head. And instantly hated how he looks now. I'm impressed he stayed still long enough. With hair he looks more like I do. Without it he looks like her side of the family.

One of the many bears at the in-laws house. Because like all areas that are riddled with man-killing death-beasts, if you make effigies of them that are all cute and cuddly you can convince yourself that you won't be eaten when you go out to get some wood for the fire.

Speaking of which - here's the wood stove. It's a beautiful thing and I wish I had one. This thing get's the room hotter than the surface of the Sun. Grandma makes the same mistake every single day and over does the fire in the morning when she sees it's -20 outside. Within an hour it's 78 inside and you can't the house so wonderfully insulated that you can't leak the heat out. And yet she will persist on feeding it more wood.

I guess I'm supposed to find something nice to say about this thing. That would be that he was and is pretty reasonable around all the kids. Still, I've never been around a more annoying untrained arsehole of a dog. He never stops barking. He barks so much that his owners have no idea he's doing it anymore.That dog you can hear in your neighborhood? It's this dog. I don't care where you live - it's this one you can hear.

The Flying Feet Foto Adventures may have worked out if this wasn't the only one that came out. The rest are barely translatable at all. Nice form on this one though.

My son got a bed for Christmas. It's pretty nice.Now he and his sister have real beds and the wife and I kip on the floor.

Winter got here. This was last Friday.It snowed once more since then and has been brutally cold since then.

I like this photo - she did a great job with this one this morning. I like that you can see the cat tracks to and from the garage where her cat tree and little box house are.

Last one - Captain Cheesestick disguised as The Pencil Eraser. Yeah....