welfareloser's totally excellent parenting adventure!

welfareloser's rule #17: do what your doctor tells you to do

2009-07-14T11:22:00.006-05:00

today's the day! it's now been six weeks since my right ulnar nerve transposition surgery. the ban on any repetitive motions or hefting over 5 lbs is officially lifted, and i can now resume normal activity - with my right hand, anyway. the left hand is still good and fucked, which precludes playing the banjo, unfortunately. i haven't been able to play it much at all since about january, and since my hand surgeon moved to another state, i had to start over, waiting 2 months to get into the new hand surgeon's schedule. that's at the end of this month, and the surgery will be scheduled a week or two after that, then it's another 6 weeks of recovery after that, so it'll be october before i can really get back into banjo picking. fencing, on the other hand, is a go, since all i have to do with my non-weapon hand is keep it the hell out of the way.

now, other than the incision itself aching, my right arm has felt pretty good and functional for over 2 weeks. i felt like i could have started practicing with the foil again, if not actual stabbing at targets, at least point-control exercises like circling a doorknob, moving between blade positions, footwork, etc. and if i was 20, i may well have done something like that. but i'm not 20, i'm a month shy of 33. that's middle age, and officially old enough to be scared of doing permanent damage to useful body parts.

JokerJitsu, also about my age, is in a similar position. two fucked-up knees in need of surgery; he got one torn ACL repaired about the same time i got my arm fixed, and he just got his other torn ACL repaired last week. one of these knee injuries is brand new, but the other one is about 10 years old. 10 years ago, he hurt his knee, then felt better, and went back to martial arts training, and it wasn't right, but he didn't worry about it, and almost subconsciously compensated for the injury. then, last winter, he blew out his other knee. he stayed off it, then it felt better, he went back to training, and he didn't feel right... so he went to the doctor.

now, i find the activity restriction during the recovery tough; my trains-20-hours-a-week, amateur-world-champion-in-several-combat-styles friend feels like a rat in a cage. but when i asked him if he was scaring the hell out of his physical therapist, the answer was, well, of course (it's hard not to be scared of the 6'4" shaved-headed menace), but he was damn well following his instructions to a T. no pushing it, no testing limits, and even a hint of pain means sit the fuck down and relax. i've been doing the exact same thing. we admit it - we're old. we turn the music down, drive the speed limit, and above all, we do what our doctors tell us to do. cripes, in the two weeks immediately post-surgery when i couldn't do much more than sit in a recliner with a computer in my lap, i felt a twinge of an ache at my wrist, and immediately switched to an ergonomic trackball with a gel wristpad, and severely limited my keyboard time, as well, because FUCK carpal tunnel syndrome... not. going. there. (also, limiting my facebook scrabble playing was a good thing. i should have realized that since i was on enough narcotics that i would nod off in the middle of instant message chatting, i probably shouldn't have been playing a bunch of scrabble. my rating dropped about 100 points in just those two weeks, and it was only this week that i got it back up. this is my brain on drugs, spelling "dog" and "the." oops!)

so. i've had today circled on my calendar; i've REALLY been looking forward to going back to fencing tonight. last night, i picked up my practice weapon for the first time in two months. it took all of about 5 minutes of target practice for my elbow to start hurting. not because of the nerve, which is good - function and sensation are at 100%.

muscle mass, on the other hand? kinda pathetic. when the surgical wrap came off a month ago, i was amazed by how super-model skinny the whole arm was. my forearm had straight lines instead of curves and there was no discernible bicep. but, hey, that all comes back in time... a LOT of time. as i was describing to PRM how, after 4 weeks of light activity, i seem to have only gained back only 50% of the muscle that used to be there, he informed me that the rule of thumb is for every week you spend losing muscle, you have to spend 4 weeks to get it back.

now he tells me! so, yeah, i *can* stab, but without the full musculature to provide stability to the elbow, the joint hurts a bit. a good compression brace helps a lot - more than i expected, and it was only $6.95, to boot! i managed some non-stabbing practice today without any pain or instability, and i'll probably go ahead and go to fencing tonight, but i sure as hell won't be bouting the entire 3 hours. when it hurts, i quit. period. in fact, i'd prefer to quit before anything hurts. it'll be another couple of months before i'm good as new. the muscle is slowly building up again. from fencing practice, from herding feral children, and most of all from housework. nothing like scrubbing the holy hell out of three bathrooms that have been neglected for months to get my ass all buff and swole again!

and i am SO okay with the wait. of all the sports-related injuries to have - and i'm realizing that virtually anyone who engages seriously in any sport goes through some version of this at least once - this one is FINE. i expect to recover fully and permanently, which is more than you can say for a lot of injuries. you blow out a knee, you may never enjoy running again. you need back surgery, it's going to reduce the pain and increase functionality somewhat, but nowhere close to good as new.

so. in my last post of fencing pictures, i forgot to post the ones of me. so, since of course you find fencing as fascinating as i do, here you go! me and StabbiLongStocking:

i initially yelled at HappySquirrel for posting this picture of me obviously giving up a point, until StabbiLongStocking directed my attention to the scoring box. two white lights lit = two off-target hits. so i may not have retreated fast enough, and i may not have riposted accurately enough, but by god, i parried well enough!

damnit. okay. looking at these pics again has made it obvious that my stance consistently rises during panicked retreats. bad foilist. bad, bad foilist. gonna go work on keeping my stance low during retreat drills as soon as i finish this blog post.

and, finally, this is the sabre strip on the left, and the foil strip on the right, with me directing in the center. which may be what i mostly do tonight. because i am old, and i do what my doctor tells me to do.

then again, i could just play in the sabre sandbox. a sabre slash doesn't require full extension at the elbow. and actually, being target practice for 7-foot-tall saberists doesn't require much in the way of elbow action at all!

billy dee! billy dee!

2009-07-12T07:10:00.004-05:00

over the fourth of july, we drove to our hometown to see some friends who were making their semi-annual visit from germany. driving from southeast iowa to southwest illinois means driving across rural missouri for 4 hours. there are huge differences between rural iowa and rural missouri. the former is pretty farmland sparsely populated with salt-of-the-earth types. the latter is some broke-ass land where farming may occur, in between piles of trash that may or may not be burning at any given time, sparsely populated by scary people who might well beat the shit of me for my human rights campaign bumper sticker. rural iowans consistently seem like normal, educated people who happen to live and work on farms. rural missourians, on the other hand, tend to seem more like post-apocalyptic mutants who are just waiting for a chance to steal your shoes. all kinds of fascinating nuggets at the NCES homepage, like, despite having twice the population of iowa, missouri has less than half the number of libraries.

anyway. the point is, there's a billboard we'd never seen in iowa that stood proudly across the missouri landscape from hannibal to st louis.

i'm serious. i'm also not the only one who finds it funny enough to blog about it

so MonkeyBeef is pretty good about being stuck in the car for 5 hours, plus or minus a mcdonalds break and an "I HAVE TO GO POTTY RIGHT NOW IN THE MIDDLE OF NOWHERE!" break. but at some point just out side st. louis proper, he apparently lost interest in practicing his rendition of "witch doctor," and "oo-ee-oo-ah-ah" turned into balls-to-the-wall screeching and tears. i reached into what we like to call "the STFU bag," (stocked with toys and books and junk food,) and tossed the boy his current favorite candy, a gummy krabby patty. screeching stops, plastic wrapper rattles, and then we hear him chirping "spongebob!" through a fat mouthful of chewy sugar.

PRM decided that we needed an animatronic billy dee williams in the back of the van. it would be screech-activated, dispense treats to the offending child, and then say "works every time." then pound a colt 45 and bang an animatronic drunk woman.

anyway. SpazMonkey is still on his amateur movie-maker kick. so most of the 200 pictures from last weekend look about like this:

in fact, i was able to wrest the camera from his sticky clutches only long enough to take this one, lone picture of a couple of opas and their grandsons: that's my dad, my 4 boys, and my dad's best friend from germany with his grandson, who is two weeks younger than MonkeyBeef. pictures of the omas, me sandwiched in between my knocked-up sister and knocked-up friend, and our husbands, will trickle in over email as everyone gets home and gets around to uploading their adult-taken photos.

more on MonkeyBeef's continuing language issues later; my friend's little boy has language issues of an entirely different nature than MB's - lots of words. in several languages. his mom is german. his dad is italian. they mostly speak english to each other. and they just moved from italy to switzerland, adding a new dialect of german, and the supremely weird romansh language, to his occasionally confused repertoire. he speaks really well, and keeps his languages separated much better than would be expected for a 2-1/2 year old. but it's still a fertile source of lulz (as is the case any time any toddler opens his or her mouth, really.) his english has a pronounced italian accent - the song "twinkle twinkle little star" comes out "TWINKLA TWINKLA LITTLA STAR!" he knows the german word for binoculars, "fernglass." when his opa asked him what the italian word was, he replied confidently, "fernglasso!" and he added some important words to his english vocabulary while hanging out with my kids, like "wheat thins" and "pew pew pew!"

anyway... good weekend. fireworks, barbecued pork steaks, swiss chocolate, italian wine, squirt guns, root beer floats and wings at fitz's in university city, a stroll through the new Citygarden, 4 lbs of pregasaurus-rex impulse buying at the st louis fudge factory... and billy dee.

works every time!

follow your dream. do what you love!

2009-07-10T07:47:00.000-05:00

so this is a conversation that PositiveRoleModel had with DramaQueen:

DQ: are we gonna live in this house forever?
PRM: well, no. i'm going to have this job for another 3 years, and then we'll move.
DQ:where are we going to move to?
PRM: wherever i get my new job.
DQ: (utterly amazed) you're gonna get a different job?
PRM: yeah.
DQ: what kind of job?
PRM: well, what kind of job do you think i should get?
(long pause)
DQ: snake fighter.
PRM: does that mean i'm a snake who fights, or a guy who fights snakes?
DQ: a guy who fights snakes!
PRM: how do i fight snakes?
DQ: you kick them. and punch them. and stomp on their heads!
PRM: sounds dangerous.
DQ: yeah! and awesome!

remeber how painfully embarrassed you were by damn near everything during preadolescense?

2009-07-08T22:24:00.010-05:00

evilgremlin is soooooo there. at 9-1/2, he's more self-aware. this means he's more conscientious, which is great, but also more self-conscious. like all kids his age, he's beginning to see that the world is big, and he's trying to figure out how to angle for a good spot in it. he's even paying attention to his looks. less than a year after he was horrified when i suggested he let his hair grow out some ("do i look like i want to be in high school musical?!?! i just want a NORMAL haircut!!!") he started refusing haircuts; his hair now swoops carefully over his forehead, kinda skater-punkish. he chooses his clothes carefully. of course, sometimes "desert chocolate chip" and "realtree oak" constitute "matching"... but in a house where an outfit can consist of your brother's pants (which are either 2 sizes too big or too small) a t-shirt with a picture of tom selleck that says "don't disrespect the mustache," a straw hat, ladybug rainboots, elbow and knee pads, and a holster made of old tae kwon do belts (for a lightsaber, watergun, or an "I CAN'T SHOW YOU IT'S NUCLEAR AND IT WILL MELT YOUR BRAINS,") ...let's just say EG is stylin, relatively speaking.

but the biggest change is that HE IS EMBARRASSED BY EVERYTHING HIS FAMILY SAYS OR DOES. for example, we've been going out quite a bit lately with the other radiology residents so everyone can meet the new class. there were a couple of picnics that included kids. EvilGremlin is used to being the oldest kid by about 5 years at residency functions, so he drifted between civilized conversation with the adults, and playing frisbee with or blowing bubbles for the younger kids.

SpazMonkey had gotten a bug up his ass earlier in the day about building a time machine. so far, he had gathered various pieces of scrap wood, an old keyboard, random wires (having watched me modify xboxes and repair electronic toys, he was familiar with the need for soldering, and was still trying to convince me to tell him where i keep the soldering iron) and a "bag of plasma," which is absolutely essential to time machine construction. plasma, in case you don't know, is "THE OPPOSITE OF A LASER." duh! (i un-froze one of those "polar ice" freezy bag thingies, and the resulting square breast implant was enough to delight SM.) at a picnic at DirtyMartini's house, SM was explaining to TexasRoadKill that all he needed was "more metal parts." TRK promptly offered him a broken lawnmower in his garage. convinced that the eventual success of his invention was now inevitable, SM proceeded to stomp up to every single person at the party (literally. every now and then he'd scan the crowd, say "HEY I HAVEN'T TALKED TO THAT GUY YET!" and go bounding over) and say some version of the following:

"HEY GUESS WHAT! I'M BUILDING A TIME MACHINE MY BROTHER AND ME ARE AND IT'S GOING TO BE FINISHED ON JANUARY THIRTY FIRST 2010 SO YOU HAVE TO COME TO MY HOUSE ON FEBRUARY FIRST 2010 SO YOU CAN GO WITH US THAT'S MONKEYBEEF'S BIRTHDAY BUT HE CAN'T COME BECAUSE HE'S TOO LITTLE AND HE MIGHT GET SCARED AND WE'RE GOING TO ILLUSION FOREST IT'S A PLACE THAT DOESN'T EXIST BUT WE'RE GOING TO GO THERE ANYWAY AND MY MOM GOT ME THE BAG OF PLASMA THAT POWERS THE TIME MACHINE WHICH IS ALSO A TRANSPORTER AND I HAVE WIRES AND POWER TOOLS AND IT HAS A PASSWORD TO TYPE IN TO TURN IT ON AND MY BIGGEST BROTHER IS BUILDING THE ROBOT AND UNCLE ROADKILL IS GIVING ME ALL THE METAL PARTS AND I AM NOT GOING TO SLEEP AND I'LL WORK ON IT ALL NIGHT IN THE BASEMENT AND IT'S GOING TO BE FREAKING AWESOME!"

one of the new residents summed up his style of speaking pretty nicely later in the week at the hookah bar:

NR: was that your oldest i was talking to?
me: i dunno. could you understand what he was saying?
NR: it was pretty stream-of-consciousness.
me: that was one of the twins, then. did he talk like he was on meth, or pot?
NR: definitely meth.
me: SpazMonkey.

of course all the adults found this absolutely adorable, even when he charged a wide-eyed 3-year-old girl (i had to tell him that she wasn't responding to him because he was calling her "dude," which probably didn't do much to signal that he was talking to her) with bringing the missile launchers. because if your mission lacks missle launchers, the person in the room with pigtails is definitely the one who can hook you up!

EG did not find this adorable. he was so embarrassed he actually hid behind a tree. when i went over to ask him what was up, he sounded halfway to panicked.

EG: MOM, are you going to let him DO THAT?
me: do what?
EG: keep talking about stuff that he doesn't know anything about!
me: dude, it's fine. he's just a little kid.
EG: but you can't really build a time machine! not yet! that technology doesn't exist yet, and they all know it!
me: it's okay. they also know he's just using his imagination.
EG: but i'm his big brother and they're going to think he learned that FROM ME!

i had to explain that nobody was going to hold his brothers' goofiness against him; if anything, i would take all the blame. it took some more talking, but once he was convinced that the mother is the one with the day-glo judgment target on her massive butt, he calmed down and was able to rejoin the party.

and all was well in PreAdolescent AngstVille until we reached the van at sundown to head home, and EG noticed the "FAILBOAT" bumper sticker that i had put on my grocery-getter after our failboat mission.

EG: oh god, mom, how long has that been there?
me: dude? MY car! (i'm as mature as any 2-year-old!)

he silently cast sidelong glances down the sidewalk in each direction, probably mentally calculating how long it would take him to walk home. then he just shook his head and got in the car, shoulders slumped, his head hanging down to let his hair cover as much of his face as possible.

yep. just wait til prom night!

random pictures

2009-07-02T18:31:00.002-05:00

yes. that is just what it looks like. watermelon covered in shredded cheese.

getting ready for bed after a long, hard day of being awesome:

biggest of the 4 fish he caught today:

okay. now. here is a 3-1/2 minute window into what my entire day sounds like (okay, at least 14 hours of it, anyway.) it has narration. and theme music. lots and lots of theme music.

FISHING TRIP

SpazMonkey is really into making movies these days. i've taught him the rudiments of post-production editing, as well, and he's working on captions, voice-overs, splicing, and transitions for a movie he shot a few days ago of a plush mario being attacked by some odd-looking mcdonald's happy meal toys. he's disappointed that i can't teach him computer animation, because "explosions would make my movies totally sweet." and who could argue with that?

this is what happens when you stick a buttcrack in PRM's face

2009-06-29T18:28:00.000-05:00

another one bites the dust

2009-06-28T18:24:00.000-05:00

baby gate #4 eats shit after a particularly emphatic rattling session:

welfareloser's rules, #2: know the heimlich maneuver

2009-06-27T17:46:00.002-05:00

i've now had to do it at least once on 3 out of 4 kids. DramaQueen wins the honor of never needing it (so far. i wouldn't put competitive hot-dog swallowing past him at some point in his middle school career.) EvilGremlin wins the honor of needing it the most - at least three times that i can remember before age 2. that little shit did the worst job i've ever seen of swallowing, something that you would think would be instinctive, but apparently is not.

a few nights ago, it was MonkeyBeef's turn. as i was cooking dinner, i became aware of MB making a really fucked-up noise, just as EvilGremlin shouted "oh my god i think he's choking!" every now and then he made a horribly labored noise as he breathed in for all of a second, and then it would get choked off again. i swiped through his mouth, found nothing, and started the heimlich. the second i heard air rushing in, i'd go digging in his pharynx, but by the time i got my finger there, he had sucked the object back down. i tried to get him to eject it more forcefully, but he never seemed to be able to move it completely out of his airway. and so it went, for a good two minutes. two minutes of trying to get your baby to breathe is a very long fucking time.

finally, my finger caught the object: a marble. a slippery, round marble. i jabbed my finger in good and hard to make sure i got behind it instead of it slipping to the side and getting pushed back down. i probably scratched him in the process, because when he coughed up the marble, a fat rope of bloody mucus came with it, like a comet tail. he was still making fucked-up, labored noises, which resolved when he finished puking up the bowl of popcorn he had just eaten, but was terrifying until then.

and did i mention all of this happened in the middle of a tornado? going to the hospital wasn't even an option!

yeah. fun night! anyway. heimlich maneuver. good shit to know. i guess i'm officially a "veteran" parent, because not only was i able to hold my shit together well enough to figure out a sort of hybrid between the baby-technique and adult-technique heimlich, i also had the presence of mind to call EvilGremlin over and talk him through what i was doing to MonkeyBeef so that he would be able to do it himself in the future, and finish off with explanation to the twits that this is why you don't try to fit as much food in your mouth as possible, because sometimes, that actually isn't going to be hilarious.

LiquidCourage thought maybe that would teach the little shit not to eat glass. and by god, two minutes worth of punching the boy in the stomach did what two years worth of scolding couldn't do... he doesn't put marbles and dice in his mouth anymore. later that night, he stole a pair of dice from his brothers' board game, held them up to his (closed) mouth, and looked at me fearfully. when i said, "no, no, hurt you!" he threw them at the wall and started wailing like... well, like i'd just punched him in the stomach.

so, uh, back to square one with the recovering arm (so much for "no lifting anything over 5 lbs") but the look of terror on MB's face when he spots a marble is totally worth it!

remember when you were nine years old...

2009-06-23T23:52:00.002-05:00

and your mom told you to clean your room? and you were like, what? why? why do i have to clean my room? and she was like, do it! and you were like, awwwwww, man, why?!?!??!

THIS IS WHY:

now go apologize to yo mama. you know you need to.

i hate quitters!

2009-06-22T13:25:00.004-05:00

i started fencing last september. the first session of the 12-week beginner's class had what looked like about 200 people, but people started dropping off like flies as it became obvious that fencing makes you sweat. a LOT. by the end of the class, when we started going to the twice-weekly open fencing bouts, there were fewer than 40 beginners left.

owing largely to the fact that i practiced the footwork for at least half an hour a day before we were ever handed weapons, i was able to develop two essential skills very early: taking priority and attacking instead of standing there like a deer in the headlights, and getting the hell out of scoring range when i don't have priority, also instead of the deer-in-headlights technique. i mostly beat the other beginners, and scored at least one, if not two or three points, against the really good fencers. i was awesome!

for a little while. the problem with feeling like you suck at a sport is that it makes you want to quit, which is what almost all of the other beginners did over the next couple of months. by the time christmas break was over, there were fewer than ten of us from the beginner's class still there; just three of us foilists.

i was no longer awesome. luckily, at this point in my life, i have very little left in the way of pride, so i can take an ass-kicking and keep coming back for more. i'm practicing daily, i'm taking private lessons, i'm seeing slow but steady improvement, and i'm pretty sure that i will, someday, be good at this. as i've mentioned before, i really, really love fencing.

which is why the current situation with the non-functional hands is just about driving me batshit. i've lost months of time while everyone else has been improving their skills. i got my stitches out from the surgery on my right arm a week ago, and have three more weeks of "take it easy so you don't rip up all of the very, very insulted soft tissue around your ulnar nerve's new location." the surgical dressing came off to reveal a right arm that was noticeably skinnier than the left arm... and that left arm has lost quite a bit of the girth it once had when i was still fencing, but at least it still had some good curves on the forearm, and a discernible bicep. *sigh* i lost muscle everywhere else, too; two months ago, i could stand in a low squat for hours and leap forward and backward to get in and out of scoring distance. last week i hustled around a playground for an hour with the boys and was sore the next day. wtf?

it's frustrating, but fuck it. it's survivable. 3 more weeks - i've got the day marked on my calendar - and i can take my ass back to fencing. from the recovery so far, i'm guessing that i will be able to start working out on footwork drills again in another week. it won't make me a rockstar, but it should at least make me more than a complete marshmallow by the time i show up to open bouting two weeks later. PRM just got his schedule for the coming academic year, and got his request for "no call on tuesdays or thursdays" fulfilled, so i won't have to miss a single session. (besides taking about 3 weeks off when i get my left arm done, but all i have to do with my left arm when fencing is keep it the hell out of the way, so full recovery isn't necessary.) i doubt it will have me in good enough shape to kick ass at the hawkeye open tournament in the fall, but maybe by the spring's hawkeye novice tournament, for fencers with fewer than two years experience, i'll be able to place respectably well.

at this past spring's hawkeye novice tournament, i placed 36 out of 42 foilists. not dead last! i could offer up excuses about how, by that time, i had lost 90% of sensation and 70% of function in my pinky and ring fingers on my weapon hand, and the pain had gotten to where it was interfering with the function of my other three fingers. however, this wouldn't change the fact that, after fencing the 4 bouts in the initial pools, i lost my first direct elimination bout 15-12 to a fencer who has the opposite problem i have: instead of her ulnar nerve, her radial nerve is getting smashed, and she has a significant loss of sensation and function in thumb and first two finger of her weapon hand. since the weapon is gripped and controlled almost exclusively with the thumb and forefinger - the other three fingers being referred to in fencing books as "the aides" - i pretty much need to shut the hell up, work my ass off, and get good at this. preferably before ShampooBanana moves here, which she tentatively plans to do after the coming academic year. partly for the awesome university, partly for the VA hospital that is not only on campus and not scary (don't laugh. have you seen Danville, IL? trust me: scary), but also has a neurosurgery department that can hopefully fix her up... and mostly for the awesome fencing club, of course.

so, some pictures of the awesomest fencing club on the planet. first, our saberists, who kindly allow me to play with them when there aren't any other foilists around to play with. i would like to tell you about how i'm gaining sabre skills after 3 or 4 sessions with them, but i mostly sit inside my gong of a helmet, a foot and a half shorter than those corn-fed, pond-raised mofos, and take repeated hits to the head. and somehow, even at that, it's fun as shit!

some of our epeeists:

and some foilists (technically, a foilist and the women's epee team captain kicking our asses):

and now some pictures of the hawkeye novice tournament a couple of months ago.

a woefully tiny cameraphone shot of me making a pretty good lunge and scoring in my DE bout against ShampooBanana:

me chatting with one of the illinois fencers between the pools and DEs. i recognized the IL team instantly; they reeked of enginerdiness... heheheheheheh. just kidding. don't stab me.

DramaQueen, watching one of our 7-1/2 foot tall saberists, points at him and declares, "that's the guy i'm going to fence! in the green socks! he's AWESOME! where's my sword? can i borrow your sword? what about that sword? but nobody's using it!"

and then, as SpazMonkey tried to quietly sidle away to grab a sword, it was time to leave the tournament before certain members of my entourage got escorted out of the tournament:

so. 20 days and counting until i get to get back on it. and if my ego needs a boost, there's another batch of beginners showing up in a few months.

road trip to st. louis, part 2

2009-06-21T11:22:00.003-05:00

we took the kids to the city museum with TalkyTalky and TalkyJunior. the other kids had been several times, but it was MonkeyBeef's first time. he had a good time, and we didn't lose him, so we'll call that a success!

the little kid ball pit, for kids 6 and under:

now, right next to that ball pit was another ball pit for the big dogs. and it was very, very thunderdome dodgeball deathmatch in there. teenagers ran around screaming, hanging from the cage walls and roof, swinging on ropes, and winging playground-quality dodgeballs at each other with deadly force. EvilGremlin begged to go over there. my exact words were, "the kids over there are really big, they're playing rough, and i guarantee you're going to get hurt. and if you really want to, yes, you can go." so his skinny 9-year-old ass (which is roughly the size of your average 7-year-old ass) bounded over there and dived in. he skulked. he snuck. he sniped. he actually got in several really good hits and did an excellent job of hiding, and completely dodging the few hits that did come screaming in at him. and then, at about the 30-minute mark, he caught a ball right on his eye. there was a loud THWOCK, his head snapped back, he clapped his hands over his eye. it had to hurt, but he didn't let on. he just slowly, carefully crawled over the balls and came back to sit next to his dad and sip quietly on his slushie until we moved on to the next area.

MonkeyBeef had no fear:

SpazMonkey, then PositiveRoleModel and MB coming down one of the bigger slides:

the caves in the basement, full of crystals with rainbow backlights, fake dinosaur fossils, tunnels that parents can't fit through, exposed wiring, and lots and lots of darkness!

all the boys headed through yet another hamster tunnel... lemme tell you, i had to avoid killing my elbows, so instead of crawling through miles of tunnels, i freaking duck-walked through them. and my elbows and hands survived with no further damage, but the next day my legs were about as sore as they've ever been, far beyond even what a fencing tournament did to them:

outside on top of the building. PRM instructed DramaQueen to "look scared"

we took a break for lunch on the third-and-a-halfth floor, ordering cheese pizza, more slushes, and caesar salad. now, here's something i have to share about TalkyTalky. PRM and i use his name as a verb. when you get talked into doing something that you intended not to do, you have been TalkyTalkied. this is a guy who can walk up to someone he's never met before, find out the guy intends not to drink that night because he has a job interview early the next morning, and say, hey, dude, that's cool. but could you hold my beer for me? cool, thanks. yeah, it's good beer; you should taste it! oh, right, right, you're not drinking; i forgot. you should smell, it though; this is a really fresh keg, or maybe they changed the recipe or something. smells better than usual, right?

two hours later, mr. job interview is doing kegstands and can't find his pants.

now, TT also uses his superpowers for good, and actually not only got SpazMonkey to try the caesar salad, he got him to eat an entire PLATE of the shit. this is the kid who, at age 2, could be chased from the dinner table screaming and crying if you menaced him with a forkful of lettuce. this is a kid who will not sit next to an adult who is eating something as nasty as freaking salad. but after listening raptly to TT's treatise on how salad gives you superstrength, just like popeye and his cans of spinach, how caesar dressing was just like ranch dressing, only with MORE SUGAR in it, and then finding a small pile of salad "accidentally" on his plate, he was popping into his slackjawed mouth with a befuddled, almost hypnotized look on his face.

if i had a superpower, i'd want invisibility, but the talkiness might be a close second.

and now a few video clips. they all love the skate park, and MB is steady and skilled and fearless, and wouldn't need watching at all if not for the fact that, upon hitting the bottom of the halfpipe, he feels no need to look out for 120-lb teenagers as he tears off for the stairs to do it again.
skate park movie 1
skate park movie 2
skate park movie 3

and he learns a life lesson: if you have to duck to get IN the tunnel, you're probably going to have to duck when you turn around to come back OUT of the tunnel: tunnel movie

we also went to the st. louis zoo with PRM's mom and stepdad.

for reasons that should be obvious (if not, say it three times fast and slur it just a little bit on the last word), the twits' favorite animal was the buff-crested bustard:

EG's favorite was the somali wild ass:

MB's favorite was... not the penguins. DEFINITELY not the penguins. you approach the penguin house on a nice sunny day, and as you enter, you're suddenly overwhelmed by darkness, cold, and the well-balanced smells of dead fish and poop. before you can even figure out what the hell happened, suddenly, at eye-level, some phallic-shaped creature dives into the glass-walled tank of water in front of you and flaps its wings to close in on you like a bat out of hell. as with all of his brothers before him, this reduced him to screaming in terror until he had gotten the hell out of the bat cave.

he did kind of dig the free-range peacocks, though. they look awfully easy to catch.

bakugan tournament

2009-06-20T22:05:00.002-05:00

so today's field trip was to toys'r'us for their "BAKUGAN TRAINING CAMP AND TOURNAMENT!!!" the night before, the kids sat and carefully selected their bad-assest bakugan and cards to take to battle, and i explained, so that they wouldn't get their hopes up about winning, that there would likely be some kid there who had really, really powerful bakugan that they wouldn't be able to beat, and it was okay, it didn't mean that they sucked, they were just going to have fun, etc. i felt that i had to prepare them for the possibility that bakugan had gone the way of pokemon, wherein 16-year-old SAK's spend hundreds of dollars on eBay to stack their decks with the rarest, most powerful cards, and take great satisfaction in going to pokemon tournaments and kicking 6-year-olds' asses until they cry.

happily, this bakugan tournament was not at all like that. there were about 10 other kids, all under the age of 10, and all really sweet. there was one 8-year-old who had a ridiculously powerful bakugan that nobody could defeat, but he was so nice that he was helping SpazMonkey choose cards to play when battling against him, and he seemed genuinely surprised every time he won a battle. the oldest kid there was very confident, had an entire, well-organized spinning rack full of bakugan, but he was also unfailingly polite, and when he wasn't playing a round himself, he sat down next to DramaQueen to help him with his strategy, and not only wasn't pushy about it, he was encouraging every time DQ was defeated, high-fiving and hugging him like a good big brother (even though he seemed to be an only child himself.)

EvilGremlin took 3rd place in the tournament, winning a carlsnaut, which is a BRAND NEW SEASON 2 PREVIEW NEW VESTROIA BAKUTRAP (ooooooo! ahhhhhhhhh!)

DramaQueen was initially upset when the tournament was over and he hadn't won a single match against anyone. as he started to cry, i told him that when big kids and little kids play together, the big kids usually win, that's just how it is, and someday he would be the big kid. and i'll be damned if that didn't work perfectly. he stopped crying, and he was totally cool. i need to write that one down so i remember it for the next kid! also, it didn't hurt that they all got a bakugan poster, some candy and magnets and other random participation prizes. the highlight for me, though, was that they were all gracious losers (and EG a gracious winner), and a close second was the reminder that there are far more good kids out there than turds. turning my kids loose to play in the streets almost invariably ends with some other kid being an asshole to them, and of course getting away with it, because the only kid you can turn loose on the street and not worry about is an asshole (or possibly enormous and freakishly strong. they're a lot rarer than your garden-variety asshole, though.) after several incidents in a row, i start to wonder if my kids aren't sheltered pussies, then i remember that it's been this way since i was a kid, and probably since long before that - the kids allowed to roam the streets unsupervised are assholes. their parents don't watch them, because they don't have to - their kid isn't the one who gets hurt, so why worry about that other kid who's crying suspiciously near him? if your kid says he didn't do nuthin, that's good enough for you! why get off your ass to explore the possibility that you've set up a "parenting" system in which your child's every lie and bullying tactic is rewarded by your laziness? any kid who isn't an asshole is going to lose in that lord-of-the-flies regime, so your choices are to teach your kid how to beat assholes by being bigger assholes, or to stay out of the game entirely.

watching my kids grow up to be polite - not just snivelling ass-kissers when they know adults are watching and pencil-dicked tyrants when they know adults are NOT watching, but genuinely kind, fair, and nice, even when they think nobody is watching - is well worth it to me, and obviously to a lot of other parents, too. i'll happily suffer the scorn of lazy parents for my "uptightness." i'm pretty sure i win.

but i digress! after the tournament, we went to an A&W retaurant for cheese curds, cheeseburgers, cheese dogs, chili cheese fries, and root beer floats. they have never had root beer floats before, despite ice cream and root beer being two of their favorite forms of sugar. two years ago, they were disgusted by the idea of combining the two, and when we stopped at an A&W restaurant a year ago, their soft-serve machine was broken. today happened to be "mega-super-gulp for the price of a small float" day, so they were dumbstruck by the paper cups so tall that they had to stand in their chairs to get the ends of the 2-foot-long straws in their mouths.

don't worry. the intense sugar high was somewhere between "syringe full of epinephrine" and "hooker's cleavage full of coke," which totally cleared the cholesterol out of their bodies. it's called a "balanced diet."

roadtrip to st. louis, part 1

2009-06-19T17:00:00.000-05:00

we managed to catch up with some friends, MonkeyHouse and his wife, NotWithStupid. we went to the sports bar in town and ate our food the way god intended us to: breaded and deep-fried.

see that bloomin onion? yeah. that plus red bull equalled breakfast the next day.

thursday night was the Los Straitjackets and Southern Culture on the Skids concert. we got a couple of sets of grandparents to babysit a couple of sets of kids, and went with TalkyTalky and BicycleIrish.

i have a theory about Los Straitjackets. it would be easy to prove if i had ever learned a useful language like spanish, but from my choices of latin, icelandic, lingala and german, it's obvious that i prefer my languages to be marginally useful, if at all. because everyone can speak english, dammit! yeah.

anyway, Los Straitjackets get up on stage in suits, ties, and latex mexican wrestling masks, and play some laidback surfer guitar with minimalist synchronized choreography. and if you've never been creeped out by 4 silent dudes standing in formation and silently chickenheading their shiny colorful faces, you've never lived!

so, there's one guy, their frontman, i guess, who speaks. he doesn't speak english. i'm also pretty sure he doesn't speak spanish. i'm pretty sure that what he speaks is best described as "spanish-themed syllable-salad with a heavy central illinoisan accent." seriously, it sounded about like this "aaaaiiiiiiiiiii ya los straitjackets la ringa-dinga-dinga burrito chalupa dos equis SAN LOOOOEEEEEES!" upon recognizing "st louis," the crowd cheered on cue. this occurred multiple times throughout their set, and i never could decide if the crowd was retarded or smugly enjoying the irony.

the headliners, though, were southern culture on the skids. they songs make reference to moon pies, rc cola, and other finer things of southern culture. their big finale is, by tradition, the song "eight piece box," in which they invite audience members to dance on the stage, and throw the contents of an actual 8-piece box of fried chicken into the audience.

awesome show, and when it let out around midnight, we were starving. you would not believe how intensely an 8-piece box can scent an entire concert hall unless you have experienced it yourself. holy crap. we were jonesing for some chicken, and st louis is THE place for fried chicken. there is a fried chicken joint on every corner, quite literally, at least in the part of town we were in. but after passing a KFC, a church's, two lee's, a popeye's, and at least half a dozen mom-and-pop outfits, we concluded that, while st. louis may be the right place for a fried chicken jones, 12:30 AM on a thursday is definitely not the right time.

we eventually landed at Uncle Bill's Pancake House, (st. louis's first pancake house, and home of what is quite possibly it's last functional pull-bar cigarette vending machine). uncle bill's has not only 20 kinds of pancakes (we went for the blueberry and the maple-pecan pancakes,) but biscuits and gravy and fried chicken, any time of day or night. awesome food, awesome jackass friends, awesome night out.

random pictures

2009-06-18T14:17:00.002-05:00

some low-key summer vacation fun.

more fun to chase than bunnies, because unlike the hyper little mammals, the waddlers tend to give the children hope of catching them until the very last second:

noms. also known as "glitter," "playdoh garnish," "the herpes of the craft world."

painting some wooden boxes in utterly hideous color combinations:

MonkeyBeef and SpazMonkey have an unusually civilized breakfast of cap'n crunch:

MonkeyBeef drags a chair over to check his busy social calendar:

an intensely intellectual game of chess between DramaQueen and EvilGremlin. i would say something funny here if i could, because you'd think this would be comedy gold, but they actually play chess really well, think out the games carefully, and constantly improve their strategy. no shit!

and we have occasionally made it out of the house, in between my arms being ripped to shreds.

the mall:

the north liberty barbecue and blues festival:

random conversations

2009-06-17T19:10:00.000-05:00

me: so, since i can't drive much this summer, we can think up some projects to do at home. like SpazMonkey and DramaQueen are raising tadpoles, and i'm going to help them make stuff from their special effects cookbook, and they're inventing Metroid Monopoly. you're all helping getting your new upright bass-

EG: my DAWGhouse! (note: it's a 1/8 size bass. this amuses the hell out of me. it's basically a couple inches taller than a cello, but his 4'3 ass is going to stand next to it and thump it like a doghouse.)

me: -and reading all those books on electronics, and building robots. i'll eventually build my new banjo, and until my arms get better i'll be reading all my new fencing books.

EG: and what about dad?

me: he's studying for his next board exam and gardening.

EG: and what about MonkeyBeef?

me: well... he's learning how to talk. and how not to be a butthead. that's probably enough for him.

EG: yeah... maybe you should just pick one of those for him.

DQ: i did it!

me: you're awesome!

DQ: yeah! i'm so awesome you can't even understand me!

EG: you got that half right!

me: god, you're stupid.

PRM: you're fun!

SM and DQ are walking around the kitchen table, where the rest of us are sitting, repeatedly crashing into each other in their "robot armor," which consists of my old tae kwon do sparring pads.
EG: well, dad; you were right. iowa does stand for idiots out walking around.

SM and DQ cackle madly and continue bashing into each other; MB jumps down to join them, knocking them on their asses with repeated running head-butts.

EG: i was born in illinois, right?

diaper fail?

2009-06-15T14:01:00.000-05:00

half an hour after DramaQueen announced that HE would put a diaper on his little brother, there was a bare ass streaking and shrieking back and forth across the living room, a diaper wrapped around SpazMonkey's head, and about a gallon of pee splattered over the front and sides of the toilet. DramaQueen proudly declared it a win, seeing as how he had just single-handedly potty-trained his little brother.

apparently, he's a glass-half-full kind of guy.

a good joke is worth at least 30 bucks

2009-06-03T21:38:00.002-05:00

k. so yesterday was my first ulnar nerve transposition. still excruciating 36 hours later despite mind-numbing amounts of percoset. PRM took care of me, played outside with the boys after school, made dinner, hosed the mud off them and got them in bed with stories and blankets and hugs, took care of me some more, stayed up til 1AM doing all the housework, got up early to make breakfasts and pack lunches and get boys to school before heading to work, only to turn back around and come home at lunch because, although i (barely) managed to pick DramaQueen up from school after he puked, there wasn't much i could do to keep MonkeyBeef from slamming his poopy diaper repeatedly into DQ's head as he attempted to curl up miserably on the sofa. PRM made breaded cheese sticks and marinara from scratch for DQ, cleaned up MB and got him down for a nap, and took care of me some more befre rushing back to work.

all without being asked! i swear, this is not the jackass i married. it's like finding a diamond tennis bracelet in a dog turd.

anyway, point being, i am typing one-handed, and nauseous and dead tired and need to lay down and elevate my arm again, so i am behind in my posting. there are more posts to come soon about our week of vacation in st. louis, the surgery, and the very unexpected "down with the sickness, part 4," but first, i had to interrupt with this...

so miller beer is going to pay me $30 for participating in a 3-part survey about their lime-flavored "miller chill." i have 5 "pre-purchase" questions to answer, basically asessing my perception of the product's image. they want the answers in an open message forum, where all participants in the survey can read, and comment on, each others' replies.

so as i sat down to my computer to bang out some answers, i started laughing... and PRM read my answers, and started laughing... and we agreed that we could live with giving up the $30 if it was good and funny. we're now taking bets on how long it will be until miller kicks me out of the survey.

QUESTION #1: Describe a party hosted by Miller Chill. Tell us the music playing, who would be there, how the guests are dressed, where it is, etc.

MY ANSWER: poolside, current top 40 music and party favorites (the stuff drunk chicks can't resist dancing and singing along to, like margaritaville, brown-eyed girl, etc.) , guests are wearing swimwear and/or casual shorts/t-shirts/dresses, the decor is inflatable tiki-themed stuff from oriental trading co, the food is crock-pot themed.

obviously, everyone's white.

down with the sickness, part 3

2009-05-22T22:35:00.005-05:00

now, lost in the shuffle of all the far-more-important ear infections was the fact that SpazMonkey crapped himself just before school let out last Friday afternoon. He had some story about how he SAID he needed to go and the boys room was not working and the teacher wouldn't let him go and yadda yadda yadda, but it sounded an awful lot like one of his stories where you're feeling really sorry for him because the bully did this and that and nobody helped him... and then the alligator appears. (i've already explained to the boy that his stories often "jump the shark." not surprisingly, he likes that particular turn of phrase.)

so i had no idea if he had just decided to try to hold it himself, gambled and lost, or if a teacher had really not let him go to the bathroom when he asked to, or if he was just plain sick. then i got to dealing with the ear infections, and forgot about the crap in his pants - until sunday night, when i thought i was going to die. at 5 pm, i was calling my mathematics-brain-trust friend EvilRedHead to ask what the heck the formula for the height of a triangle is (so i could cut some "fact triangle" math flashcards for EvilGremlin,) and by 9 PM, EvilGremlin was putting his brothers to bed while i lay facedown on the living room floor wondering if the prospect of spending the night in a pool of my own vomit was enough to motivate me to try to drag my face to a toilet or not.

so i spent the entire night sunday alternately puking and laying in bed shivering and sweating, and crawled around the next day - yet another thing that is damned near impossible with gimpy elbows - while PositiveRoleModel was yet again out of the house.

by tuesday morning, though, i was in decent shape, and by thursday had decided that, yay, nobody else in the house was going to get sick. of course, SpazMonkey had picked it up from school, and it was still getting passed around the school, as i discovered when the school called me at 10:45 to say that EvilGremlin was "not himself" and his teacher had sent him to the office insisting that he was sick, thoug EG was denying it (which he alwas does, not wanting to miss school.)

when i showed up to the office, there were three other kids laying on their separate cots and couches in various stages of contorted, pitiful moaning. and i must say: good call on his teacher's part. she avoided the pukepocalypse going down in her classroom by less than ten minutes. as i was signing EG out, he stood up to go, and got as far as the carpet in front of the secretary's desk before bending over and ralphing all over the carpet. the secretary, principal, and nurse all stood there and watched it with a complete lack of alarm or even disgust - they're pretty much numb to anything involving puke at this point in their careers, god bless them.

i had MonkeyBeef with me, barefoot and thrilled as shit to be allowed to walk into the grade school. this is a kid who, at the age of 18 months, smashed a baby gate, unlocked a front door, broke a screen door, and walked his own ass 3 blocks toward the school before being picked up by the police, all in the 5 minutes it took me to poop one morning last september. this is a kid who angrily kicks at his brothers as they exit the van in the morning, and then works furiously at his own seatbelt until the van doors shut, and then howls all the way home in outrage at not being allowed to go to school with them. as far as he's concerned, this is the most awesome shit that he has ever seen go down IN HIS LIFE.

now, granted, EG approaches the business of puking very much like his daddy: balls out. PRM has dubbed the technique "screaming at the toilet." when they puke, it's not just "urk" *splash.* it's more of a "HEEEEEYRRRRRRROOOOOOOWWWWRRRRRR!!' sound, followed by the splash, then some ragged breathing, some follow-up spits, and a couple more rounds of "HOOOOOYEEEEEEEEERRRRRRRWWRRRRROOOOOOOOOWWWWW!!!" MonkeyBeef cackled so hard at the ralphing that he could hardly breathe, looking around to beam at all the onlookers as if to say "did you see that? and wasn't it AWESOME?" after each retch, he'd yell "YEEEEAAAAH!" with his hands in the air, and then he'd spit on the floor right along with EG, until the next round of retching forced him to dissolve into helpless cackles again.

in the midst of all this, another kid came flying into the office, having been sent to see the nurse about some sand in his eyes. adorable fat little kindergartener, eyes squinted nearly shut, careening from wall to wall, saying "i got sand in my eeeyes..." and of course, the four adults in the room basically chanting "stop, stop, stop, stop!" had no effect, and he plowed inexorably toward his date with "sandals full of some big kid's puke." this made him cry. which made MonkeyBeef laugh. which was good, because it covered up my laughing.

and this is why i love people who work in grade schools: they were all not only laughing too, they were calmly and efficiently calling the janitor, keeping the three other sick kids from getting up to see what was going on, and comforting the blind, pukey-footed kindergartener. i may think my job is hard some days, but those people are freaking superheroes.

so anyway, i've spent the day with a miserable EG curled up on the couch, trying to keep MB from bouncing all over a big brother who can't stand the feel of so much as me rubbing his back, let alone a bowling ball butt trying to execute a flying teabag from the back of the couch. PRM made it through the day at work, sort of, but he's down with the sickness now, too, and went to bed pretty much the minute he got home.

the best part about writing stories like these - in this case, about MonkeyBeef being a degenerate - is hearing his daddy's laugh in my head as i do. whether he's reading it or not, this blog has, from the very beginning, always been written for an audience of exactly one. i love you, dude.

down with the sickness, part 2

2009-05-20T21:43:00.005-05:00

so monday, MonkeyBeef started drooling again. this is something that he did for the entire year that he had fluid in his ears, and something he hadn't done since he got tubes put in 3 weeks ago. and SpazMonkey has a nasty ear infection. crap! so i took him in to his otolaryngology follow-up appointment today, where they confirmed that one of the tubes had crusted over and had a little fluid stuck behind it. not a big deal, we just started him back on the antibiotic eardrops he had used for the week following his surgery. i was planning on a speech pathology appointment and a hearing test unless the doc thought MB's progress over the last three weeks was better than expected - and it was better than expected. he's gotten almost all of the consonant sounds down individually now, and though he hasn't yet started incorporating most of them into speech, he's started saying some pretty clear words on his own ("up," "ted up" for stand up, "off," "appuh" for apple, "meenah" for mitten, and my favorite, "dick-dick" for tickle) and he's started spewing out entire sentences of gibberish with all the intonations and rhythms of actual speech. so, all's well on that front.

here's the fun part. when it comes to doctoring, MB is just plain DONE. in the last 2 months, he's had an elbow re-set in the ER, he's had a head CT, he's had anesthesia twice, he's had his damned ears poked and prodded a bajillion times, he's had enough, and he's just. fucking. DONE.

so. as always happens in a teaching hospital, a resident saw him first at today's appointment. probably a first-year resident. the guy walked in, said hi to MB, who stood there and regarded him stonily. he tried to engage the boy in conversation that would have been a bit over the head of a normal 3-year-old, let alone a 2-year-old that's only been hearing for a few weeks. MB didn't move, didn't respond, didn't blink. the resident pulled out his stethoscope. he approached the boy with it. the second he touched it to his chest, MB threw his head back and turned on the siren, and didn't stop for a second the entire time the resident was in the room. the resident crouched down and hesitantly tried to look in the boy's ears, and didn't seem to know what to do when the kid jerked away and tried to take the otoscope away from him. he was relieved when i suggested that i hold MB in my lap, and showed him the straightjacket hold that would allow him to look in his ears without stabbing gray matter. the resident noted that one of his eardrums looked just a tiny bit infected, and maybe that was why he was screaming, because it hurt? i told him nah, the boy just hates you and your evil white coat.

MB hammered this point home - i saw it coming a split-second before it happened. he got this look on his face. it's his determined/fucky'all face. his eyes harden, his funny little pointy chin juts out as he sets his jaw, and you know he's on a course that only the good lord himself could stop the boy from following. the last time i saw that look on his face, his brothers had just thwarted his 5th or 6th attempt to snatch a gameboy from their hands. after that look appeared on his face, he walked quietly out onto the back porch, and then came just as quietly back in, that look still on his face and a fucking baseball bat slung casually over his shoulder.

unfortunately, today there was only a split second between "the look" and "the explosion," so i didn't have time to stop him from suddenly arching his back and delivering a wicked tennis-shoed kick to the resident's balls. i had to admire his professionalism; he winced, but finished looking in the boy's ears before standing up, shaking my hand, telling me he'd be back with the attending doc in a moment, and limping out of the room.

of course, MonkeyBeef's displeasure had been clearly audible throughout the clinic for the last five minutes solid. when the resident emerged, a passing nurse asked him what he'd been doing to that boy, to which he replied, injured balls in hand and a huge smile on his face, "establishing rapport."

raw fucking style, yo.

down with the sickness, part 1

2009-05-17T19:37:00.002-05:00

k. so SpazMonkey woke up crying friday night/saturday morning, sometime after midnight. he said his ear hurt. crap. he had just finished a 10-day course of antibiotics for an ear infection the previous monday, but either it didn't quite work or he had another ear infection. so i loaded him up with tylenol, and cuddled under a slanket with him on the couch with a box of cap'n crunch while he narrated some shitty cartoons for me for a solid two hours. when he was finally feeling better at 3am, i put him back in bed. at 3:20, just as i was drifting off to sleep, i was awakened by screeching from the twits' room. i ran in to find DramaQueen sitting bolt upright, looking horrified and bawling.

me: what's wrong, baby? do your ears hurt?
DQ: i swallowed a lego!
me: you what?
DQ: i swallowed i lego!

i looked around uncertainly... there weren't any legos in their room. and the boy was barely awake, so i don't think he was playing with legos or anything else.

me: you swallowed a lego just now?
DQ: yes!
SM: I DID THAT ONE TIME! IT DIDN'T TASTE LIKE ANYTHING!
me: baby, were you playing with legos just now?
DQ: i don't knooooooooooow!
me: i think you had a nightmare.
DQ: a nightmare?

he sounds even more horrified at the idea that he'd had a nightmare. SpazMonkey, on the other hand, was bouncing happily on his bed, chiming in brightly as he saw fit. which was often.

SM: I HAD A NIGHTMARE ONE TIME!
me: sweetie, i think you were just dreaming about swallowing a lego. i think you were just asleep and it didn't really happen.
SM: YEAH I HAVE NIGHTMARES LIKE ALL THE TIME!
DQ: but i'm scared of nightmares!
SM: LIKE I HAD A NIGHTMARE ABOUT BEING BURIED UNDER THE DIRT! AND ABOUT EVERYONE ON THE WHOLE PLANET WAS LIKE DEAD! AND ABOUT THE ALIENS BITE MY HEAD OFF!

of course, this reassurance from his brother did nothing to calm DQ down. long story short, i finally got SM to shut up and DQ to sleep, and got back to bed around 4AM. you'd think i'd get at least 3 hours of sleep, but you'd be wrong. MonkeyBeef chose this morning to wake up screaming at 6AM. i looked at the clock, tried to beam the thought "ARE YOU FUCKING KIDDING ME?" across the hall to his room... but the wailing persisted. so i walked into his room to find a half-asleep MB trying to roll over... with his foot caught in between two of the rails of his toddler bed. none of his duck-footed brothers could have pulled it off, but he of the long, narrow feet can fit one in if it's exactly vertical... and the minute it turns a few degrees off vertical, it's stuck.

so i unstuck him. he of course woke up, planted a sloppy-ass "MUAH!" kiss on me, and then ran headlong down the hall to jump on SpazMonkey's bed, because he doesn't know the difference between a "school day" and a "mommy needs everyone to STFU for two more hours" day (or he does, and doesn't give a fuck.) so, there was some more cap'n crunch, a trip to the saturday family practice clinic to get another round of antibiotics for SpazMonkey, and a whole lot of rockstar energy drinks, or as SpazMonkey now calls them, "MOM'S BIGASS ORANGE ROCKSTAR SODAS THAT SHE GETS SO MEAN WHEN I JUST WANT TO SHARE THEM."

i think i lost that battle

2009-05-13T15:07:00.003-05:00

MonkeyBeef notices stuff. he noticed that i often deny requests for cheetos. he noticed that i generally fulfill requests for goldfish.

i'm not as good at noticing stuff sometimes. it took me a while to notice that the boy in the camoflage overalls sitting quietly under the kitchen table stuffing his cheeks out of the golfish bag smelled strongly not of goldfish, but of cheetos. because he had filled an empty goldfish bag with cheetos.

dammit.

Grand Theft Auto VI: The Adventures of Thuggy

2009-05-11T13:43:00.002-05:00

"lady, fuck your carseat. i'm drivin' this bitch today YEEEEEEEEAH! suck it."

"WHY THE BLOODY FUCKING HELL WON'T THIS GODDAMNED PIECE OF SHIT START?!?!?"

long story short: the unarmed standoff with authorities delayed the trip to the grocery store a good 20 minutes.

muther's only half a word

2009-05-10T22:58:00.008-05:00

my gift from EvilGremlin: an original work of art, sharpie and watercolor carefully mounted on black construction paper and ready for a frame:

and an original poem. he didn't give it a title, so i'll call it "deep thoughts in the key of mother."

my card from SpazMonkey, quarto on pink construction paper. the outer cover:

i'm wearing an ice suit and wielding a plasma beam.

the inside of his card. with the space chickens. and mother brain, identifiable by her spikes. and ninjas. lots of ninjas.

my card from DramaQueen. folio on pink construction paper. he displays a rudimentary understanding of what girls like: pink, flower, heart, star. he also displays a love of manga, given that the "front" cover is the back by euro standards.

and the inside. sort of a family portrait. this was actually a lot more fun to post on facebook, since you can tag photos so that mousing over the photo causes the names of the people pictured to pop up. since i have no idea how to harness this nifty little trick on my blog, we'll play it like a game of i spy: after you find all the family members, you can look for the cat, the sun, the ants, the pile of one thousand one dollars, and the dead martian. also, if you can identify any of the unlabeled creatures under the earth are, let me know. i think the cluster of three things on the right might be rock-paper-scissors, but that thing on the left looks like some evil shit.

this was actually a replacement for his first mother's day card. this morning, he made me a paper airplane out of purple origami paper. i think it had flowers drawn on it, and a ninja pilot. from what i gather, it was later eaten by a nazi zombie, necessitating the replacement card. and the extra half-hour of staying up tonight to make the replacement. sneaky little shit.

and finally, they even sat together and sort of held still for a sort of portrait.

werd to your muther!

no brothers were harmed in the lighting of these candles

2009-05-08T09:32:00.003-05:00

the twits turned 6 a few weeks ago. SpazMonkey got a darth vader cake, and DramaQueen got a spiderman cake (which is kind of funny, since it was SpazMonkey that was the big spiderman fan during the toddler years; DramaQueen was superman. period. he wore the same superman shirt for almost a year and a half straight.)

they got lots of cool toys, of course, but the one that was the most work was the special request for "bakugan hot wheels." these, of course, do not exist. so i dug through the massive drawer of random hot wheels and matchbox and whatnot - some from PositiveRoleModel's childhood, some from a huge tub of cars my mom picked up at a yard sale when EvilGremlin was 2. when presented with the tub o' wheels, he was so blown away that he just climbed into the tub and sat there on his pile of treasure like a fat little dragon.

oh, and a good portion of them i acquired. as an adult. before i had kids. i'm awesome like that. i won't even bother showing you my ten years worth of mcdonald's happy meal cars (mostly because it would take forever to identify all of them.) but the cereal box cars? oh those are worth a picture. i don't even think this is all of them, and in addition to the 12 boxes of sugary breakfast awesomeness i consumed to get these, there was some sort of elaborate ritual of secret order forms and boxtops and receipts involved in mailing off and waiting 6 weeks to get the crown jewel of my collection, the car-hauling truck thingy emblazoned with the mascots of enough nuclear breakfast sugarbombs to keep an entire kindergarten class acting like cornholio for a week:

so anyway! if you're not familiar with bakugan, a quick primer: marbles that, upon being magnetically activated by a metal playing card called a "gate" card, pop open into little battley robot thingies. there are a few dozen different kinds, and each has one of 6 "attributes," and each attribute has an associated color scheme. there's ventus (seafoam with accents of green), aquos (blue with light blue), subterra (two shades of brown), haos (grey with gold), pyrus (red with bronze) and darkus (black with purple.)

so i found 2 cars in each of the right colors (except red. strangely, we own only 4 red die cast cars, and they're all either wussy cars, like a model t, or convertibles that don't leave a lot of space for customizing. so i did have to go out and buy 2 new matchbox cars.) i used appropriate-colored sharpies to color over some non-bakugan lettering and symbols on a couple of the cars. then, i got some bakugan sticker sheets, which had some stickers small enough to fit on hoods, roofs, and trunks. next, every bakugan package come with a little fold-out sheet of the rules, so we have several of those lying around. this is useful because the rule sheet has lots of tiny illustrations of the game being played. i sat and carefully cut out tiny attribute symbols, tiny bakugan cards, and itty-bitty bakugan logos to superglue onto the doors, bumpers, and grilles. coated it all in a couple of layers of a clear scratch-repair paint from the automotive section of walmart, and voila - instant awesome! okay... not instant. took me a good 6 hours. at least. not sure. the counting got all fuzzy after i busted out the paint, which smells strongly of the stupids.

i'm thinking my next project needs to be some sort of storage/display structure for the bakugan. the commercially available ones are an infuriating combination of poor design, small capacity and high price - i'm not paying $25 for a shitty tin with two flimsy sheets of dimpled plastic that fit together poorly and hold a grand total of 18 bakugan (or $20 for the display case that i think holds 8, or $20 for the clear plastic box divided into 12 little boxes), when the kids have over 50 of the damned things.

and before you go gasping about how fucking spoiled my kids are having FIFTY of the goddamned things - just remember this is a 4-kid collection. you wouldn't be shitting yourself over one kid owning 12. don't be like the mom in the grocery store who felt the need to sigh indignantly and say "wow, i bet my son would love for me to buy him THAT MUCH strawberry quik," with unmistakable disgust as i put about 8 canisters into my cart. (and no, she wasn't pissed because i was cleaning out the stock... there were still plenty on the shelf.) i looked over at her one kid... and her two canisters of strawberry quik... and wanted to ask her if she was still pissed off about eating shit on the math section of the SAT. (as it was, EvilGremlin sweetly pointed out that, actually, his mom was pretty much doing the same thing as her, since 8 canisters for 4 kids worked out to the same 2 per kid that she was buying for her kid, so i didn't even have to come up with anything witty. i just brought that one home by giving him a big hug and thanking him for helping the nice lady with her math, causing the nice lady to storm off making choking noises.)

so, now that we're all on the same page, this is what i dug out for now. blast from the past; it's a wooden display rack for holding a bunch of essential oil vials from back in the day when my mom owned a little antiques-gourmet-foods-and-gifts store downtown. it's been sitting on a forgotten shelf in the toy room for a couple of years now, but it first entered our house as "mighty beanz stairs," and worked nicely for holding all of EG's beanz. it then became the epicenter of "the water game," wherein the twits would run to the basement shower, stick their faces in the leftover water on the floor, slurp up a mouthful, and then run over to the mighty beanz stairs and try to spit directly into one of the wells, and repeat until we caught them running their cackling, soaking asses all over the basement.

they've grown up so much since then. like last week, when they were spitting water at each other in the tub, cackling? they were at least a foot taller.

it's kind of like a shark cage

2009-05-05T11:07:00.000-05:00

we calls it the "brother basket." DramaQueen explained that he thought it would keep MonkeyBeef from slamming his ass into his lap to get the book read out loud to him.

yeah. not so much, as he found out the next time MB cruised through the laundry room and caught his big bro reading without inviting him.