THINGS ONLY PARENTS SAY (TO EACH OTHER)

Her Awesomeness: "Are all six-year-old boys fixated on farts like Beast is?"

Me: "Wait until he finds out they're flammable."

---

And that's gotten 2012 off to a classy start.

WELCOME BACK, HON - I CAN TOTALLY EXPLAIN WHY THERE'S A COLANDER FULL OF BARBIE DOLLS IN THE SINK

Her Awesomeness is surprised and relieved upon her return from a day of Woonsocketry.

I got through an entire day by myself with the kids without a) burning the house down, b) getting a visit from CPS/FBI/ATF/etc. wondering what in sam hill I thought I was doing, c) collapsing in a broken heap by noontime, or d) grabbing that bottle of Screech on the top of the cabinet and pounding that bad boy down.

The kids ate something resembling three meals at the appointed time and place, and kept their bedtime grousing to a minimum.

And so we celebr-- oh, that's the "check engine" light, isn't it? Splendid.

CHICKEN SNAILS!

Her Awesomeness busted this one out while yours truly was rolling around in the annual Epic Huge Pile of Leaves with the now-4-year-old Beast. Oh yes, there was very much of the OM NOM NOM NOM at the dinner table last night. (hat tip: Clumsy Wife, Careless Mom)

PHIL, YOU NUT

Busy times at the house...we're about to try something new for our semi-staycation: camping out.

Not full-blown Bear Grylls stuff, certainly not. We've got a cabin for starters, and if that works out for Noodle and Beast we'll try something more rustic in the future. Her Awesomeness has been camp-supply hunting all week, and me? I've been watching stuff like this:



It's assuring to know there are places where it's not raining.

ONE CAN OF WORMS, EXTRA LARGE, TO GO

Oh, my. Much as I dig the daylights out of being a dad, I'd be full of beans if I told you I'd never, in one of the bleaker moments we all have, had a thought like this one:

"At some point in the last few decades, the American male sat down at the negotiating table with the American female and -- let us be frank -- got fleeced"

On the other hand, it's not so bad compared to the times this American male sat down at the bar with the American bartender and paid way too much for a pint and -- let us be frank -- got fleeced, by overtipping said bartender in the ridiculously mistaken belief that she thought he was cute. I much prefer the current state of affairs with Her Awesomeness, even though I may come in for the bit of unfair criticism in a stressed-out moment.

And I am going to try to resume a more regular posting regimen, but I have been laid out with a beast of a cold and allergies for nigh on three weeks. My apologies.

THAT'S RIGHT (UH!) THE WOMAN IS...SMARTER

We both get tired, my wife and I.

She, however, can stop herself before pouring Ovaltine into the coffee machine.

Noodle had herself a midnight hurl last night, and so she has a day with the Memere and the Pepere to be pampered and spoiled and otherwise coddled. The girl is just shy of four feet tall at age five and a half, and the charts say...well, just look for the black dot.

For those who didn't click to enlarge, she's still 97th percentile for height. And 99th percentile for wisenheimery.

FLU BE DOO BE DOO BE DOO DAH DAY

Looks like the local health officials were right about this year's influenza peaking right on schedule, although what my kids have appears to be a mild case of the creeping shpilkes and not the full-blown flu that's laying people low. Beast has been cranking out the green schmutz at an impressive rate but that hasn't stopped his usual rascality, and now Noodle has picked up a mild fever and she likewise is far from debilitated; she's spending the morning at work with Her Awesomeness and I pick her up for the trip home in a few hours, then it's coloring and bumming out in front of the TV from there on in.

Here, have yourself a song you might never have heard before.

YEA AND VERILY, 'TIS A QUANDARY

My bride, Her Most Royal And Sublime Awesomeness, has a birthday coming up early next month. It's the Birthday That Shall Not Be Named, to be specific, and so we shall refer to it henceforth and ever after as her 28th.

Yours truly does not have a John Mayer-sized budget for a weekend blowout - and that's not milady's style anyway.

What's a guy to do?

I LOVE IT WHEN THE LACK OF A PLAN COMES TOGETHER

So after the telephonically-truncated nap, I went over to Noodle's school to pick her up to be dropped off at the grandparents' while I met the missus to take care of the various legal things that we'd put off because of general parental day-to-day frenzy: wills, health care proxies, &c.

Stood there at the school like a lox until it sloooowly dawned on me that Noodle was already at her grandparents' because she was under the weather, slunk out, picked up Beast and off we went to Poughkeepsie. 9/9G traffic is many shades of evil in the afternoon, so we took the Milan-Schultzville-Salt Point route to the grandparents. Over the river and through the woods, indeed.

Dropped off the kids, got talking to my father-in-law about growing up eating brains for lunch; seems like every ethnic enclave has its old-school brains dish, and now I can add French-Canadian to the list since he grew up along the Massachusetts/Rhode Island border in Blackstone/Woonsocket, which is the largest French-Canadian area of the continent south of Montreal. All this talk of brains (braaaaaains) was grossing out my mother-in-law a bit, so I took that as a cue to make my exit and meet up with my wife.

And when I got to our meeting place the meeting was already over and done with, and I hadn't done had to be there nohow no way. Five minutes, boom, and Bob's your uncle. Which meant...

Free time. With my wife. And only my wife.

DINNER DATE!

We hadn't had one of those in...I can't keep track of the months, it's been that long.

Suffice to say there's a new entry in the Food and Drink section of the blog, and that's Peza in Hopewell Junction, in that plaza on 52 just west of the Parkway. She: the shrimp scampi pizza. Me: the macaroni & cheese with chicken and caramelized onions.

We like.

A shame it's 40 miles away from us up here in the boonies otherwise we'd be there more often, but if you're a Parkway commuter it's right there for you. Om nom nom nom, ladies and gents.

I even got a smooch at the end of the meal even though I had cheese-and-onion breath. Score!

UPDATE: my old mate Miller reminds me that Longobardi's in Wappingers is also a good one, so it's on the List now as well.

NO MUTANT CHRISTMAS TREE THIS YEAR

Got our tree at Heller's Farm in Germantown this year, figuring it was the closest cut-your-own to our place. A whole bunch of real beauties up there if you're still looking, along with a few man-I-shoulda-brought-the-camera weirdo mutant trees nobody's going to buy unless they have a bit of a contrary streak and a spouse who's either equally contrary or extremely understanding.

I headed purposefully toward one specimen that looked something like the tuckamore we saw on our honeymoon in Newfoundland back in '01, but Her Awesomeness' romantic streak does not extend that far and she shot me one of Those Looks that indicated my tastes needed to be adjusted toward something a hair more symmetrical and not the Joseph Merrick of Christmas trees.

On the way back, hey! New market in Germantown! Her Awesomeness reports that the coffee at Otto's is excellent and the cookies look tremendous, but they were short on half-and-half and at 3 in the afternoon we scooped up the last two of their homemade donuts. Eh - they haven't been open ten days yet, so some hiccups are to be expected. You open up a new business and hustle, in an out-of-the-way location in this economy, some slack should be cut.

FIRST, THERE'S A STORK

Wife got the "How does a baby get into a mommy's tummy?" question from Noodle last night.

Okay, it's like this: First, Daddy makes sure there's Marvin Gaye in the CD player. Then, the--

Look, the rest of you can give us a break right now about the CD player. This was six years ago, and nobody in this house was going to be shelling out that kind of money for any kind of newfangled MP3-playing computer device thing you kids go for, not when we had to be down in't mines for tuppence a day.

/get off my lawn

HONEY?

Honey?

You said to bang on the roof when I was done cleaning the gutters and you'd steady the ladder while I climbed down. So I'm done, and I'm banging.

Honey?

Sure is windy up here today. Gutters look sweet, though. She must be watching the game.

Honey?

ANOTHER PERFECT DAY

Noodle loses her first tooth, as noted earlier:

That will be the cover of Noodle's first solo album, Fathe Value.

After that blessed dental event it was rather quickly downhill.

(Update: things as described below were not quite as lurid as had originally been perceived, thus the edit.)

Wife loses her first car - hooray for Route 9 traffic lights that operate when malls aren't even open, and double hooray for people who don't know what to do at said lights, especially when an emergency vehicle is trying to get through. Hint: panicked leaping on the brakes and screeching to a halt when everybody else is expecting to slow down and pull over is NOT the move. The oil slick on 9 didn't help matters any. So, bye-bye to Ol' Red. New Red (the minivan) becomes Ol' Red. For reasons known only to them, the rental-car company has provided Her Awesomeness with an enormous truck she needs a step-stool to climb into, and as we speak she's at Ruge's in Rhinebeck lining up a new ride. In the meantime, we're going to use the truck to pick up a few day laborers and threaten to turn them in to La Migra unless they come across with some scratch for Beast's nursery school.

All this leaves me working on the best doggone cobbled-together spaghetti-and-meatball combo you ever did see, but I'm trying to time it out so that it'll still be warm when my beloved comes back home.

Barring a deer jumping out in front of her truck, that is.

Please eat tonight, kids. And no throwing fits at bathtime or bedtime. Daddy's begging. Give us three hours of Stepford-Child behavior and for you, dear children, it's ponies and Camaros and all the Yo Gabba Gabba you can handle.

HELLO, MURPHY - WE WERE WONDERING WHEN YOU'D POP BY

Her Awesomeness has been in a bit of a vehicular scrape on Route 9. She's fine; her car, not so much.

UPDATE: totaled. And off we go to shop for a car, because it's not like money's tight or anything.

THEY SLEPT ALL NIGHT

Both of them. On time.

Will wonders never cease?

Beast is usually no problem at all, being the low-maintenance relaxed Dude he is...wish he wasn't so relaxed about getting to the potty on time, though. Noodle, on the other hand, has a brain that operates on a whole 'nother level. No way is she sleeping when something interesting is happening in the house, even if it's just one of their hair-trigger toys switching on for no reason. This time she went right out without kvetching or stalling or anything. I tried motivating her by saying the only way she'd get to give mommy bye-bye kisses before she left for work was to go to sleep early, so we'll see if that works in about 33 minutes. There's also the second motivating factor of her Mémère coming over after lunch so I can take Her Awesomeness to the podiatrist. All that distance running has left my darling with an owie that requires expert attention, and because she may have to be off her feet tonight there is a possibility we will splurge and...order a pizza.

And that will be its own drama. Beast pulls the cheese off his pizza and then doesn't eat much of the remaining slice before demanding another, and Noodle likes hers cold. Weirdo.

29 minutes. We'll see what happens.

THE MANLY ARTS, PASSED FROM FATHER TO SON

Herman's dietary routine, translated into pidgin BASIC, which I haven't used since 1982 so forgive the lapses:

1 REM V=the amount of semidigested cat food that'll be coming up Herman's esophagus if he keeps eating stuff that is obviously NOT a food any other cat on the planet would eat
2 REM B=our budget for nice things
5 LET V=0
7 LET B=50
10 INPUT "Has Herman eaten his insanely expensive veterinary cat food?", F$
20 IF F$="Y" THEN GOTO 40
30 IF F$="N" THEN GOTO 10
40 INPUT "What else has Herman eaten?", E$
50 IF E$="DEAD LEAF" THEN LET V=V+10
60 IF E$="KETCHUP" THEN LET V=V+15
70 IF E$="TOENAIL CLIPPING" THEN LET V=V+20
80 IF E$="SHOELACE" THEN LET V=V+35
90 IF V<20 THEN GOTO 40
100 PRINT "GAAAAAAAAACK"
110 LET B=B-10
120 GOTO 10
130 END

Next week I'll get to work on a subroutine to calculate the free time lost to cleaning up the copious by-products of Herman's reverse peristalsis. Which brings me to the meaning of the title of this post.

Like many three-year-olds, Beast is a most observant little tyke and is absorbing information every waking moment. Her Awesomeness and I are aware of this when it comes to things like obviously blue language and behave accordingly, but when it comes to descriptions of digestive matters we revert to collegiate form.

Result: Beast now knows several synonyms for "vomit", including gack, puke, hurl, barf, boof, and toss cookies. Which I maintain is as it should be for the lad, because a young fellow is not considered eligible for a Guy Card unless he knows at least 50 synonyms for praying to the porcelain god, and at six Beast is well on his way.

Heck, I just added "Cantar Oaxaca" to my extensive synonyms list this very evening.

FIFTEEN POUNDS OF CRAZY IN A FIVE-POUND SACK

My tiny little brain is still trying to re-absorb the week.

Noodle has been alternating between nightmares and needing the potty, Beast turned 3, the Nana had to be hospitalized for a bit of falling off the wagon, yours truly had to blow up his schedule for a three-hour congressional candidates' forum and then get said Nana off to the hospital, and Her Awesomeness has been lost somewhere in a cloud of flour as she attempted to bake Beast a birthday cake as well as a couple of banana breads for the big school bus driver's appreciation day today, plus it's over to Kingston for a lighting part that just came in so that I can fix the living room lights and then off to the Wal-Mart to return some insufficiently flattering Noodlewear. She's not being spoiled...it's just that she's 99th-percentile tall for her age and standard clothing sizes don't work all that often. Add that to Wal-Mart's superior quality control (/sarcasm) and it would have been less of a time-suck to buy the nicer stuff straight off, except that the bank account is approaching Bush-approval-rating levels.

Yeah, you caught that right, I'm doing electrical work. Red's hot, black's not, why is my hair sticking straight up and what's that burnt-flesh odor I'm smelling?

SIGNS MY WIFE HASN'T HAD ENOUGH SLEEP

She just told me "I think I'll hit Wal-Mart with the kids tomorrow."

My wife hates Wal-Mart with the intensity of a thousand suns. Not for any political or labor-relations reasons, but just because it's a freak show. Me, I like freak shows because they're a fount of material for the radio show, but the kids really don't need to see the 250-pound tattooed woman in gold tights telling her troglodytic husband/boyfriend/rutting partner "Now this here aisle is the one I was in the last time I got kicked out."

How far off the bell curve of acceptable behavior do you have to be to get kicked out of a Wal-Mart?

And yet my wife is talking about going there tomorrow - with the kids, on a Friday, before a summer's weekend.

She will need a glass of wine tomorrow night. And a foot massage. I shall provide.

PLUMB WORN OUT

Give it up, first of all, for the good people at the Mohonk Preserve for the Father's Day hike they organized. They do all sorts of guided hikes and such for all skill/endurance levels, and this one was perfect for a two-year-old, a four-year-old, and their fat dad. (As for Her Awesomeness, when we were finished with the hike she was ready for a rock scramble while I was shvitzing like Patrick Ewing.)

Ach! Look at the time. And me, not done with my show-prep for Monday. Recaps and catching-up and such...later.

IN WHICH MY WIFE EARNED A YEAR OF BACK RUBS

Groveling is called for at this juncture. Anointing of feet as well.

Not that she asked beforehand, but the Nana went ahead and bought four tickets for a bus trip to see "Mary Poppins" on Broadway today - for herself, Noodle, Noodle's cousin, and my saintly sweet splendid sexy spouse. The sort of thing where there was no delicate way of backing out even though it gobbles an entire Sunday. Stuck on a bus for three hours down and three hours back, Her Awesomeness deftly battled the Nana's eccentricities while simultaneously entertaining the girls in all their squealiness.

I owe her bigtime.

Me and the Beast stayed home and had a splendid time doing Man Stuff, complete with lots of dangling-the-boy-upside-down-while-roaring behavior. We toured various area playgrounds, looked at lots of tractors, drew menacing stares from the geese who thought we had designs on their goslings, and saved a turtle that had strolled onto West Kerleys Corners Road without an appreciation for the hazards involved. There was even an Uneventful Nap, that rarest of phenomena.

It hardly mattered that there were simultaneous Noodle-n-Beast meltdowns when the ladies returned home. We're just glad it's all over with, at least until next month when I try to wheedle the wife into allowing that big trip to the Stadium.