Did you take a picture of my funkle?

Black Belt!

Last Friday I earned a Black Belt in the venerable Chinese art of Shaolin Kempo.
I'm the one on the left.

Youre the Best Around - Joe Esposito

Pregnancy a Cause of Obesity?

Soon to be 6 year old Henderson resident Ben expressed his concern today over the apparent increase in girth experienced by expecting mothers. "Moms are fat when they have babies", he said in a statement made to his father as they waited in line at a local Wendy's drive-through.

While young Ben has never experienced pregnancy firsthand he was intimately involved in his mother's first pregnancy 6 years ago, and has been witness to pregnancy's waist increasing effects on many occasions.

Ben, who has often expressed desires for a little sister, went on to say "I hope my mom doesn't have twins. I don't want her to look like the people on Wall E- on the ship". (Note: Pixar's latest masterpiece, Wall E, features morbidly obese characters aboard a space-cruise ship.)

When asked if there are other causes of surplus portliness Ben only replied "Your face".

You punk.

I taught Jared to call people a punk. Now both he and Ben run around calling people punks. One time a guy at the store touched Ben’s Mohawk, and Ben said “Don’t touch my hair punk!”, and I’ve heard him say “Out of my way punk!” to kids at the playground, so I started telling them that punk isn’t a nice word and that they shouldn’t say it, so Ben started whispering to Jared “Tell Daddy he’s a punk”, and of course Jared would say it. Then Jared started whispering the same thing to Ben, which is hilarious. And if you tell Jared he’s punk he says “You punk”, and “You are.”

Then a few weeks ago I was carrying Jared, and I said “Jared you’re heavy.”

So he said “You heavy”.

And I said “You are”.

He said “You are”. And so on.
Anyway all that is funny, but it leads to something funnier. A few days ago Marie was getting some Yogos ready for Jared, and he got all excited, and started waving his hands in the air, and I said “He’s pumped!”.

Jared shot right back with “You punk Daddy. You are. You heavy. You are. You punk.” And the whole time he was pointing his finger right at my face. It was so freaking funny.

It’s crazy how cute Jared is, and he’s always saying funny stuff. Ben says funny stuff too, but It’s just funnier for a 2 year old to say funny stuff. Like the other day he walked past me and said “Right back Daddy. Poopy diaper. Wipes.” He’s telling me that he’ll be right back, because his diaper’s poopy. He’s been telling me for a long time when he’s poopy, and then he’ll go to his room , and dump all the diapers on the floor.

Blue Belt Test

I tested for my blue-belt today. In the karate style that I study blue is the fifth belt. Every belt test is difficult, and not just because you have to know your stuff, but each one is also an intense physical workout, and today’s test was the worst one yet.

Normally people test on a Saturday, but for blue belt you have to do some sparring as part of the test, so Sensei tested me during a normal class, so there would be people available to spar.

First we did some jumping jacks, then he said to do 10 push-ups, roll over and do 10 crunches, then 10 push-ups, then 10 leg-lifts. Then he had as do what he calls running jumping jacks. You have to run across the dojo, and do 1 jumping jack. That’s one. Then back across the dojo, and another jumping jack. That’s two. We had to do 10, and when we finished we had to do the highest “form” that we know. Whenever you see some Karate guy on TV practicing his moves, and it looks sort of like he’s fighting someone who’s not there, but it’s obviously a choreographed set of moves, that’s a form. I have about 5 forms. Next he lined everyone up, and they took turns attacking me (about 5 people), and I had to use specific techniques to defend myself. Then more push-ups, and crunches, then more running jumping jacks, and repeat the rest of the steps.

After a few rounds of that I was pretty tired, and would have been happy to call it a day, but that’s when Sensei told us to grab our sparring gear. First he made me spar everyone in turns. A few rounds of sparring can be exhausting. One guy even had to quit, because he was tired. He was like the third guy I had to fight, and he quit because of fatigue, and I had to keep going.

I got so tired that most of my karate training went out the window, and I was just trying to get close enough to lay one on whoever I was fighting. The good fighters took advantage of my desperation by backpedaling, and peppering me with punches to the head. I did pop most of them a good one though. Out of the five of them, four had to stop, because I hit them hard enough to ring their bell. The one who I never hit hard was the guy who got too tired to continue. They were landing five blows to my one, but the one I landed was hard. It was the only way I could fight at that point. Take a few punches for the chance to unload one big one.

Once I had gone with everyone once, or twice. Sensei started to double them up on me. That’s when it got really tough. I was already getting killed by everyone one on one, because I was too worn out to fight, and then I had to deal with two guys at the same time.

At one point I thought to myself that I really wanted Sensei to let me stop, or I might pass out, but then I thought if I pass out I’ll get to stop, so that’s not so bad. One or two rounds later he finally did let me stop, and I got my blue belt.

Heroes

The new TV series "Heroes" is awesome. If you're not watching it yet, you must be dumb.

Ender's Game

I finished “A Clash of Kings” book 2 of the Song of Ice and Fire series, so I went out and bought book 3, but I didn’t start reading it yet, because book 5 isn’t even out yet, so I don’t want to read the first four books, and then have to wait forever for the next one, and then wait some more for the next two, so I read a book called “Ender’s Game” instead. It’s by a guy called Orson Scott Card, and it’s about a 6 year old kid named Ender who is recruited by the military to join their “Battleschool”. Ender doesn’t know it, but he’s humanity’s last hope in the war against the alien “Buggers”. It’s a GREAT book. As great as Song of Ice and Fire is, Ender’s Game was a welcome break from 900 page books that aren’t over by the last page. It’s only a little over 300 pages, and has a good, solid ending. There are a bunch of sequels though.

AWESOME!!!

If you don’t want your stuff to get ruined, you shouldn’t have kids.

About a month ago I bought a Nintendo DS lite for 120 dollars, and Ben likes to play with it. Today he was playing with it in the living room, and I was in another room. He came into the room where I was, and handed me the DS, and said "Daddy can you fix the DS?" He had tried to open it farther than it's supposed to go, and he broke the two halves apart. Now it's destroyed. It won't even come on.

Eyes on the Road Please

I was watching the UFC fight tonight (technically yesterday), with my Bro. In-law, Scott, when Marie came in to tell him that some lady just crashed into his parked truck. Can you believe that crap? What was I just saying about morons, and crashing into stationary objects? (See yesterdays post about crashing into walls). The lady’s BMW was busted up, but Scott’s truck only suffered minor damage. She said that she was looking down to fasten her seatbelt, and get this, she’s an accident lawyer. Ha! That’s funny.

The BMW symbol broke off of her hood, and I tried to keep it, but Marie made me give it to her. I don’t know what for. She has no use for it. The thing was busted anyway.

Oh, and the Ortiz/Shamrock fight ended quickly with Tito winning by ref stoppage, and Silvia beat Arlovski in a boring fight. Not the best UFC pay-per-view I’ve seen.

License and registration Please

My Mom came home the other day, and said there was a guy ranting on the radio, about how the Mexican border patrol is “racial profiling”, because they're not stopping anyone, but Mexicans. They were being racist, and he was outraged.

Is this guy the biggest effing moron of all time? It’s the Mexican freaking border patrol! Their job is to keep out the illegal Mexicans. Un. Be. Lievable.

This Looks Like a Good Place to Park

It’s about 12 AM. I’m sitting on the couch watching cooking shows where people show me how to cook stuff that I’ll never try to cook, because if I did it would suck, and if it didn’t suck, I’d still be the only one to like it, so what’s the point. That’s when I hear tires screeching loudly nearby followed by a thud. “Someone just crashed” I said to myself. “I bet they crashed into my freakin’ wall”.

I go outside and there’s no visible damage to the wall, so I take a peak over, and sho nuff there’s a car parked with it’s front bumper pressed to my wall. The reason it didn’t bust through the wall is because the ground is a few feet lower on that side, so there’s a lot of earth bracing the lower portion of the wall, but there’s a decorative wall only a foot in front of that. It’s about 2 feet tall, and 6 feet wide, and it sits right under the sign that says Amber Ridge, the name of the neighborhood. Well that wall has seen it’s last days.

I ran out there to “see if everyone is OK”, but really to make sure they don’t try to get away with crushing the wall. I half expected it to be some retarded teenagers. Teenagers are infamous for their inability to avoid large, stationary objects. There weren’t any teens, just full growns. People were rattled, there were crying women, someone was making excuses, everyone was shook up. I got a license plate number.

There are only two ways to explain how someone could drive into a cinder block wall. 1) the person is drunk. 2) the person is a complete moron. My guess? That lady was wasted. She better fix that friggin’ wall.

You Go To Hell, and You Die!

Kenneth Lay, the Enron boss who was supposed to go to jail, up and died without even giving notice. He was supposed to go to jail, but he got out of it by dying. Can you believe the freaking nerve of that guy?

They interviewed former Enron employees on the news, and these people were actually pissed that homie kicked before he went to prison. One lady said "I wish he would have at least served a little jail time". HE'S FREAKING DEAD LADY!!! What more do you want from the guy? He's dead, as in not alive, as in no longer freaking living! Un-freaking-believable.

Ketchup

Tommy called me last week, and rebuked me for slacking on my Blog, so I decided to play a little catch up (ah, now you understand the cleverness of the title. Yes I’m good, I know). This entry is essentially an excerpt of a letter I wrote to my Brother Kevin, who is serving a mission in Colorado.

I bought Ben The SpongeBob movie on DVD the yesterday, and he’s watched it almost 1,000 times already. Kid is really digging on SpongeBob these days. His tastes are really fickle though. He’ll love something one week, and watch it until the disc wears down to a wafer, and then the next day it will be something else. One time he watched Aqua Teen Hunger Force with me, and the next day he asked me if he could watch “the food guys”. I didn’t let him though. It’s a little inappropriate for him. The one we watched had their neighbor guy whizzing in a cup, because he was too lazy to get up. I already have enough problems with Ben wanting to go outside to pee in the dirt. I don’t need him learning more places to pee besides the toilet.

I could let him watch ATHF anytime though, because Cox cable has this InDemand thing. You turn it to channel 1, and there’s a crapload of stuff that you can pay to watch like movies and fights, but there’s also free stuff. That’s how we watched ATHF in the first place. I’ve been using it a lot lately to let him watch cartoons that we don’t have on DVD (like SpongeBob before I bought the movie).

A few weeks ago we took the boys to the Doctor for a routine look under the hood. A nurse asked Marie if Jared says 10 words yet. Marie said no. Since then, I swear, Jared has learned 30 words. His favorite thing to say is “no no touch”. He says Papa (grandpa), grandma, Momma, and Daddy, night-night, kick kick (that’s from swimming at Colleen’s pool) and some other stuff too. It’s all very hard to decipher by untrained ears though.

Speaking of Colleen’s pool, it’s been finished for about a month now, so we go over there a couple times a week. Ben loves to swim. Almost every day he asks “Can we go swim in Cotleen’s pool?” He wears those inflatable floaties on his arms, and he swims around the pool all by himself. He can go for hours.

His Birthday is next month, and he specifically requested a Chuck E. Cheese Hulk party, so that’s what he’s getting. He keeps telling everyone that he’s going to get “Party Mario 7”, for his birthday, but lately he seems to want “The Hulk Game”, instead. He’s into the Nintendo. He kills is at Mario Sunshine. He can do the back flips and everything. He knows how to fetch the right fruit for Yoshi, and he can get a few of the Shine Sprites without any help. If you saw him play you’d be impressed, and I’m talking about when he was only 3 ½, because he hasn’t been playing it much lately.

RIP Koonya

Koonya was put to sleep last week. The cancer finally got the best of him, and it was time to let him go. It was really sad for everybody. Ben didn't understand that Koonya was dead. He kept telling me not to be sad because Koonya would wake up, and that being sad is "against the superhero code."

We'll miss you Koonya.

Funny Stuff That Ben Said Recently

He fell out of the shopping cart at Wal-mart, and later when I asked if his head hurt, he said, “Nope, it’s all fix”.

He calls Marie and I by our first names at least a couple of times a day.

He dropped his sucker, and it broke, so he ran to tell me, “I dwop my fweakin’ sucker!”

He asked me to put a movie on for him, and I told him to ask his Mom, but he said, “No, she’s crazy”.

Then a minute or two later when she was putting the movie on for him she asked “Am I crazy Ben?”

To which he replied, “No, you’re a genius.” We were both stunned, and we were asking ourselves where he learned to say that.

A few minutes later we got our answer as we were listening to his movie (Beauty and the Beast), and we hear a conversation between Belle, and her father. The father calls himself crazy, and Belle replies, “You’re not crazy you’re a genius.”

We got Koonya’s biopsy results last week. He does have cancer. The Vet. said he would live another few months if we didn’t treat it, but he could make it up to a year with Chemo. Call us heartless, but Chemo. is very expensive, and we don’t see the point in spending all that money on a losing cause. If it was a person, sure we’d do everything we could, and a lot of people would do everything they could for their pet, but that ain’t us. Sorry Koonya, we’re going to miss you.

I noticed a few days ago that Koonya has large lumps under his skin right by his jaw. Last night the skin under his jaw got swollen, and started to hang like jowls, so today I took him to the vet. The prognosis isn’t so good. The vet. said that it’s a good chance that he has lymphoma, a type of cancer, and that if he does, it’s not so much a question of whether he’ll survive, but of how long he’ll survive. Depending on the type and severity of the lymphoma he could live for even another year with treatment, but eventually it will kill him. He said that remission is very rare. If it is cancer, and it goes untreated the vet, gives him a few weeks to a couple of months. If it’s not cancer then Koonya should be fine. He’s scheduled for a biopsy tomorrow morning, and in a few days we’ll get the results.

How do You Spell Relief?

I bought some of those new-fangled soft-chew Rolaids today. When I got them home I had to try them even though I didn’t have any heartburn, but then my tummy felt weird, so I ate a couple of jalapenos. I feel much better now.

Next Week I Go Pro.

Marie and I went bowling today to celebrate our 5th anniversary. Romantic, I know, but the movie we wanted to see was sold out. In two games I had 10 strikes, that’s means half of my frames were strikes! In the first game I had a streak of 6 consecutive strikes, and ended with a score of 212. That’s my second highest score ever. The second game wasn’t so impressive, but I got 4 more strikes, and came real close to getting a strike every other frame.

On a side note, if you like being too crowded to move around when you go bowling than you should definitely try the new lanes at the Sunset Station. I hate elbow room, so I had a blast!

Back to the Gym Again.

Ben’s been going to preschool for a couple of weeks now, and as it turns out, there is a 24 Hour fitness about 50 feet from the community center that has the preschool, so I’ve been working out again. It’s perfect, because Ben gets to go to preschool, and I get to go to the gym without paying a retarded 3 dollars every time, because they let Jared use the 12 dollars a month, or whatever it is, that we pay to use the Kid’s Club there.

I also have a new workout strategy. I used to do 40-60 minutes of low intensity cardio followed by 3-4 sets of one exercise on a major muscle group (chest, legs, back). That wasn’t working so great, so now I do 1-2 exercises 3-4 sets each on a major muscle group, plus a few more exercises on the smaller muscles (biceps, triceps, shoulders, calves). I follow that with about 15 minutes of moderate to high intensity cardio.

The theory is that by working more muscles I’ll increase my lean body mass, which increases metabolism, and the higher intensity cardio will improve my cardio-vascular health, which also increases metabolism. The idea is to make my body more efficient at burning calories when I’m resting, whereas the old way I was trying to burn all of the calories by working out. We’ll see if this way works better.

Everyone Should Be Lucky Enough to Have an Uncle Brad

I didn’t write this, Kelly Parker did on her blog, but since I’m involved, and it’s so freaking funny I just had to put it here.

Saturday, November 12, 2005
SAILOR MOUTH
I’ve often joked (kind of) about wishing I had a “meal-time nanny”. You know…someone else to prepare the food my kids won’t want to eat; someone else to cajole them into not only picking up the veggies on their plate, but to actually put one or two pieces in their mouths; someone else to argue about how many bites is sufficient for a treat and someone else to scrape the mashed-up, dried noodles off the tile floor.
Mealtimes with young kids just isn’t my favorite thing.
Last night was no different, nor did I expect it to be. It was Friday, which meant House Church potluck – a bunch of different dishes brought by a bunch of different people which we all share and happily eat. Well, most of us.
During the course of dinner, I saw Gabriel playing around on his stool, his plate pretty much untouched. Nothing out of the ordinary there.

Here’s the scene:
ME: Gabriel, stop playing around and get busy eating.
GABRIEL: But I don’t want to eat that crap!
ME: (standing there, mouth agape, eyes bugging out, momentarily speechless) What?
GABRIEL: I don’t want to eat that crap!
ME: (absolutely mortified) That’s not the way you talk about the food that people have made for you to eat blah blah blah. That’s your dinner and if you don’t eat that, you’re not getting anything blah blah blah!

I couldn’t believe what I had heard, nor could Kenny when I repeated it to him a minute later. Where had we gone wrong? The kid’s only three!
We make a point to regularly fill our house with friends and family, food and fellowship; a place where we speak freely of living a life modeled after Christ, and yet, all we manage to pass on is trash talk?
Clearly, we could now see that we were failing miserably as parents.
A little later, as I was helping the boys get ready for bed, the subject of “bad words” came up again. My composure regained, I was ready to tackle the situation a bit more positively, perhaps even teach him a timely little lesson about thankfulness and all that junk.

Scene #2:
ME: Gabriel, you said a bad word tonight, didn’t you?
GABRIEL: Yeah, but Uncle Bad put that crap on my plate and I didn’t want to eat that crap.
ME: Huh?
GABRIEL: Uncle Bad put that crap on my plate and I didn’t want to eat it.

Suddenly, it dawned on me. Uncle Brad, notorious for torturing young children, had been trying during dinner to get Jake and Gabriel to try some of the CRAB that someone had brought to share. Despite Gabriel’s refusal, some still wound up on his plate.
I breathed a little sigh of relief – so we weren’t the worst parents in the entire world, Supernanny wasn’t on her way over that very second. He was still just our sweet little picky eater.
And really, I couldn’t blame him for the not-wanting-to-try-seafood thing – I wouldn’t want to eat that crap, either.

Now that is some funny mama-jama! OK in my defense- I do not torture young children… well OK, I guess I’m guilty on that one (I threw an orange at my nephew Josh today, and he cried. I wasn’t trying to hurt him though, and I did offer him a free shot, but he wouldn’t take it.), but Gabriel didn’t refuse the crab. I asked him if he wanted to try it, and he said yes, otherwise I wouldn’t have put it on his plate. No, I’m serious I really wouldn’t have. He only refused it after it was on his plate. He should’ve tried it though, it was really good crap… er crab.

Now I’d like to share another excerpt from Kelly’s blog. In this one I impart some of my expansive wisdom to young Gabriel.

Monday, February 14, 2005
NICE
“Nice” is a hot topic in our family. Kenny and I are constantly extolling the virtues of “being nice” - talking nice, playing nice, being nice to friends, siblings, etc.
“That was so nice of you to share with her.”
“Do you think that was a nice way to talk to me?”
“It’s so nice to see you kids playing quietly together!”
And the list could go on and on.
Consequently, Gabriel also talks about “nice” a lot. Mainly, he concerns himself with “nice guys” and “not nice guys”. In his world view, you’re either one of the two and he’s determined to find out which one. This entails nonstop questioning:
“Mama, he a nice guy?” “Mama, he not nice?” “Why he not nice?”
I try my best to explain, in three-year old terms, about moral character and making good choices, about how some people might choose not to be nice and the reasons why, and why we should choose nice instead.
Usually, my explanations are followed by a barrage of more “whys” and “how’s”, leading me to believe that he’s either
a. not fully understanding me or
b. trying to drive me nuts.
Yesterday, Gabriel was playing Star Wars with his Uncle Brad when I overheard this conversation:
Gabriel: (pulling out an action figure) Who’s he?
Uncle Brad: He’s a _________(some guy who’s probably not even in any of the movies that only a Star Wars dork would know.)
Gabriel: He nice?
Uncle Brad: No, he’s not nice.
Gabriel: Why he not nice?
Uncle Brad: Because there have to be not-nice guys so that the nice guys have someone to fight.

And that was it. End of story. No “whys” or "how’s” following that answer. His explanation seemed to make perfect sense to Gabriel.
Now, why didn’t I ever think of that?

Hey, that was some easy blogging. I need to torture Kelly’s kids more often, so I can copy and paste her entries instead of having to come up with my own.

Loompa Land

I saw “Charlie and the Chocolate Factory” starring Johnny Depp last night. It was good. I was surprised at how much I liked it.

It’s Just That Good

I read a really great comic book last week called “Maus: A Survivor’s Tale”. I decided to read it because Wizard magazine gave it the number 1 spot in their list of the top 100 comic book stories of all time. It beat out “The Watchmen”, which is pretty much the best comic book I’ve ever read, so I gave it a shot.

It’s an amazing true story about a holocaust survivor. The book was written by the survivor’s (Vladek) son- Art Spiegelman. It goes back and forth between Vladek’s telling of the story, and Art’s time researching the story by interviewing his father.

Everybody knows how brutal the holocaust was, but I was still surprised at some of the things that happen in the story, but mostly I was amazed at Vladek’s ability to survive. The guy was incredibly resourceful. He narrowly escapes death I don’t even know how many times.

I convinced my Mom and my Dad to read it, and when they’re done, Marie even agreed to give it a shot. Even Kelly Parker said she would give it a try. None of them will be disappointed. A well written comic is just as great as a well written novel. They’ll all see. I know Doug wants to read it too. If it was easy to find I would tell him to just go buy it, because he’ll want to own after he reads it anyway. Hopefully everybody else will hustle up, so he can have a turn soon.

Preschool Ben

I decided to stop making the biggest mistake of my life, and I let Marie talk me into putting Ben in preschool. It’s only about 20 minutes away, and when we move into the new house it will be even closer. Today was his first day, and it seemed like he really enjoyed it. He hasn’t got to play outside, or with other kids very much since we moved in with my parents, so just getting him out of the house, and putting him in a social situation is worth it, plus they learn, and do crafts, and have stories, so I’m really glad he’s going.

They must have sang the “If You’re Happy and You Know It” song, because he was singing it tonight. He knows the words pretty good too, considering that he only learned the song today.

Popular Baby

I was eating lunch today at Panda Express, and the checker, 3 customers, and the girl cleaning the floor all told me how cut Jared is. They didn’t just say “Cute baby”, and move on either. They all stopped to talk to him, and tell me how cute he is, and they ask me how old he is, and what his name is. It happened at Wal-mart too. In fact it happens everywhere I go without exception. The kid is just that cute, and don’t say it’s because he’s a baby, and people think babies are cute. These people are genuinely impressed by his excessive cuteness.

Save the Pizzas!

OK, I usually try to make these things light-hearted and fun, but today I need to discuss something that is very serious. People are ruining the pizzas. Yes, pizzas are senselessly, and illogically going to waste. You can see why this is an important subject. Pizza is one of the greatest creations ever conceived by man, and it is imperative that we all do our part to put this mindless pizza wasting to an end.

You see, pizza is dough, tomato sauce, cheese, and then toppings, and in the last year or so I have personally witnessed pizzas numbering in the hundreds become rendered useless by the neglectful practice of the OPWOT, or ordering pizza without toppings, commonly referred to as a cheese pizza.

Please people, if your dull, lifeless tastebuds can’t handle a little flavor, do the rest of us a favor, and order a pepperoni, and pick the pepperonis off, or maybe styrofoam, or cardboard would be more pleasing to your child-like palette.

I’m hoping everyone who reads this will help me in this noble effort to put an end to the OPWOT, and save the pizzas!

Special Delivery!

Update

Just to update some previous posts. I replaced my missing football game by buying a used copy for 15 bucks, and Ben has gone #2 in the toilet twice since his last accident. It’s been almost two months since I hurt my big toe, and it still hurts when I bend it, so I think it’s safe to say that I did break it. I forgot to tag someone when I was it for booktag, so I tag Marie, but she doesn’t blog, and she probably won’t read this to discover she’s it anyway, so I also tag Tommy. If Tommy’s already been it than he can tag someone else, I guess.

Bug-phobia

It’s six AM. I’m jarred from my sleep by the terrified screams of my three year old son Ben. “What’s going on?” I wonder. I gracefully spring from my bed. I can see the hall light creeping under the bedroom door, and I take a guess as to what is happening. “He woke up, and looked for us, and then he panicked when he didn’t find us”, I think to myself. I quicken my pace toward the source of the dreadful cries, intent on comforting my poor naïve child. He must be terrified. My poor child thinks he’s been left alone, and he’s terrified.

I turn the corner, and find myself in the living room. Ben is in view now, but something isn’t right. His Grandpa is with him. Why is he crying then? They’re both in the kitchen. Ben is still frantic, but Grandpa is calm, and composed. What could be wrong?

As I approach I ask what’s going on, and Grandpa tells me what happened. “A fly landed on him while he was eating his cereal.” Oh, no wonder he was wailing at 500 decibels at six in the morning. I’m back in bed, asleep before Ben can say “There’s a fly in my Corn Pops.”

Facial Tick

I think I developed a facial tick today. Ben took my football game out of the Nintendo and can’t remember where he put it. I probably spent two, or three hours looking for it. Have you ever lost something that you really didn’t want to be lost? Then felt the intense frustration that comes from not finding it? After awhile it becomes less about wanting the thing back, and more about how crazy it is that you can’t find it. I mean where could it possibly be? I’ve looked everywhere in the whole stinking house. He’s never lost one of my games like this before, usually he takes the game out of the Nintendo, and puts it in a game case, but not this time. I need Marie to get home so she can use her magical woman power to find it in two seconds, and point out to me that it was right under my nose the whole time.

That’s not the sole cause of the tick though. What put me over the edge was when Ben pooped his pants. It wasn’t so much that he pooped his pants, but what really chapped my butt was that he took his underwear off in the bathroom and made a big poopy mess. He got poop on the floor, and the rug. That’s when I felt my eyebrow start to twitch. I think I might be recovering already though. Somehow, writing the word “poopy” has a way of cheering me up. Now if I could just find that filth, flarrin’, flarrin’, filth football game.

Dear Tech Support

My Mom forwarded this to me via Email. I thought that it was good enough to hold on to.

Dear Tech Support,

Last year I upgraded from Girlfriend 7.0to Wife 1.0. I soon noticed
that the new program began unexpected child processing that took up a

lot of space and valuable resources. In addition, Wife 1.0 installed
itself into all other programs and now monitors all other system

activity. Applications such as Poker Night 10.3, Football 5.0,
Hunting and Fishing 7.5, and Racing 3.6

I can't seem to keep Wife 1.0 in the background while attempting to
run my favorite applications. I'm thinking about going back to
Girlfriend 7.0, but the uninstall doesn't work on Wife 1.0. Please
help!

Thanks,
A Troubled User.


Dear Troubled User,

This is a very common problem that men complain about.
Many people upgrade from Girlfriend 7.0 to Wife 1.0, thinking that
it is just a Utilities and Entertainment program. Wife 1.0 is an

OPERATING SYSTEM and is designed by its Creator to run EVERYTHING!!!
It is also impossible to delete Wife 1.0 and to return to Girlfriend
7.0. It is impossible to uninstall, or purge the program files from
the system once installed.

You cannot go back to Girlfriend 7.0 because Wife 1.0 is designed to
not allow this. Look in your Wife 1.0 manual under
Warnings-Alimony-Child Support. I recommend that you keep Wife1.0 and

work on improving the situation. I suggest installing the background
application "Yes Dear" to alleviate software augmentation.
The best course of action is to enter the command C:\APOLOGIZE
because ultimately you will have to give the APOLOGIZE command before
the system will return to normal anyway.

Wife 1.0 is a great program, but it tends to be very high
maintenance. Wife 1.0 comes with several support programs, such as
Clean and Sweep 3.0, Cook It 1.5 and Do Bills 4.2.

However, be very careful how you use these programs. Improper use
will cause the system to launch the program Nag Nag 9.5. Once this

happens, the only way to improve the performance of Wife 1.0 is to
purchase additional software. I recommend Flowers 2.1 and Diamonds
5.0!

WARNING!!! DO NOT, under any circumstances, install Secretary With
Short Skirt 3.3. This application is not supported by Wife 1.0 and
will cause irreversible damage to the operating system.

Best of luck,
Tech Support

Going in the Toilet: Reloaded

Ben finally pooped in the toilet again today. It was almost a month ago that he had his big breakthrough by going in the potty, and he hadn’t done it again since. He kept on finding somewhere to hide, and going in his underwear, which is massively disgusting to have to clean. At first I took the hard line by punishing him. I was giving him cold showers, and yelling at him. When that didn’t work I knew I was doing something wrong. I looked on the internet, and all of the advice I found there said that I should act like it’s no big deal that he a had an accident, and that I should just encourage him to use the toilet next time. It was about a week ago that Marie, and I adopted this new philosophy, and today it paid off. Whew.

On a related note, I’ve been trying hard to be more patient with Ben. He can cause me to get enormously frustrated, and I tend to be stern with him, because of it. I realized recently what I’ve always known: you catch more flies with honey than vinegar, so I’ve been making a greater effort to be calm, and encourage him to do what I want rather than barking orders, and of course loads of praise always helps. One thing I learned from “How to Win Friends and Influence People” by Dale Carnegie is to give people a reputation to live up to. For example, with Ben I would tell him how great he is at pooping in the potty, even though he was failing miserably at it. It really works well on kids, and I suspect that it works great with adults as well.

Laundry Duty

Today I told Ben to go fold the clean laundry, but of course I was only kidding. His response was “I already did it. I help Uncle Tean with the landries.” It took me a second to figure out what he meant. Last week we were at the Torkelson’s (Marie’s sister’s family) house for their son Danny’s birthday. Apparently Ben helped his Uncle Dean with the laundry while we were there, thus his reasoning that he was exempt from laundry duty, because he had already fulfilled his obligation by helping Dean last week.

Entertaining Exercise

I had the best workout of all time today. I managed to combine exercise with one of the all time laziest of lazy activities- playing Nintendo. I ran on the elliptical runner in my parents’ room, and I plugged my Nintendo into the TV, and played a game of NCAA Football ’05. I ran for 55 minutes, and they flew by.

Working out while watching TV is fun too. Yesterday, and the day before I watched The Sixth Sense while I ran. I’m gonna borrow “Lost” from Doug, and watch it during next week’s workouts.

Bye-Bye Big House

We moved out of the Big House last week, and into my parents’ house. It was a load of fun living in the Big House, and we’ll miss it. Ben still talks about Jack and Gabriel everyday, of course it’s only been five days.

Life at my parents’ is fun. The house is way smaller than the Big House, so it’s a little cramped, but on the upside everything is always really close. In the Big House if I needed something from the kitchen it was like “OK I need to pack a bag for the trip to the kitchen. See you in a few hours Honey.” Here if I need something from the kitchen I can probably reach it without leaving my seat.

Koonya’s not diggin’ it here though. He spends his days chained up outside. I’ll be happy for him when we have our own house again, and he can have the freedom to go in and out whenever he wants.

Camera Shy

Jared crawled for the first time a couple days ago. Of course, when we got the camera out to record it, he decided that he was done crawling.