Mon 21 Dec 2009
when an overweight stranger breaks into your house surreptitiously and eats your food and drinks your milk and leaves things under foliage for you and stuffs things into your socks. YOU SIMPLY HAVE TO LOVE THIS TIME OF YEAR!!
MERRY CHRISTMAS!!!!
“The Winter Stalker” By Stephen Reedy & Alex Pardee from ZerofriendsFilms on Vimeo.
Wed 7 Oct 2009
So I realize that if I had lots of time and an complete lack of need for income, I could regale you with Muppet stories pretty much every day. So if you love reading this as much as I love living it and sharing it, we can definitely strike some kind of deal. You give me money, I provide you with consistent enjoyment, amusement, hilarity, breaks from your daily grind. Just wanted to throw that out there. Run it up the proverbial flagpole and see if anyone salutes…
Anyone?
Anyone?
Buhler?
Buhler?
Ok, guess not. Well, then fine. Have it for free. But no more bitching about the quality of service on the lido deck then. And we are moving to well drinks in all the bars now. All the fine liquor will be in the captain’s quarters from now on…come to think of it, it always has been. Move along -nothing to see here.
Alright, you know something mush have happened to drag my sorry butt back to the keyboard. So let me get to it. Once a month, I have to be in K-town now to do some work. It’s a good situation, but it does take me away from Ferf and the Muppet for short stints and that part can be trying. The Muppet has been surprisingly nonplussed about it. Ferf has been fairly good about it. I have been accepting all forms of sympathy however and milking it for all it is worth - but that’s just how I roll. With the advent of such wonderful technology like Skype and internet phones I can all but touch my family while I am gone. If I could actually touch my family, or at least Ferf, while I was gone then I am pretty sure that this would quickly become a little too personal a post for most of you to read. That or I would make it a members only site and start making some real money…but I digress.
SO one morning, I got a phone call from Ferf. This is not that unusual, but normally we do our calls in the later afternoon or right before the Muppet goes to bed so we can stick with the whole bedtime ritual and routine. But this day I got a call fairly early in the morning. So I answered it (cause that is the normally accepted response to a ringing phone. In fact, it has become almost Pavlovian these days, which you would think would mean that I should be able to get my dog to answer the phone, but the best I can do is get him to run to the phone and slobber…). Anyways, I picked up the phone and seeing it was a call from m ever-lovin’ wifey, answered it. (cause with caller ID that whole Pavlovian response things is less relevant. In fact, you shouldn’t even bother trying to get your dog to answer the phone. If you could get him to read the screen and tell you who was calling however, that would be a neat trick and could probably score you an appearance on David Letterman’s Stupid Pet Tricks. Unless he was busy destroying his show by sleeping with people who work for him. Maybe he might want to sleep with your dog…you know what. Let’s put this whole dog, phone, David Letterman affair behind us shall we. It leads to dark, awkward places.)
So, lets go back to the beginning. The phone rang, I saw it was Ferf and I answered it. See, that wasn’t so hard was it. There is absolutely no reason to go delving into things like dead Russian psychologists and whether or not David Letterman has a predilection towards bestiality. Why do you people do this!?
SO I answer the phone with out a single thought outside of answering the phone…and Ferf tells me that the Muppet doesn’t think she should go to school that day. Now, understand that this is a HUGE thing. The Muppet likes school. In fact, the Muppet loves school. She’s a role model for goodness sake! She loves the kids, the teachers, the uniforms - she loves it all. So her not wanting to go is well, huge. So she gets on the phone with me. And I ask her how she’s doing the fine morning. (Cause you don’t want to play into anything unwittingly.) She tells me that she is not doing well. I can tell this is going to be a bit of a drawing out process.
Me: Why are you not doing well? Isn’t today a beautiful day?
Muppet: I don’t know if today is beautiful I haven’t seen it yet. And I probably shouldn’t see it.
<Now, to be fair, and in the interest of full disclosure, she did have a bit of a cough - and evidently a tickle in her throat judging by the horrid sound she was making that was more than clearing one’s throat, but less than anything else I could imagine. I realized that at some point it would be my fatherly duty to teach my little princess how to “hock a loogie”. I have come to understand that this is not a practice that girl daddies normally participate in. One doesn’t see a lot of little girls all dressed up in frilly lacy pinky things spitting hocked up snot onto the sidewalk like they might see a teenage boy doing. But even if one is reviled by the concept, one must admit that said teenage boy had to have been taught how to both hock and spit said loogie at some point - either through intentional tutelage or by personal practice from mimicry. However it happened, there was a definite exchange of knowledge, and as I am less inclined to allow others to teach my daughter things “on the playground” I figured that it probably fell to me to cover that particular portion of the life curriculum - mostly because I know for a fact that her mother doesn’t have the knowledge to share with her. I know this because her mother once asked me to teach her how to do it. We were already engaged, so I guess the gloves we off and she figured I had made enough of a commitment that she did not have to fret over whether or not I would call her the next day if she asked me how one does it. Being the good and kind fiancee I was, I acquiesced to her query. We were sitting in Queeny Park in Vancouver - overlooking the entirety of the place, which by the way, is gorgeous. That fact plays little part in the story, but it does help with setting and sometimes context matters. It was late morning, so we had the place pretty much to ourselves. We were sitting on a park bench that was placed with a perfect view of the city, but probably not with loogie hocking practice in mind, but hey, you cannot anticipate everything. So Ferf got the hocking part pretty quickly. (She does have a younger brother and I know for a fact that ScottyBear can bring up quite a loogie, so I assume that she learned the internal portion of the project from mimicking him.) Evidently, though, she never had really “gotten” the concept behind spitting. So there was a gap in her learning that she desired to close. I showed her a couple of times with what were, I must admit at the risk of sounding prideful, beautifully arching blobs of the perfect mixture of saliva and mucus that flew no less than 7-8 feet before impaling themselves on the blades of grass on the lawn before us. I talked at length at the importance of rolling the tongue, the science of creating an airtight seal with your lips until the last moment to achieve maximum velocity, and the art of the perfect trajectory. In fact, it might have been one of my finest off-the-cuff lesson plans. When she finally worked up the courage (and the loogie) to try, she was giddy with anticipation. We were sitting side by side and both looking forward in order that we might together view her first successful attempt so we could do an after action review of her performance. I counted it off for her….three…..two….one….GO!
The sound that emanated from her cheeks, as well as the flakes of spittle on the side of my face gave me instant informational feedback that she had indeed not made an airtight seal like we had spoken of. It was then that I felt the delicate pressure on the top my shoe. That perfect amount of pressure that only comes from a dainty loogie being deposited by gravity onto the top of your foot. I looked at her briefly before looking down to survey the carnage that was my Nike Air. I knew two things instantly. One, the girl before me who would become my ever-lovin’ wife, was not going to “get it” when it came to this activity. And two, she was getting a cold. But I digress…>
So the Muppet had a tickle in her throat that she was unsure how to scratch, but the noises she made suggested that she was not going to scratch that itch before she made anyone around her with a half decent sense of auditory awareness really uncomfortable. Also, she had a bit of a dry cough. Not quite Swine Flu, but evidently annoying enough to her to be worthy of a “I can’t go to school today” intervention.
Me: Muppet, what’s the problem? Are you sick?
Muppet: Oh yes daddy. I am SO sick.
Me: How sick are you?
Muppet: Too sick to go to school!
Me: How sick is that?
Muppet: Well daddy, I have a cough. I couldn’t sleep last night because of the cough.
Me: Baby girl, Daddy went to school lots after not sleeping all night. You can do it.
Muppet: Daddy…<sniffing like tears were beginning to well up in her puppy dog eyes> you don’t understand.
Me: What don’t I understand baby girl?
Muppet: I am exhausted and catastrophied!!!
Me:
Muppet: Daddy, did you hear me!?
Me: Ummmm, yeah. I got you there chief. Exhausted and catastrophied. That sounds bad.
Muppet: Oh it is bad Daddy. So very bad.
So Ferf let her stay home from school. The cough was not very nice and the sounds she was making would have been distracting even to the most dedicated kindergarten student. And through it all, I got a new vocabulary word. One that I am certain we have all felt at one time or another. Catastrophied. Yep, we’ve all been there baby girl…we’ve all been there.
Thu 24 Sep 2009
So I picked the Muppet up from Kindergarten today. It’s a fun thing to do when I am able to. She’s always surprised that I am there, and she is always ready to talk about her day: who she sat next to at lunch (which has the possibility for endless drama on an almost daily basis), what she did at school, what she learned, who her favorite teacher is (which never changes, but she wants me to guess every time and seems genuinely amazed at my almost precognitive ability to guess right every time), and other such important details in the life of a 5 year old.
Truth be told (and every now and again it is here on the Maru) I really enjoy the entire verbal process. It’s her inviting me into her world. I know that she might not be so eager to do so later in life, so I relish it now. Today I got some serious scuttlebutt on the goings on in the kindergarten class. There is all kinds of stuff going on there. The Terry Fox run is tomorrow and the kids are raising money for the Terry Fox Foundation. The Muppet decided that she wanted to raise money for Terry Fox like she did last year. She told the kids this. They were not as impressed as she thought they should be - mostly because they are all doing the same thing. SO, being the Muppet, she felt it necessary to remind them that she raised more money than them last year and would do so again this year.
Heh. Funny, cause last year I was working in an office and I could let her go from cubical to cubical soliciting people who would feel occupationally obligated to help her out. This year, I work from home…
But this would not be something that held her back. She told me that we could make calls and get people to give on the internet. Seriously, my child is 5 and has a pretty good understanding of the vehicles best suited for fundraising. I told her that we would make some calls, but she had to do the entire solicitation. SO she had to be prepared to ask people to sponsor her, and then be ready to tell them what she was doing and WHY she was doing it. She seemed to get the picture, so I called a buddy and asked him if she could solicit him for a fundraiser. I explained in great length that he was welcome to say yes or no because the lesson was learning how to ask and how to be grateful no matter the response.
So after the quick run down, I handed the phone to the Muppet. She said hello and then immediately asked if he would like to support her cause. (I winced a bit because first rule of making an ask is to spend some time establishing rapport with the donor…seriously, everyone knows this and the kid blew right by it.) I could hear his side of the conversation and it went like this:
The Muppet: “Hello. Would you like to support my cause?
Her mark: “Well, what’s your cause?”
The Muppet: “We are raising money for Terry Fox.”
Her mark: “How are you doing that?”
The Muppet: “I am calling people and asking them if they want to support my cause.”
Her mark: “How much are you trying to raise?”
The Muppet: “I am letting people decide how much they want to give.”
Her mark: “What does the money go to?”
The Muppet: “The money goes to help little kids in the hospital who have cancer in their bodies, so they don’t have to die like Terry Fox did.”
Her mark: ” <blink> <blink> “uh, okay…how much do you want?”
The Muppet: “However much you want to give so the kids don’t die.”
Her mark: “How’s $50?”
The Muppet: <pulls the phone away from her ear> “Daddy, he’s giving fifty bucks!!” <puts phone back to ear> “Thank you…daddy will get your money.”
Seriously, this happened over and over for about an hour (though the $50 was the high water mark in single gift size). She told the same story time after time. I asked Ferf if she had coached her on wording, and she assured me that she had not, and that the Muppet had come up with that all on her own.
So she’s running in the Terry Fox run. I am pretty sure she will be the highest fund raiser in the class again. But, if you want to give, you can. Click this link to the Terry Fox National School Run. Where it asks for a participant code, type: APSEQT That’s the Muppet’s page. Donate however much you want so the kids don’t die. The Muppet and Terry Fox will both be grateful.
But to get back to the original point of this story - drama in the classroom.
Where were we???? Oh yes, we were on the way home from Kindergarten and the Muppet is sharing her day with me. She sat next to Emma at lunch because her favorite friend was absent. But that’s okay. Her favorite friend was probably sick…or on vacation. And Emma is nice to sit next to because she chews with her mouth closed. And she doesn’t spit when she talks. Both of which are social skills that are evidently not universally practiced in her class. Then, with absolutely no segue, she mentions that Nate doesn’t like it when everyone in the class looks at him when he gets in trouble. I mentioned casually that maybe he should stop getting into trouble if the looks of others bother him so much. The Muppet seemed to be underwhelmed with my suggestion and gave me a look that I AM CERTAIN she learned from her mother who gives me the same look when she is underwhelmed with suggestions I make. She paused dramatically to give the look and continued on with her story about Nate and his distaste for groups of people looking at him when he gets in trouble. Wanting to be an active listener, I asked what kind of things he did to get in trouble and thereby garner the looks. The Muppet told me that he is usually just silly or does inappropriate things.
Now, to be fair, the Muppet has a vocabulary that is kind of outside the norm for 5 year olds (at least this is what I have been told by others. Personally, I think she has an appropriate vocabulary for a 5 year old, but then she is the only 5 year old I have ever had and thus she is judged against herself in my world - thereby ensuring that she is constantly normal). So when she says that someone does something “inappropriate” I (a) know that she is aware of the meaning of the word and (b) ask a follow up question that you would expect me to: “What kind of inappropriate things does he do?”
Again, I am honestly expecting her to reply with something fairly benign like “forgets to wash his hands before eating” or “cuts in line at the water fountain.” Inappropriate to be sure, but hardly earth shattering. So, when I asked the question it was almost a throw away line. I am driving, she is in the back seat and I simply want her to know that I am listening and engaged with her. So you can understand that I almost drove off the road when she said, “Like when he’s inappropriate with others in the cloak room.”
<blink>
<blink>
<blink>
<remember to breathe>
<stop the trembling in your hands>
<release the death grip on the steering wheel>
<calm your voice before you speak and sound relaxed>
“What do you mean baby girl? What kind of inappropriate things does he do with others in the cloak room?”
<blink>
<blink>
<blink>
<check the clock>
<what’s taking so long to answer?>
<don’t sound pushy>
<don’t panic>
“ahem…Muppet? Did you hear my question?”
“What daddy?”
“I said, ‘What kind of inappropriate things does he do with others in the cloak room?’”
“oh…he talks. You aren’t supposed to talk in the cloak room - it’s inappropriate. He does, and so he gets in trouble, and then everyone looks at him. He doesn’t like that.”
<as feeling returns to my extremities and thoughts of justifiable homicide recede from my consciousness and my heart rate returns to normal>
“yes…I can see that. Wanna listen to the radio for a bit?”
Seriously, we’re like 3 weeks in…I don’t know if my heart can make it through a whole year of this kindergarten drama…And poor Nate has no idea how close to death he came today - somebody was gonna get hurt real bad!
note to self - teach the Muppet another word for “inappropriate”…one that doesn’t illicit such strong emotional responses from little girl’s fathers.
Thu 3 Sep 2009
Yes, it has been a long time. Officially this is the longest I have gone without a post of some sort since I started this voyage back in 2006. My bad. It’s summer and things have been hectic. Remember that Ferf broke her foot? She milked that for a full 2 months in a big boot and “couldn’t really walk” and I was doing WAY more than normal around the house - which is saying something cause, let me tell you, on any given day I do A LOT. Seriously, Ferf married well!! But I was doing way more than the way more than normal I do, and bottom line - I (a) didn’t have time (b) was too dang tired or (c) couldn’t come up with an amusing was of telling any stories for a bit. Oh, and add to that the fact that I had been working more than ever on Ferf’s website and running the business side of her occupation and well, one can only do so much. At least I can only do so much. A dear friend of mine recently said to me, “turns out I have a ceiling.” Evidently I too have one, and unfortunately, the Maru was on the other side of it for a bit. But two things have me encouraged - first, I am back on the Maru. Second, I may have a ceiling, but at least it ain’t glass!! (though that would be so cool during a thunderstorm - but probably not so much during a hurricane)
Anyways, this summer was back to nature here on the Maru. We, as a family, spent a good deal of time outside and got back to the whole natural eating thing we had slipped away from for a bit. To that end - we did some serious canning and freezing. So if Y2K ever shows up again, I suppose we’ll be ready. But don’t you come knocking on my door simply because you didn’t prepare like I did. I don’t have enough for everyone - but my neighbor down the street does still have a chemical toilet left over from 1999, and he’d prolly let you use that if you came by and needed it.
So, one of the things that Ferf wanted to do this summer was to get some fruit - lots of fruit. She wanted blueberries, a whole lot of blueberries. The upside of living where we do in Canada is that fruit grows here like mushrooms in sheeit. It is everywhere and it is wonderfully sweet and juicy and yummy. For those of you who were not blessed with knowing me as a young child (and believe me that would truly have been a blessing to you) you would not know how strange it is for me to have written a sentence like that last one - no, not the you would have been blessed to know me as a kid one…the one before that about fruit and it being described with terms like yummy goodness. As a child I was NOT a fruit fan. I would eat apples (red delicious only) and occasionally grapes (especially green seedless ones frozen in the freezer). That was about it. I simply did not like the flavor or the texture of such things. I figured that if eating a piece of fruit caused the freaking fall of man, then I was better served to stay away from such things. Imagine how much better off we’d all be if Adam hadn’t liked fruit.
Genesis 3
The Fall of Man
Now the serpent was more crafty than any of the wild animals the LORD God had made. He said to the woman, “Did God really say, ‘You must not eat from any tree in the garden’?”
The woman said to the serpent, “We may eat fruit from the trees in the garden, 3 but God did say, ‘You must not eat fruit from the tree that is in the middle of the garden, and you must not touch it, or you will die.’ ”
“You will not surely die,” the serpent said to the woman. 5 “For God knows that when you eat of it your eyes will be opened, and you will be like God, knowing good and evil.”
When the woman saw that the fruit of the tree was good for food and pleasing to the eye, and also desirable for gaining wisdom, she took some and ate it. She also gave some to her husband, who was with her.
But Adam was not a fan of fruit and said to his wife, “No thank you.” His wife said to Him, “But I have taken of it and eaten and did not die.” Adam cocked his head to the side and said to her, “Look woman, this has nothing to do with the rightness or wrongness of eating a piece of freaking fruit. You wanna listen to a dang snake, you go right ahead. But I don’t like fruit all that much, so back up off me woman.”
Then the man and his wife heard the sound of the LORD God as he was walking in the garden in the cool of the day, and she hid from the LORD God among the trees of the garden. But the LORD God called to the man, “Where are you?”
He answered, “I’m over here, watching my wife try to hide from you in a berry patch. I told her the thorns would hurt, but she dove right in. It’s crazy! She said she had to hide cause she’s nekkid”
And he said, “Who told you that you were naked? Have you eaten from the tree that I commanded you not to eat from?”
The man said, “The woman you put here with me—she ate some.”
Then the LORD God said to the woman, “What is this you have done?”
The woman said, “The serpent deceived me, and I ate.”Then Adam said, “honestly, I don’t know what’s gotten into this one Lord. She’s hanging out with snakes, eating bad fruit. The whole thing is sketchy to me.”
And the Lord, wiped serpents, Eve and fruit off the face of his creation and replaced them with dogs that could speak, beer and women that were totally hot and utterly compliant.”
But that is not how it went down, and here we are today. But that is not really the point of this post, I was simply letting you know that I used to loathe fruit and now, I really like it. No, the point of this post is the berry picking portion of the story, which I haven’t even been able to get to yet, cause that saucy tart Eve screwed stuff up so long ago. We’re still paying the price for her…<sigh>
Anyway, back to the story…let’s see, fruit, yummy goodness, oh yes, I remember! Ferf wanted fruit. We have an abundance of “you pick it” fruit farms around us here in the valley. She thought we might go pick some fruit. Blueberries to be exact - cause it was blueberry season and she wanted like A LOT of them. I am into this a bit, but still leery that I will be doing the majority of the picking because the Muppet will enjoy it for about 10 mins before she gets utterly bored and Ferf has the broken foot…SO, I ask the ever-lovin’ wifey how many berries she is thinking about obtaining. She tells me, “no more than a hundred pounds.” Oh, good. Nice to have an upper limit. 100 FREAKING POUNDS OF FRUIT!? Are you kidding me?? And you want to PICK IT? BY HAND??? “Well,” she tells me, “it would be cheaper.”
Admittedly, that does tend to get me attention. “How much cheaper?” I ask. “I can call and ask,” she replies. (don’t you love the witty banter we have in our home. We’re like the Gilmore Girls, only we’re not named Gilmore, and we’re not mother and daughter, and we’re not both female, and..you know what - turns out we’re nothing like the Gilmore Girls…just ignore that whole train of thought.) SO she calls. Turns out that to have them picked is $0.10/pound more than you picking them. Hmmm…so if we got 100 pounds, that would be a $10 difference in total price…It would probably take me 2 days to pick that many berries doing 8 hour days, so my time would in fact be worth…<add the two, sum up, carry the naught, divide by the sum of the parts> $0.62/hour.
So we called and ordered 100 pounds of already picked berries. WooHoo!! The next day I got to the berry farm to pick up said berries. I go to the counter and give them my name and they go to get the berries. As I am standing there, I figure I’d give something a shot…So I ask the girl, “Since I am buying so much at once - I assume I get a bluk discount, right?” She looks a little bewilderd, but says, ” I can give you $0.10 off per pound.”
That would be excellent!!!
I love berries!!!
Mon 22 Jun 2009
Has it really been almost a month since I posted?? I have been too busy on the ever-lovin’ wifey’s internet presence and have let my own go a bit. I am truly sorry about that to you whom look to the Maru as a constant (or at least consistent) source of…source of…ummm…whatever need it is you have that somehow goes unmet in any other place in your life. I can only imagine how difficult these last few weeks have been on you. Seriously, I can only imagine because I wouldn’t actually know in a personal way. But I am here to empathize with you. I feel your pain. Let’s move on.
So Ferf broke her foot this weekend. Yep. Broke her right foot - and know I don’t mean she broke it off in my arse. I mean she broke a bone in it. Fracture of the fifth proximal metatarsal.
So now she has a big black air cast boot on her foot. Very sexy. She wears it well - makes it look good.
But how did she break it you ask. I’m glad you asked. She tripped over thin air whilst walking across the bedroom floor. She swears that she tripped over my house shoes, but I think that’s bunk. My house shoes are not something easily tripped over. They are size 12 after all. How on earth does someone overlook a freaking foot-yacht parked in the middle of the floor? If it were me, I would rather have people believe that I tripped over thin air. But she stands by her story…well, sits by it really. She doesn’t stand so much right now. heehee.
She did it right as I was leaving for the weekend. Friday morning and it is literally 10 minutes before my ride was coming and she takes the dive upstairs and I run up to find her doing a full frontal face plant on our bedroom floor - her head landed 4 inches from the door jam. The good news is that she didn’t brain herself as well. But we got her up and down stairs and her foot elevated and iced. It was already swelling by that time and she couldn’t put weight on it. So she asked me if I could go to the store and get her some crutches before I left. Dutifully I checked on line and made some calls to drug stores and such. No luck. No crutches to be had. I had the dubious honor of letting her know that there would be no crutch based assistance coming. I offered to cancel my trip, but she wanted me to go. When my ride showed up I took my bags out to his car and when he opened his trunk, there was a set of crutches. I asked him if he were planning to get injured to which he responded that they were a set he used after ankle surgery and he was taking them to the Salvation Army. I laughed and took them into the house for Ferf. She used them all weekend and waited until Monday to even go see a doctor. Ahh my wifey. She’s a keeper!
Evidently the Muppet was quite the trooper this weekend. She took care of everything that Ferf needed. She carried food and dishes to Ferf, she brought her drinks and kept the house “tidy”. She did her chores and never once complained. She was awesome. In fact, she tried to do everything. She tried to not only bring Ferf a bottle of extra strength Advil liquid gels, she tried to open them and give her some of them. Unfortunately she was foiled by the child proof lid.
She tried and tried to get the bottle open, but to no avail. Frustrated she handed the bottle to Ferf and told her that she could not get it open. Ferf smiled and told her that it had a safety feature - a child proof lid. The Muppet thought about that for a moment and said “it’s child proof?”
Ferf said, “yes honey…it’s child proof.” Again, the Muppet thought about that and finally said with a deeply sincere look on her face,
“But HOW does it know that I am a child???”
Later I told the Muppet that it is magic, like a thermos. It keeps hot things hot and cold things cold, but nobody knows how it can tell the difference.
…
…
…
Thu 28 May 2009
Tue 19 May 2009
So today is an “anniversary” for me. At least that is what we call it. I have often wondered why we use the term “anniversary” colloquially only to refer to annual celebrations of weddings i.e. wedding anniversary, but we say birthday to celebrate the anniversary of our birth. And we use Christmas to denote the anniversary of the birth of Christ. And we use a length of time in conjunction with “reunion” when we celebrate the anniversary of our graduation from school (like this fall will be my 20th reunion - though I have not attended anything close to 10 others).
For those who pay homage to the great god google I give you this piece of intelligentsia:
An anniversary (from the Latin anniversarius, from the words for year and to turn, meaning (re)turning yearly; known in English since c. 1230) is a day that commemorates and/or celebrates a past event that occurred on the same day of the year as the initial event. For example, the first event is the initial occurrence or, if planned, the inaugural of the event. One year later would be the first anniversary of that event.
But this day is actually none of the above, but it does commemorate a past event - 12 years ago today my father died much too young. He was 57 years old. He never saw me marry Ferf. He never saw me move to Nepal. He never saw me get dual citizenship. He never got to talk to me about my travels all over Africa and south-east Asia. He never heard me speak exotic languages poorly. He never saw the birth of the Muppet - nor any of the followig growth she has done in the almost 5 years since. He never drank really good scotch with me and talked about my life and my goals and dreams. He never saw me get my CFRE designation or the years of work that went into earning it. He never celebrated my first 7 figure gift that I brought into an organization. He never saw the first house I bought…or the second one for that matter. He never saw me screw up so badly and then pull life out of the ditch (with the help of more friends than I could ever create nicknames for).
Bottom line…he missed a lot. And the list grows every day. I think that is one of the hardest things to get over. He should be 69, about to turn 70 this year. That’s young…young enough to still be alive that’s for darn sure.
He died of cancer over a decade ago. Sometimes I think I am still pissed at him for having the audacity to die. Yes, that is incredibly self-absorbed to the point of bordering on narcissim…I’m comfortable with that. At least I’m self aware. SO many people miss the boat on that one. But not me. I got that going for me. Which is nice.
It is an amzing thing that our subconscious can remember the anniversary of the deaths of loved ones even we don’t consciously think about it. I had a list of things to do today that I didn’t really get through. I just wasn’t feeling it, you know? I couldn’t get in te groove. I felt blaise and weird and out of sorts. I wasn’t depressed but I was far from perky. Then I looked at the calendar and it occurred to me that this was the day that my father had died on. That gives me a complete pass on all things emotional I think. It’s like playing the orphan card (which Ferf and Merf do WAY better than I because they have lost both parents at much younger ages than I lost the one, so in the scheme of things they totally win on this). If I kinds sulk around on the 19th of May and just don’t get a lot done (or at least as much as you or anyone else thinks I should) then I get to play the “my dad died on this day in 1997″ card and you have to back off. It’s like a rule. No, more like a law. A universal law that must be obeyed.
I am lucky in the one respect that my wife and her family totally get what I am going through. Marvin married a girl and BOTH her parents are still alive! It’s like she’s rubbing it in. She can sympathize, but I get the full on empathy. It’s a totally different ballgame.
So here’s the deal. All of you out there with fathers that are still alive. Right now, go….wait!!! WHAT ARE YOU DOING?? Okay. OKay, not RIGHT NOW…let me finish first. Go get a pen and paper, or open your Outlook (or whatever email client you have chosen or opted to accept like mindless sheep because it came installed on your Bill Gates controlled PC - those of you who use Eudora or Thunderbird, you get a pass from that last rant. If you own a Mac, then you get a cookie) and wrote them a letter RIGHT NOW telling them how much you love them and that you appreciate everything they do/have done for you - especially the being alive part, that is more important than you realize, trust me on this one. It doesn’t have to be long, though seriously, if you are balking at this because of the necessary length of said letter, than you do not understand the point behind this and I am going to have to ask you to go stand in the hall for 20 minutes or until you realize what a selfish punk you are - whichever comes first.
Then, call them too. Becaus hearing their voice is something you should do as often as you can. Just because you can. Besides, Fathers Day is coming up. Get a jump on the crowd.
Go…
Go on,
DO IT.
I am going to call them and ask if you did or not. I swear. GO!
Thu 14 May 2009
[youtube]http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=tJRzBpFjJS8[/youtube]
I personally have nothing against pregnant women. In fact, I am personally responsible for making my wife into one of them - and for continually trying to do so again.
But still…this was funny.
Wed 22 Apr 2009
And so it’s Earth Day. A day where we celebrate…uhh…Earth. I guess. If you area at all like me - yeah I know, scary thought and not something that you would publicly admit to anyway, but still, if you are, then you would suddenly feel this overwhelming urge - nay, NEED - to Google “earth day” and find out what this whole thing is about anyways…so, let’s do it.
Kneel down, close you eyes and say, “great oracle Google. Please tell us…” What!? Oh sure, you don’t pray to Google. You just use Google like a harlot. Getting your needs met whenever YOU feel like it, but never giving back. Have you ever even said Thank You once?! Well. Have you? I thought not. Ok, Google whore user person. Lets just go get what we want from Google and then move on to the next tab in our browser like we don’t care shall we? FINE!
So Google tells us that
Earth Day, celebrated in the US on April 22, is a day designed to inspire awareness and appreciation for the Earth’s environment. It was founded by U.S. Senator Gaylord Nelson as an environmental teach-in in 1970 and is celebrated in many countries every year. This date is Spring in the Northern Hemisphere and Autumn in the Southern Hemisphere.
The United Nations celebrates an Earth Day each year on the March equinox.
That sounds all warm-fuzz doesn’t it? Like we should take some time each year and nurture nature? Let’s hug trees and dance naked in the forests at midnight in the light of the full moon…
But I digress…there is more that Google is willing to give us, if we would just be patient and a little kinder.
Like this:
In September 1969 at a conference in Seattle, Washington, U.S. Senator Gaylord Nelson of Wisconsin announced that in spring 1970 there would be a nationwide grassroots demonstration on the environment. This occurred during a time of great concern about overpopulation and when there was a strong movement towards “Zero Population Growth.”
Nelson viewed the stabilization of the nation’s population as an important aspect of environmentalism and later said:
“The bigger the population gets, the more serious the problems become … We have to address the population issue. The United Kingdom, with the U.S. supporting it, took the position in Cairo in 1994 that every country was responsible for stabilizing its own population. It can be done. But in this country, it’s phony to say ‘I’m for the environment but not for limiting immigration.’”
OH OK!!! So Earth Day was originally a big push to have people stop breeding. I get it. Love the Earth more and each other a little less…nudge, nudge, wink , wink, know what I’m sayin??
SO Earth Day is where we celebrate a pledge to stop procreating. It’s like a birth-control celebration!!! Only, don’t use condoms, cause those things don’t recycle. (If you somehow think differently on that - Please, for the love of God and all that’s holy, don’t explain your position in the comments. Seriously.)
I’m starting to understand now!!
Wait…what? Google has more for us? See how much better it is when you treat Google right Mr. Man?
Five months before the first April 22 Earth Day, on Sunday, November 30, 1969, The New York Times carried a lengthy article by Gladwin Hill reporting on the rising hysteria of “global cooling”.
“Rising concern about the environmental crisis is sweeping the nation’s campuses with an intensity that may be on its way to eclipsing student discontent over the war in Vietnam…a national day of observance of environmental problems…is being planned for next spring…when a nationwide environmental ‘teach-in’…coordinated from the office of Senator Gaylord Nelson is planned….”
OHHHHH….So Earth Day is to warn up about the dangers of Global Cooling!!! I get it. So we all go outside in parkas and mittens and then go out in the forests in the dark of night and rub our naked bodies together to create a natural heat that can turn the tide against this global cooling epidemic that will kill us all with the new ice age!
Wait a minute…what the hell am I going on about? Global COOLING?? I am confused…I need me some more Google.
Denis Hayes, the national coordinator, and his old staff organized massive coast-to-coast rallies. Thousands of colleges and universities organized protests against the deterioration of the environment. Groups that had been fighting against oil spills, polluting factories and power plants, raw sewage, toxic dumps, pesticides, freeways, the loss of wilderness, and the extinction of wildlife suddenly realized they shared common values.
Alllriiiighty then…so on Earth Day we protest. We are angry about deteriorating environments, and oil spills, and factories and power plants and raw sewage (I prefer my sewage medium well personally) and toxic dumps (as opposed to innocuous dumps I suppose), pesticides, and freeways (I hate those big things that are paved and allow me to go visit people and see things that I would otherwise never see or die on the journey to), the loss of wilderness (cause I need more wild in my life) and extinction. These things all really chap my hide. Individually, I would probably just stew in my own proverbial juices, but when looked at collectively, it is a rallying cry to people all over to stand up and say, “I’m mad as hell and I’m not gonna take it anymore!”
[youtube]http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=dib2-HBsF08[/youtube]
I’M MAD AS HELL AND I’M NOT GONNA…what? I’m sorry, what? What do you mean there’s more? Oh ok, what now?
Earth Day on April 22 in 1990 gave a huge boost to recycling efforts worldwide
Recycling?? Seriously? I thought we were mad as hell? So what, we’re so mad that we’re gonna create blue plastic bags…and we’re gonna put cans and bottles and plastic stuff into different blue bags and neatly set them on our curbside every week! Yeah…that’ll show them…Geez. That’s not even worth getting undressed in the forest for. Earth Day sucks…
Errr…WHAT? WHAT? WHAT? What does that Google biatch want now?!?! I’m starting to understand your emotional detachment to Google. That is one seriously high-maintenance relationship. Even act like you care for one minute and it just won’t shut up…
Ok. What now?
As the millennium approached, Hayes agreed to spearhead another campaign, this time focused on global warming and a push for clean energy.
NOW JUST A FREAKING MINUTE HERE!!! We started this whole thing because of global cooling! Oh, alright, so we actually started it because of over population, but we moved onto global cooling pretty quickly there at the start. So what’s the deal? We did such a good job keeping the planet from getting cold that now folks are pissed that it’s too warm? Are you kidding me?? It’s like my wife wants to be in charge of the Earth’s thermostat too! “It’s too cold…now it’s too hot.” Is the Earth pregnant? Is this really global warming, or just a hot flash? Honestly, the Earth could just be in menopause. I’m not sayin’…I’m just sayin’.
Ok, so now (for the moment anyway) we are running off to the forest to dance naked in the moonlight…cause it’s too darn hot to do it durng the day? Cause a sunburn on your hoohoo would not be pleasant? I’m confused.
Can’t we just go hug a tree and be done with it?
I for one have been celebrating Earth Day all week long. It’s true. I swear. No really. Ok, I’ll prove it.
On Monday, for some unknown reason, I started getting up at 6am - which is the butt crack of dawn. Honestly, if you get out there early enough you can see the horizon hitching its pants up in the back and going from galactic plumber to morningscape. Anyway, I started running. It’s not like it is the first time in my life. I was on the track team in high school. Yes, this year will be my 20th reunion…so what!? Point is, I have run before. Sure, not in a while. But running is like riding a bike right? Only harder and you can’t coast downhill…and you can’t buy a spiffy new runner that has 12 speeds like a bike does so you can pick the right gear to make peddling easy like on a bike…and there’s no cushy seat (with a gel seat cover) to rest your fat bum on…you know what? Running is NOTHING like riding a bike. I don’t know why I said that. Bike riders are lazy compared to runners.
Anyway, I started running again. Not particularly fast. Not particularly far. And definitely not particularly pretty. But I do it early so people don’t have to see me. They shouldn’t be looking out there anyway unless the want to see the butt crack of dawn and that’s voyeurism anyway and worse, who wants to see buttcrack? People don’t even do Google image searches for buttcrack…
ok, go ahead. you know you want to now. Do a google image search for buttcrack. We’ll wait. Oh for Pete’s sake…make sure safe search is on you sicko…ok. Back now? Happy you did that? I didn’t think so. Did you see the one really fat guy that had a…errrrr, I mean, none of us want to hear about your perverted little foray into pictorial buttcrackdom.
Butt I digress…heh…get it? BUTT I digress….with two T’s…it’s a double entendre…
Anyway, I am running again. Not right at this moment, but conceptually I mean. I run. I have been running for 4 days straight now. And I get up WAY early and put on sweats and nice comfy new runners. (ok, they aren’t NEW new. I bought them like 4 years ago actually. But I had never worn them until Monday when I started running again. So…new.) I grab my ipod with 500 sngs on it, you know, in case I ever get to the point where I need more than the 4 I listen to now…during warm-ups and stretching and running and cool down. WHAT? I’m efficient!!! I plan to do more. I’m working up to it. Next week…FIVE songs!
Again, I digress. So I was proving to you that I have been celebrating Earth Day all week long. So Monday I was hugging a tree on our street cause I needed something to hold onto when I started retching and puking from not having run in freaking years and suddenly thinking it was a good idea and just up and starting again without consulting my body who was OBVIOUSLY a little upset and not fully on board with the idea. Then Tuesday, I hugged a tree - no not the same one, I made it a little further - to steady myself when the world started spinning as I hyperventilated…from not having run in freaking years and suddenly thinking it was a good idea and just up and starting again without consulting my body who was OBVIOUSLY a little upset and not fully on board with the idea. Then today I hugged yet another tree as I desperately tried to stretch out the cramp in my calf because while the rest of my body seemed to be coming around to the idea of running, my legs have taken it as a personal affront and are united in their desire to cause me as much pain as physically possible without there being an infant at the end of the ordeal.
SO there! I have indeed been hugging trees all freaking week. Earth Day is like apathy…I have been doing Earth Week. AND I went to an Earth Day celebration at the Muppet’s school today. That was a treat let me tell you. They all sang a song, that I can only assume they have been practicing, because as much as the Muppet likes to think that life is a musical, the probability of 40 something pre-schoolers and kindergartners suddenly breaking into song spontaneously is pretty slim. I leave you to do the math if you are that interested in probability…plus they all knew the words:
Don’t throw your junk in my backyard, my backyard, my backyard
Don’t throw your junk in my backyard, we must recycle.
Yep…when sung, it sounds about how it reads. No rhyme, no rhythm, nothing that one usually mentally connects with the word “song”. But those details did not stop them from singing it. Over. And over. And over. And over.
You’d think being an institute of learning they would know that Earth Day and recycling is SO 1990! Obviously they don’t Google there. Bet they didn’t hug three different trees this week. Posers…
…
…
…
Thu 2 Apr 2009
So the Muppet is a huge fan of music. It probably started when she was in the womb and her Aunty Merf would put headphones on Ferf’s belly and play her favorites. Hundreds of hours of bands who graced the cover of classic Rolling Stones Magazine covers. And then, we would all get up for middle of the night feedings and dance back to sleep with the dulcet tones of Marvin Gaye and James Taylor. However it happened, she LOVES music. And she has very specific tastes. I remember when she was like 6 weeks old, she would often ask us to change the radio station if she did not like the music…or maybe she had pooped herself…either way, I usually changed the station (while Ferf changed her - we all had our assigned duties).
But when the Muppet was old enough to talk - so like 12 months old - What? She was extremely bright, and every time I have told this story she gets younger. I realize this, but it is my story so back off. Where was I, oh right, the Muppet was about 8 months old and she would ask for a specific song to be played over and over and over. (Ok, so maybe she was almost 2 years…whatever, it is barely relevant to the story.) It was Toby Keith’s Whiskey for my Men and Beer for my Horses. I know right, who teaches there two year olds that kind of music, but it was usually on the way to church, so that’s when we listen to worship music…
Anyway, she would be sitting in her astronaut-like 5 point harness baby seat in the back and she would simply say, “More Toby please.” If we dared to play a different Toby Keith song, she would become indignant and chant over and over, “NO NO NO…MORE TOBY PLEASE!!!” Until we played it again. Lucky for me, I like the song. Still do surprisingly enough.
Whatever, my point is that her love of music started early. So I was not too surprised when I was listening to music on the computer (that was TOTALLY LEGALLY DOWNLOADED I might add in case anyone is reading this…are you a cop?? Sorry, I ask that of everyone on advice of my attorney, don’t take it personally. Besides, you aren’t a cop are you?” Anyway, I was listening to some music that was suggested to me by my personal music sommelier Mr. Seth - who is a surprisingly astute judge of music for an Orthodox. What? How is that offensive?? It’s legitimate. How many Orthodox do you know that suggest really good music - especially underground style musicians that you have never really heard of? Does this look like an icon you’d find on your ipod:
But I digress, I simply want to give credit where due to the guy who hooks me up with new music - usually every Friday, though he has been slacking in that department for a while now, but this is not the place to publicly call him out for not living up to his job description…that would be really awkward to do to someone - especially a friend.
Anyway, so one day I was working on the computer - probably entertaining my Maru passengers if I am being honest - and listening to said totally legally downloaded music, which in this instance was a lady by the name of Regina Spektor.
For the purposes of full disclosure, and because I think this lady is seriously talented and that everyone should give her a listen: Regina Spektor (born February 18, 1980) is a Soviet-born Jewish-American singer-songwriter and pianist. Her music is associated with the anti-folk scene centered on New York City’s East Village.
Ok, enough superfluous background info about the song…back to the actual story that made all this relevant and not just me being a Dad bragging about his daughter’s musical interests at an early age…in a semi-anonymous way…on a blog that is a spec on the naval lint that is the internet. There is a point! And I shall find it…it’s like a recession you spend your way out of…this is an alphabetical sink whole that you write your way out of. I’m printing money word here. I’m the alphanumeric treasury department. Sure, if I just keep writing then the value of every word is lessened, but we are in a word recession here and dog gone it, I am going to make sure that everyone has as many words as they need until this crisis is over! A chicken in every pot and a post on every blog! For those who don’t get the reference (not you…I know you get it, but there are a couple of dumb errr culturally illiterate I mean, young people who might not get it) - in 1928 the Republican’s promised that if Herbert Hoover was elected President there would be a “chicken in every pot and a car in every garage”. Of course it was a scant 7 months after he was elected that the stock market crashed and the US entered the Great Depression. Even funnier that Hitler took up that charge when he took power in Germany (to give every German a car) and thus was born the VW.
But I digress…When we last left our heroes, they were in a car - ok, so that’s not where I left off, but I am skipping ahead to make a short story long long story short. Or at least shorter. Work with me here people. So, what do we know?
Everyone caught up? Anyone need to pee before we get back on the road? Good. Here we go.
Last weekend we as a family took a vacation - see previous post for details if you missed them. I had a fantasy baseball draft to do, and K-town was where said draft is held every year. And, yes, I did draft a freaking amazing team and should walk away with the championship yet one more time this year. Thank you for asking. The team is called the Sons of Thunder and we stole our logo from the Trenton Thunder (the NY Yankees AA affiliate ball team). We use the alternate logo:
Yeah…it is very cool.
But I digress…so after said draft had taken place, I collected the Muppet and Ferf and we got in the car to drive home - usually about a 3.5 hour drive. Though often times it will take longer because we have to stop in Merrit, and Hope, and Chiliwack so that the lovely ladies of my family can pee. Each of these places is like 5 minutes from each other. I kid I kid. But this time we were leaving a little later than I had wanted, and so Ferf and I formulated a plan. The Muppet had nothing to drink for like hours before we left, and we had her do a “last pee” right before we loaded up and left. This would, in theory, get us past Merritt and let our first stop be Hope. (And in a perfect world, our only stop.) But as we neared Merritt, we heard the first of the plaintiff cries from the back - “I have to pee!!” SO I looked at Ferf and said, “let’s stop in Merritt, I will top up the gas tank so we do not have to stop again, and you can drain the Muppet, so we do not have to stop again!” It seemed the perfect plan. Tank got filled, and the Muppet expelled the fluids that she had somehow managed to create out of nothing. We loaded back up and got on the road again.
Now it really is no more than 45 - 60 minutes from Merritt to Hope if you are driving the speed of traffic - which I was. But I swear it was like 10 minutes outside of Merritt that the Muppet said, “I have to go potty again.” Now, this was not something that made me happy to hear. I like to hear my daughter say many things…”I love you Daddy” is pretty high on the list…”uh oh” as a non-sequiter is low on it. But 30 seconds after she just voided her bladder and we are on the road through the mountains, “I have to pee again” is right there at the bottom. So, I looked at Ferf with that Dad look that communicates, “aw hell no” without actually saying “Aw hell no” cause my momma raised me better than to talk like that. And then I said, “Baby girl, you are gonna have to wait until the next place - cause YOU JUST WENT PEE. There is no way you have to go again.” Then Ferf whispers, “she really did pee back there - a lot!” So now I am convinced that she is just restless and thinks public toilets are cool. So I decide internally that I will not stop in Hope unless I become convinced that she really has to pee, and by rule (newly instituted solely for that drive) I will be hard to convince. So for the next 40 minutes we are serenaded by the Muppet bouncing from ” look Daddy, there is snow on the ground…I really have to pee Daddy…I see the moon Daddy…the moon is following us…I need to pee Daddy…my dolly can fly…I want to be a princess when I grow up…I need to pee Daddy…Mommy, did you know I need to pee…the moon is still following us Daddy…I have to get my masters degree before I can marry right?…are we there yet…I need to pee.” You get the picture. Any kid who is that easily distracted, does not really have to pee. The need-to-pee-ers bounce up and down a lot and focus solely on their painfully obvious need to pee, they kick their feet back and forth on the seat back in front of them in such a way as to annoy their parents rhythmically as if each kick to the seat was punctuating “I’…”NEED”…”TO”…”PEE” over and over, and their eyes start to well up with tears cause it hurts so badly (from which we get the phrase - “I have to pee so badly that my eyeballs are floating”). The Muppet was exhibiting none of the classic signs of serious urinary need. SO, as we passed the last exit to Hope, I motored on. Besides, Chiliwack is like only another 27 miles (44km to those who so love the Queen’s rulers). And she did not say a thing about peeing for the last 10 minutes before Hope or the first 5 minutes after Hope. And I figured that even if there had been the smallest degree of legitimacy to her claim, that we had simply been party to that mystical happening where the pee simply goes away. We’ve all had it happen…you have to pee so badly you think it is going to burst out of some other orifice, or create a new one, and then suddenly, it just goes away. We don’t really know what happens to it. It’s there and then it is not. Like some kind of bodily fluid Bermuda Triangle. But it only happens to pee…cause if it happened to say, blood, we would be in a world of hurt.
Police Officer 1: What happened here?
Police Officer 2: We don’t really know sir.
CSI: Don’t look at me.
Coroner: Don’t quote me on this, but it would appear that his blood simply went away.
Police Officer 1: I thought that only happened to pee!
Coroner: We thought so too. But if the bodily fluid Bermuda Triangle is expanding…well, I don’t even want to speculate about the consequences…
So maybe my burgeoning career as a screenwriter just went down in flames. But that is okay. I was digressing anyway. So meanwhile back at the ranch, we were minutes past the last exit for Hope and the Muppet is back to providing us with a need to pee play-by-play. And I think, maybe, just maybe, she really does need to pee. But I go back to the bag o’ tricks to see if she is distractable. We talk about the moon again for a while, and she seems to become oblivious to the pee - only to have it rear it’s ugly head in her consciousness once again. SO we move on to princess stories and contests to see how much dialogue from EVERY FRICKIN BARBIE MOVIE THAT IS IN EXISTENCE AND I HAVE BEEN FORCED TO WATCH OVER AND OVER AGAIN LIKE A CHINESE WATER TORTURE she can remember. (turns out to be just about every jot and tiddle in case you were wondering.) (And here is a link to the Wikipedia entry for what a jot and tittle is in case you were wondering that. I am a full service blog post provider and never let me hear you say differently!) But again, her mournful cry would echo through the car at random intervals, “I need to pee REALLY BADLY NOW DADDY.” So, I dug deep down into my repertoire and pulled out - the ipod. And the playlist that makes the Muppet happy. So we plug it into the lighter outlet in the car, and wallah - instant personal radio station. And I figure if I put on one of her favorite songs, then she will be so enraptured with singing along that all thought of urination would cease and desist. So I scramble to scroll through the list of over 500 totally legally downloaded or otherwise acquired songs, and the first one I come to that I know makes her short list, is Regina Spektor’s Fidelity. It is a great little diddy that will get stuck in your head and is fun to sing along with - thus making it perfect to help a 4 year old forget her (possibly) pseudo need to pee.
And at first it had every appearance to work exactly how I thought they would…she saw that I was turning on the ipod and immediately perked up and started asking if she could choose the first song. But I was already ahead of her on the song choice. I wanted to get something on ASAP. So I told her, I picked one of your favorites, and I pushed play. The first notes of the song flitted through the air from the speakers and her eyes lit up with recognition and she said, “OHHHH! Regina Spektor. I like Regina Spektor!” And she started singing along. At which point I looked over at Ferf with, I am sure, the most smug of looks thinking, “HA I KNEW IT! I WIN!” (yes, I realize this makes me horribly shallow that I somehow turned my daughter’s ostensibly fake need to pee into a contest of will with me, and worse, that it was important to me that I win. But I deal with it and move on…so should you. Nothing to see here people. Move along.)
It was about that time that the Muppet spoke from the back shattering my thin illusion of superiority. She simply said, “I love Regina Spektor. And speaking of Regina, my vagina needs to pee.”
I pulled over at the next gas station. I had to. I could not drive I was laughing so hard and my eyes were blurry from the tears.
And just for your listening and viewing pleasure, Here is the song we were listening to at the time. I hope it doesn’t make you have to pee…
[youtube]http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=SGTDRztaCCw[/youtube]
