The Kid Said What?!

Ah, the wonderful world of a child’s imagination. It is truly a blessing to behold. You can learn a lot when you sit quietly and listen to a child at play. You might hear your young man hum the Thomas the Tank Engine theme song as he sets up his wooden railway. You might delight to the sound of the “clickety-clack” as his trains race down the track. You’ll be enthralled by a thrilling tale as one lone dockside diesel engine rudely pushes other characters, shouting, “Get in line, you %$#*@%#^$* freight cars! What the *&%$& are you waiting for?”

Where did your angel learn such language? Chances are, from you! Because you bought him

Salty the Talking Train Engine from Trackmaster.

Salty works down at the docks, which means he hangs out with sailors all day. You can’t hang out with sailors without learning a few choice phrases. Trackmaster collected all of those juicy nautical terms and recorded them for your child! All little Johnny has to do is push the button on Salty’s head and he can "hear salty talk."  Now he’s ready for a fulfilling career in the merchant marines!

I discovered Salty on top of the asparagus on a refrigerated case at my local Wal*mart. I’m not certain how Salty came to be sitting on the asparagus, but I’m guessing little Johnny followed the directions on the packaging and pressed the button on Salty’s head within earshot of Johnny’s mother. Knowing the greater metropolitan Leavenworth community as I do, his mother probably replied, “What the ^$*$*^%%?! You aren’t bringing that ^&%*$*&^* train into my house!”

Such a chilly reception to an innocent child’s toy.

What a hysterically poor choice in packaging by a children’s toy manufacturer!

Still Cranky After a Week-long Absence, So I Thought I'd Write Something

God hath given you one face and you make yourselves another.
                                                                                                     -Hamlet  (3.1)


Our church wants to put together a directory with pictures of all the people who attend services. They’ve been asking all attendees to schedule a photography session at the church. I wouldn’t have bothered, but the Boss wants me to play nice with others, something that I just don’t do so well. We scheduled an appointment. The Mom & Pop business taking the pictures prints one free directory for each family that gets a picture taken (additional directories are $10 each), and then tries to sell portrait packages. Those packages are incredibly expensive. The woman selling the packages assumed that we were buyers. She never bothered to ask us if we wanted to purchase pictures. We sat down to pick the pose for the directory, but she started writing and processing an order that we were not going to place. It was odd. Of course, she started the entire process by explaining how they printed the directories for free, as if we had an obligation to purchase their product, and then acted completely surprised when I told her that we weren’t buying. She almost looked offended. Guilt is simply not an effective sales technique. At least, not with me. I’m a fairly unsympathetic bastard where salesmen are concerned, which is why the Boss looked at me and asked, “What do you think?” She knew I’d say “no, thank you,” and she wouldn’t have to. We have good teamwork on stuff like that. One of the selling points of this business was their touch-up services. They are quite adept at removing all character from a person’s face, making their customers look plastic. Wrinkles give people character. Ladies, crow’s feet and laugh lines are sexy. Stop trying to cover them. In one of their sample photos, they removed a drooping eye lid from a grandmotherly woman and created a face that simply was not in the original photograph. I don’t know how the subject of the photograph felt about the finished product, but if their prices didn’t guarantee that I didn’t buy anything, their touch-up services did.



"Do not lie in a ditch, and say God help me; use the lawful tools He hath lent thee."
                                                                                         - English Proverb

The Subway in our Wal*mart is 30 feet from the store’s produce section, so you can imagine my surprise when I went into the shop for a sandwich and was told by a young kid behind the counter that they were completely out of lettuce. How difficult would it have been for him to run over, buy a head of lettuce, wash it, chop it, and put it on a sandwich? There’s probably some law somewhere preventing him from taking that initiative, if he thought of it at all. It would have taken a dollar from the till, but brought in much more in sales. I briefly thought about buying a head of lettuce, handing it to the kid, and saying, “Here’s some lettuce. Now, making my f---ing sandwich.” Instead, I played nice, bit my tongue, and simply left. Honestly, playing well with others is boring.



"You are drunk Sir Winston, you are disgustingly drunk."
"Yes, Mrs. Braddock, I am drunk. But you, Mrs. Braddock, are ugly and disgustingly fat. But, tomorrow morning I, Winston Churchill, will be sober.”
                                                                                           – Winston Churchill

I’m in mourning. I’ve had a loss in my life. Mayonnaise. My foot-long turkey breast on Italian bread was boring without mayonnaise. It made the long drive from Wal*mart to a different Subway quite disappointing. Last week, I returned to Weight Watchers after a year-long absence and a return of all the weight I previously lost. When my pants stopped fitting I knew I had to either lose the weight or buy more clothes. I opted for the former. I told my new meeting leader that I didn’t want to hear any insults directed towards men in general, towards me, or towards my weight loss. I wanted genuine assistance during those weeks where weight loss doesn’t go so well, not mocking ridicule. If she could play by those rules, we’d get along fine. This woman was a bit taken back both by the story I told her about my previous meeting leader and my blunt, direct manner; but, she agreed. I lost 5.5 pounds this past week, and put back on my favorite pair of cargo shorts without playing origami with my belly fat . Apparently, the difference between a size 38 and a size 40 (in pants) is the difference between weighing 243 and 238, but I have an overwhelming desire dive naked into a vat of mayonnaise and swim around for awhile. I’ll play nice, and keep the pictures private.

With Six Months to Spare Could I Read it in Advance?

If my normally sultry bedroom voice sounds a bit muffled today it’s because my lips and tongue are slightly swollen and a bit numb from a half a bag of David Sunflower Seeds. They were a tad salty. I ate them in the car in lieu of dinner from Salina, Kansas, to Apathy, Kansas, on the return trip from dropping off the General at the Kansas Cosmosphere and Space Center. The Boss had purchased food for us to eat in the car but due to a technical difficulty it remained at home while we were on the road. I didn’t want spend money on food on the road so while I stopped for gas on the return trip I grabbed a bag of seeds, thinking that the seeds would hold me over until I arrived at home.

I learned a few things on the trip home. One is that I cannot eat an entire 5.25 ounce bag of seeds by myself on the 168 mile drive home. I learned that the bag’s slogan, “Eat. Spit. Be happy,” works a lot better when you remember to roll down the window before you spit. Most of the shells stuck to the window, but the one that ricocheted back would have scratched my cornea if it wasn’t for my glasses. I also learned that spitting seeds out an open window at 75 miles per hour isn’t such a good idea. I thought they were blowing backwards away from the car until I looked in the mirror and screamed because all the seeds stuck to my face made me look like I had contracted the pox. They blow back into the car.

The booming metropolis of Bonner Springs, Kansas, popped a few thousand bucks for some billboards advertising the shopping opportunities in their fair berg along interstate 70. For the life of me I don’t know what they have besides a Wal*Mart and a Chinese restaurant. Then the Kansas Highway Department closed the one and only exit ramp for Bonner Springs for construction without ever once posting a sign indicating that the exit would be closed. They got their money out of those signs! This particular exit is also the exit for Apathy, so while I flew past said exit I laughed because who in their right mind would turn around at the next exit and drive back to Bonner Springs for Wal*Mart? I exited near the Kansas Speedway on a road I’ve never driven on that wound its way in a large circle with no posted speed limit. I figure that if there was a large circular drive with no posted speed limit near the speedway the speed limit must be somewhere between 180 and 220 miles per hour. I was wrong.

Now, the technical difficulty that left the food in the refrigerator and brought on the sunflower seed buffet was the moment when General Mayhem brought out the sheet of paper that told us where to check-in once we arrived at Hutchinson. It was at that moment that we realized that check-in time was between 2 and 2:45 in the afternoon and not between 5 and 5:45 in the afternoon as we previously thought. I glanced at my watch. It read 1:00 pm. I’m not certain if the words “Oh, shit!” actually left my mouth or if the internal monologue remained internal, but a few seconds later the boy and his gear and I were in the car and speeding down K7 for the 3 ½ drive to the Cosmosphere. The ride was fun and the boy remained calm and when we finally arrived we discovered that the only thing he missed was the half-hour parent orientation and a one-hour lecture/discussion that he would have difficulty sitting through. I won’t be surprised if he asks me if we can be an hour and a half late for space camp next year, too.

Squeaky Shoes and Other News

I have squeaky shoes.

That’s what I get for buying cheap sneakers from Wal-Mart in an after-Christmas sale. The air chambers in both shoes developed a leak, so with each step I take air is expelled from one air chamber while the other air chamber is refilling. I discovered this while painting the trim in our hallway. I kept hearing a squeaky sound behind me. I thought there might be a mouse in one of the bedrooms, but each time I stepped into a room and stood still to listen for the critter the squeaking would stop. When I returned to the hallway it resumed. I discovered the truth when the mouse went jogging with me.

***

Captain Chaos petitioned me for something to eat while I was working with General Mayhem on math. We were standing at the chalkboard combining like terms in binomial and trinomial phrases when the girl appeared at my knee caps.

“DadcanIhavecrackers?Please?DadcanIhavecrackers?I’dreallyliketohavesomecrackersdadTheyareonthe counterCan I have some please?” she rattled off like a St. Valentine’s Day machine gun.

Without giving me a chance to reply she wandered off. That’s when I heard her add, “They will make me happy and strong!”

***

Yesterday was “Scout Day at the K,” the annual promotion at Kaufman Stadium where scouts who sold a bajillion dollars worth of popcorn attended the game for free.

It was a typical Kansas City Royals baseball game. They were out of the game by the fourth inning. Honestly, they should rename the team the Cubs West. I noticed that this year the team is flying a large blue flag commemorating 25 years since the Royals won the World Series. What that really means is that they haven’t accomplished anything significant in25 years. Can you imagine a flag flying over Wrigley Field commemorating 102 years since their last World Series? That won’t change this year, either, as the Cubs still haven’t installed a goat at Wrigley. Write those letters, folks!

Anyway, if the Royals were out of the game by the fourth inning, Major Havoc was out of the game by the first. Nothing I did kept his attention. He seems to be under the impression that the entire purpose of going to the ballpark is to eat five dollar hot dogs and drink five dollar bottles of water and eat equally overpriced cotton candy. When he did not get to do these things he made the game fairly miserable. Between announcing how bored he was and bouncing up and down in his seat like he had springs in his butt, he pretended to shoot yellow cars as they drove past the stadium on interstate 70. He spent the sixth inning making fart noises on his hand. Whenever the Royals attempted to generate false interest in the game by displaying “MAKE SOME NOISE” on the Jumbotron he screeched with all the ear-piercing enthusiasm of a pre-pubescent boy. Just when I thought my right eardrum would start to bleed he decided to sit on my other side and significantly reduce my hearing ability in that ear, too. When the decibel meter on the Jumbotron hit the highest mark he turned to me and said, “Dad, look, I did that with my voice!”

“Huh?”

I resolved yesterday to never again car pool to a baseball game. I liked the people I was with and I enjoyed their company, but if I had had my own wheels we would have been out of that stadium after the second inning, the inning I spent in a concession line for our ONLY food purchase of the day. That’s where I enjoyed watching the cashier walk away from the counter and disappear for ten minutes to loudly berate the kitchen staff for repeatedly ignoring her calls for corn dogs. Those guys just stared at her, showing absolutely no interest in moving faster than tar balls on a Louisiana beach. Go Royals!

***

Tonight I open a new chapter in my life. Tonight I begin Karate class. General Mayhem has attended Young Champions Karate classes for seven years. Eighteen months ago both the Major and the Boss began learning Karate. Now it’s the Captain’s turn, and I get to attend class with her. This should be interesting. Captain Chaos is the girl who puts the hyper in hyperactive. She moves so much she makes hummingbirds nervous. She’s the girl that jumped into one of the General’s classes and told one very serious sensei that she was a pink belt ready for class. The man stared at her, completely lost for words. My daughter is very excited. She has been ready to start Karate for a year. We told her that when she turned six years old she could start class. Now she’s six. I suspect that I am entering an entirely new source of blog material.

Was Your Day This Bad? Part One - A Tongue-in-Cheek Look at the Difficult Days

One week ago last Tuesday, the morning after we discovered that Captain Chaos put herself to sleep with her Madeleine doll, a 24 pack of toilet paper and three karate trophies,

I was more than a little surprised when I found a small brown blob of stuff in the metal dish of my food scale.



I immediately recognized the small brown blob of stuff, prompting a question that parenting classes never prepare you to ask.

“Who put a chicken on my food scale?”

Not the chicken, as in the chicken breast or the chicken leg or the chicken thigh. A chicken, as in a real, live, clucking type of chicken. We temporarily had a few week-old pullets living in a box in our kitchen. Homeschoolers, you know. We do things like that. It is amazing what children will think of to do with cute little hopping and chirping baby chickens, like weighing them, even if they have no clue how to read the numbers on the scale, or by playing “Bumper Chicks,” sliding the young hens across the linoleum floor and gently “crashing” them into each other.

“I didn’t!” answered General Mayhem, when I attempted to identify the culprit.

“I didn’t!” chimed in Major Havoc.

“Yep! I did. That’s me!” bragged Captain Chaos.

I should have known. She is the ring-leader in this house. If there is mischief afoot, she’s at the center of it. These are the same children who decided that having chicken for breakfast meant placing a bird on the kitchen table next to their cereal bowls.

Later in the morning, when General Mayhem should have been completing his math assignment, I found him on the kitchen floor, setting up a battle scene with his toy soldiers. He has not played with his army men in a long time. I assumed that watching Band of Brothers with his mother spurred his imagination. Moments later, in a Godzilla-meets-Calvin-and-Hobbes moment, I discovered a room full of slain soldiers, trampled to death by…three chickens.

 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 

This took place on the same morning that I sent the children into the backyard to enjoy our wonderful spring weather. Ten minutes later, I thought the back yard was a little too quiet, since there were supposed to be two children running around outside for the first time in months. I poked my head out of the back door only to discover Captain Chaos catching a few rays…on the chicken coop roof.

 
This was all before lunch.


Major Havoc was quiet because he had discovered a mud puddle. Judging by the amount of mud on his person you would have thought the puddle empty, but apparently there was more than enough mud to not only cover himself but also the side of the neighbor’s garage. I learned that the Major threw mud on the neighbor’s garage later that afternoon when the neighbor’s nine-year-old son confronted me in front of our house. He approached me on the driveway, explained that he did not throw mud on his parent’s garage and then asked me to explain how the mud got there.

What the -?

A nine year old. His mother was standing a few feet away while he attempted to take an adult to task for mud on his parent’s garage. You would have had to have heard his tone of voice to appreciate how inappropriate he was. I politely explained to him that this was a conversation for adults, and that I would discuss this situation with his mother.

After the young lawyer left I told his mother that I would handle the situation. Gauging the distance between the mud puddle and the garage, accounting for wind direction, speed, and the distance Major Havoc can throw, left little doubt that he was the offending party. Major Havoc readily admitted that he threw mud on the garage. He took a bucket of soapy water and a rag and washed off the dirt. General Mayhem supervised the clean-up and hosed off the building. I made the Major apologize to our neighbor (the mom, not the boy) and promise not to do it again.

As the witching hour hit, the two hour period between 4 PM and 6PM when I am helping the General wrap up his school work, cooking dinner, and getting the family ready for evening activities, Captain Chaos discovered our new cast iron display. I have a large collection of cast iron that I cook with regularly. I have more than I can display at one time. Captain Chaos sees the pans as a cast iron xylophone, playing them with all of the energy, enthusiasm, and complete lack of musical skill that she possesses.

It was very loud.

The day didn’t end there, but if I continue in too much detail I’ll need another blog. Our scheduled plan to drop off scrap sheet rock at the home of another homeschooling family was shelved for a trip to the Wal-Mart Optical Department for glasses for the Captain. The Boss was treated to the heavy sighs, eye rolling, and constant complaining that are the hallmarks of customer service for “Angela,” the Vision Center clerk who is always on duty when we are in the store. Angela makes it very clear that working in the Vision Center would be a pleasurable job if she just didn’t have to interact with customers. She might have found fitting Captain Chaos with glasses to be easier if she…oh…actually paid attention to the girl, answered her questions, or interacted with something other than complete disgust. Angela never did get the proper measurements to order the Captain’s glasses. It’s hard to do your job when you expend all of your energy complaining because you’ve abdicated complete control to a five-year-old. It took a trip to another store to find a competent employee who obtained the Captain’s eye measurements in two tries, keeping the young girl engaged and talking the entire time.

That was my day, one week ago last Tuesday.

How was yours?

Would You Like Your Milk in a Bag?

I blame it on my dad. We were sitting at a pizza shop in San Diego, California, waiting for our order, when he signaled to a waitress.

“May I have a spoon for my coffee?” he asked when the cute young lady walked over to our table. “I’d stir it with my finger but then it would be too sweet.”

She laughed and twirled off to get him a spoon while I melted underneath the table in embarrassment.

Twenty plus years later and I’ve become that guy. I don’t embarrass my son in front of pretty waitresses (yet) but I have been known to cause the Boss to apologize to anyone within earshot for bringing me in public. That happened when we checked out at a Hobby Lobby a couple of months ago and I asked the cashier if the name on her name tag, “Edith,” was her real name or just the name that she put on her name tag at work.

“I’m sorry,” the Boss told her. “He doesn’t get out much.”

In my defense, we did do that at work when I sold clothes for County Seat in the early 80’s. The expression on Edith’s face was priceless. I enjoyed watching her fumble for words to express her complete disbelief that I asked such a question.

So, last night I was in Wal*mart, purchasing two gallons of milk, a box of cereal, and toilet paper. When I arrived at the check-out lane I was confronted by the disinterested, gum smacking, looked-too-young-to-be-pregnant cashier with the slightl bovine expression on her face. She began to drag my items across the scanner.

“Do you want your milk in a sack?’ she asked.

“No, thank you,” I replied. “It’s easier to pour out of the jug.”

No reaction. Nothing. And it’s a good line. It’s not mine. I don’t remember where I heard it, but it almost always gets a chuckle.

She dragged the cereal across the scanner, and then reached or the toilet paper.

“Do you want your toilet paper in a bag?” she asked.

OOOOOOOOOOOOO, such dilemmas. Should I have said it? Should I have taken the obvious line? Would she have noticed?

“No thank you, it’s easier to use without the plastic?”

I didn’t say it. I thought it. And then I started to giggle. I looked up to the cashier and noticed that she was staring off over my shoulder, her mind…somewhere.

“No thank you,” I answered.

Two things happened later last night that gave me hope for my future. One is that the Boss, while she knew what I was blogging, looked at me and told me that she was thinking about me yesterday afternoon and thought to herself how much she loved me. If she could still say that while knowing what I was typing, I am a blessed man. The second was the General, who sat at the kitchen table eating ice cream.

“A penny for your thoughts,” I offered. “Or thirty-six cents for your whole brain.”

“Give me the penny,” he replied.

I gave him a penny.

“A fool and his money are soon parted,” he said.

It’s comforting to know that the third generation is secure!

Ode to the Hubby

Ode to the Hubby

I sure love my hubby

Tho' no longer chubby

He's sure a swell guy, and he's smart!

He doesn't get mad

When I have been bad

And forget his cheap meal at Wal-Mart.

One day in the future

From the stories, I'm sure

He'll be quite a hand full, I'm told

But I think we will be

Full of fun and of glee

Holding hands 'till the day we are old.

Y,

The Boss