She Ate What?

Frequently, late at night, when the children are in bed and we have the house to ourselves, the Boss and I…well…don’t tell anyone…but, we make a huge bowl of popcorn! Not just any popcorn. We buy good quality popcorn and pop it in good quality oil.  We pour on lots of real, melted butter and real salt. It’s fantastic, and throughout the years we’ve gotten the process down to a science.

It’s not surprising that our children love popcorn. The youngest, Captain Chaos, is a popcorn fiend. We frequently leave popcorn in the bowl for her to find the next morning. It is her big, special treat. Last night we made popcorn. This morning I walked into the kitchen and discovered this

The girl decided that using a spoon like she was tucked in before a bowl of popcorn cereal was the easiest and fastest way to polish off the bowl. A little while later I discovered that she added some flavor to her breakfast.

Mustard.

That’s my girl!

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.

Mud Masks and Mad Men

We knew there was trouble when we arrived at Wal*mart on Saturday morning and discovered that the geriatric club of Grace Assembly Church had set up a tent for their bake sale/rubbage rummage sale in the very spot that the Cub Scouts were supposed to be selling popcorn. I inquired at the service desk as to why the Wrinkled for Jesus crowd was geezing our location. The service desk employee tracked down three people before I was told that we were scheduled for that location last weekend. Oh, we weren’t supposed to be scheduled for that location last weekend. I don’t know if I made the mistake or if Wal*mart made the mistake, but it didn’t really matter. It would have made for bad PR if a den of rabid Wolf Scouts in uniform descended upon the wizened worshippers of Grace Assembly and forcibly threw them to the curb in order to hawk tins of Triple Chocolaty Delight popcorn.

The Boss saved the day with some cool headed thinking. She ran down the road to another grocery store, the store that people go to when they do not want to battle the Wal*mart crowd, and spoke to the store manager. Ten minutes later we had our table set up, complete with den flags, banners, and popcorn. Lots and lots of popcorn. She ran home to get the phone numbers of all the scouts scheduled to sell, and by the ten o-clock hour I had contacted every scout and informed them of the new location for popcorn sales. By three in the afternoon, when the sale ended, the boys sold $600 in popcorn and received roughly $150 in donations from people who wanted to support us but really had no interest in buckets of Gourmet Carmel Corn. I genuinely appreciated the donations, but still do not understand why people didn’t take something for their donation and give it to a friend. I want my living room back. Currently, it has several cases of the popcorn that didn’t sell.

My feet hurt. My legs hurt. Standing that long with other people’s seven-year-olds sorely tested my nerves. The only way to relax after a day like that was to…you guessed it…pack up the camping gear and join the scouts of General Mayhem’s Boy Scout Troop on their annual family camp-out. Major Havoc, the BFD and I drove out into the countryside and joined the troop as they completed their day’s activities, the Catapult Wars. The boys built catapults and launched flour bombs at one another. The wars were finished by the time we arrived, but that didn’t stop us from heading into the field to test drive the boomerang the Major received for his birthday last Thursday. His giggles could be heard for miles around as his boomerang sailed through the air. He was in little boy heaven for the rest of the night as he hung around with the older scouts at their camp sites, burned marshmallows in the fire, and played a late night game of Capture the Flag.  He collapsed into his sleeping bag late Saturday night, and didn't stir until eight-thirty the next morning when I realized that he was stuck in his tent after I heard him screaming, “Hey! I have to go to the bathroom! Can someone help me? I really have to go to the bathroom!”

So, what did the ladies of the house do while the men were off in the fields of eastern Kansas? It was spa night at home! Mud masks and painted nails and Madeleine videos and popcorn were the main events last Saturday night. I was calming the Major when he freaked out after the coyotes started howling. The Boss was applying a salt sea scrub and reclining on the couch with her daughter. From my perspective, (I don't wear a mud mask as well as my daughter does) I had the better part of the deal, so everyone was happy.