Asleep

Dawn.

Something sits on forehead.

Daddy, why are you still asleep.

Ekshuze me, um, daddy. I have a idea.

Daddy, get up. Daddy, get up. Daddy, get up.

Apple juice.

Find toaster. Check for roaches. Empty crumbs from toaster.

Waffles. Lego waffles. Lego Eggo waffles. Get it?

Daddy, out of apple juice.

Waffles too hot!

Okay milk then.

Pour milk at the table.

My cup. No, my cup. No, my cup, my cup!

Pour milk on the table. Pour milk on the floor.

Eat smash spill growl roar fling wee~!

Rumble of garbage truck.

Oy.

Saturday.

Daddy, why are you still asleep.

dreamtime20060728

...playing a stage I've never seen before of my favorite video game series there are four levels that you jump down through each with adifferent type of energy to deflect but i can't get past it and then I realize that if I lose here entire countries will get bombed in real life. But then it turns into a talent contest where you sing with Led Zeppelin but it's actually just that guy in Guitar Hero only they are all little kids. There are two young girls on the stage who are probably sisters with braids and blond streaks. Then Madge shows up flying through the air, hoisted on a wire pulling a curtain but she's dressed like a caterpillar and the outfit is actually alive and keeps squirming and making her sweat profusely. Then she comes down and we are backstage and she passes out our Chemistry exam, but nobody is interested. Someone starts playing the violin badly and gets stuck on a repeating loop playing that one line that says "You're Gonna Love Me" from that song in that Dreamgirls thing. Then Fiona Apple comes to class, I try to get an autograph for Bob, but she's too busy talking and walking through the neon blue water that you aren't supposed to be walking in and we scream like valley girls when we discover we have the same birthday...

I haven't slept properly in a few months.

Drop in the Bucket

C took today and tomorrow off so today we had a day with the four of us. Daddy, Mama, Elder Monkey and Younger Monkey. We ventured forth to breakfast, the Florida Aquarium, then to the International P'aza for lunch and a play area that wasn't sweltering.

Highlights of the day:

The Aquarium is expensive. But then I saw the admission prices for Sea World and quickly changed my mind.

According to the Elder Monkey the best three things that are worth seeing at the Aquarium are hammerhead sharks, leafy sea dragons, and stingrays. I'd have to concur.

Just because he can use the potty doesn't mean he'll always wipe. You will find this out when he starts walking funny in the long, hot trip back to the car.

I can't lurk too long on the fact that we are just like fish. There's way too many of us to know everyone that ever existed and that bigger one's will eat you if you aren't careful.

The Younger Monkey is just about too big for my shoulders. Realizing I am severely out of breath a lot and that my gym membership is currently a waste of funds.

The Elder Monkey is the biggest drama queen I've ever met. This is, according to her, my wife's payback for her childhood. Because I was a perfect angel when I was young. What. Put your eyebrows back down where they belong.

Changing a poopy diaper in a car in the rain is an interesting proposition. Especially, when you've no plastic bag to put it in or close method of disposal. The only thing appropriate to say in this case is "Oh, shit."

Spinning around fast to catch Younger Monkey by the collar in the parking lot will cause me to simultaneously squeeze the diaper in my hands out of panic. Thus making poop juice dribble down my arm. It's still raining.

Realizing that I still say "Ambercomby & Flinch" incorrectly. And that turning a corner to extremely large pictures of a man's abdominal region looming over me like an mythical beast can make me run for the hills.

The dapper gent who held the elevator door for us... and getting a new version of "the look" from your wife whose gaydar, unlike mine, seems to have developed into a sixth sense.

Driving around the block at home one more time so that C and I can finish singing at each other "Anything You Can Do", one monkey with hands over his ears, the other giggling ferociously. And then hearing him sing it afterwards.

Just like old times but without any earthquakes on the horizon.

dreamtime-20060727

...as I'm exploring someone's house, that of Mr. Baxter's, the pastor of my church growing up and it's huge like a dark maze like a Dechirico painting with slanted light falling on my face in a mirror with roses on the sides in a bathroom that is dark grey. I walk out of the house along with many many stray teenagers(?) going in and out to work while a big man yells and fixes things. The house is bright red and lopsided, crooked, impossible to stand up, stairway descending, we travel down the extremely suburban street and try to avoid things being blown up. Then I'm in a school for something we circle through the parking lot twice, I'm qualified to a tee all that's left is a test paper to make checkmarks on and sign that keeps getting wet and I am given a new one several times. There are puddles but it's not raining. The sign outside the school says JACA. Then there is a curved sanctuary. Many many empty chairs. They are a church but are fine with the fact I don't believe...

Partners in Crime

I've got the boys during the days for two weeks until school starts.

Today, the Elder Monkey and I sat at the dining room table drawing pictures for mom. The Younger Monkey was entertaining himself nearby, tooling in and out of various rooms never quite out of sight long enough to worry and making various action figures with missing limbs fly/crash/repeat with dubious intent while making that "BYYEEEEAAARRRR" noise. Books were read, music was playing, we were calm, we were happy and it was good.

The Younger Monkey has now discovered he can open the fridge by himself. While he's still young enough that this can all be rather cute in the right circumstances, I've had many cold bottles of apple juice dropped in my lap without warning. If he can't open it, which is everything worth eating, he'll bring it to you and shove it into your personal space with an "Ekshuze me..."

Upon the roundup to converge at the pool I noticed a plastic muffin tray, on the couch, that had not an hour earlier been filled with large Sweetbay blueberry muffins. The obvious culprit feigned all knowledge and there was none of the usual evidence. Not a crumb nor wrapper to be found. Even the adhesive label that latched it shut seemed to have vanish.

The thing about having the boys for two weeks is, if we hang around at their house instead of mine they get A/C and a pool, which is currently their favorite thing ever. As a bonus, I get a third young one to contend with. About six months old, furry, howls at sopranos, digs holes inappropriately. You know the kind. This one's name is Foxie.

The Younger Monkey and Foxie are pals, oh yes.

So to recap I've got a dog who may have eaten an entire tray of blueberry muffins, unless I find them stuffed down her accomplice's diaper. She's currently serving time in the nearest high-security cell since it seems an entire tray of blueberry muffins makes young pups bounce and nip with unbridled passion. I can tell that I'm in for it when her parole starts.

Moving Right Along

I haven't forgotten your questions. I'm getting to them. I like them, I do. Some are just kinda hard. Although, I've noticed that I must be a stick in the mud as I've gotten few silly questions. It's like ya'll think I'm deep or something.

In the meantime everything is now changing.

Starting today I'm working from home. In precisely two weeks both my kids are in elementary school. The divorce is forthcoming. And soon I'll be moving my mom in.

How did this happen you ask? I'm a bit perplexed myself. Well earthquakes and avalanches usually start fast and without warning so you either keep two steps ahead or fall down.

More on everything later.

Snippet

...wandering around looking for a way out in a theme park like Disneyworld sorta, full of people snickering at me as if I didn't belong so I have to go around the long way it's a maze of people and impossible structures on top of each other at night, then I find Cassie, Mike and Eric at the Cotton Candy which is about to close but I order food anyway and then we leave and spend a long time trying to find my car which is in various hidden scattered parking lots that are like two spaces big and when I do find my car I start the ignition and there appears a kid who is not my kid and might very well be me although it doesn't look like me and apparently when I start the car the lights come on everywhere including the sun and then there are things that are boxes which are anything that is shaped like a box like a piece of garden, a building, the invisible ones floating in the air that when you throw a thing in it the thing turns into something else accompanied by light and a sound that tells what the thing has been changed into but you never get to see it...

And then I wake up on the couch, to where I've moved in the middle of the night, to see a monkey playing guitar as he tries to play it by putting it up to his face so as to reach the frets and the strings and to the sound of things spilling on to the floor, onto the towel which was there from soaking up things that had spilled the night before, as the unforgiving neck of the guitar knocks over any leftover items on the table from dinner and of the garbage truck thundering away and realize I've missed the trash pickup...again.

"Good morning, Daddy!"

Sometimes it's hard to distinguish dream from reality. It must be Saturday morning.

50/50: No. 1~10

I'll do this in chunks. Here's the first ten:

No. 1 - Michael - What is your favorite song you are embarrassed of? I'm not embarrassed of any song, if it's one that I like. If anything, the embarrassment stems from the awkward spasms and physical interpretation of my body that occur during the song. I'm of the same failed Taylor Hicks science experiment that got loose from the lab.

No. 2 - I can't speak any foreign languages with any real degree of fluency but I can sing in Russian, Italian and Japanese.

No. 3 - Brian - If guaranteed an honest response to any three questions, who and what would you ask?
The only thing I am truly curious about is how or why people know some kind of god exists. I don't fully trust in science but I've never experienced anything that tells me a higher power is out there, the way others have said it happens to them. If truth is guaranteed, my first instinct is instead to ask three people who did exist only one question; Jesus, Muhammad and Buddha, regardless of your creed or moral code that you wish to spread, were you telling the truth about god or were you just playing the people to make them listen to you?

No. 4 - We adopted a dog from the pound once whose hair was shaved and scheduled to be terminated because she had the devil in her. This was the sweetest dog I've ever met.

No. 5 - Jess - If you could live anywhere, where would you live?
Until there is a reason for me to leave, I wouldn't want to live anywhere else but here. Sure, it's Florida, it's hot, it's hurricane-ridden, it's home-cooked, southern style Baptist prejudice with gravy and I'm here 'til it sinks and I float out to sea. With that in mind, I've never actually BEEN anywhere so certainly this could change given the right circumstance. Every once in a while I feel a gravitational pull to California but that may just be aliens messing with my mind.

No. 6 - I'd like to travel around the entire globe once. Preferably in a rocket ship.

No. 7 - Nillo - What do you think the biggest misconception about you is?
That I am an endearing, young, Christian, straight guy. I get this all the time from people based on my looks. I would have to contest all of these things equally. Once you've set a precedent for most of your life...

No. 8 - Other than that, a) I never had bedtime stories read to me, b) I don't have a special thinking spot, c) I've never been in a fist fight and d) the cruelest person I've ever known has been myself. I could twist a knife in your side like nobody's business. I simply choose not to.

No. 9 - Anony - Is there an item/amulet/keyring that you carry everyday with you?
Not currently. Any items of this nature are doomed to be lost eventually. I don't even wear a watch.

No. 10 - I like pocket-watches. They are far more intriguing than wrist watches. Especially if they doubled as a compass. I don't know that I've ever seen one that does that though, but mine would.

Keep the questions coming. I've enough to get me to 36. Remember, one question per person, whatever you want, and I match it with something of my own. Can you get me to 50? ;)

So Ask Already...

I'm itchy to write. But nothing comes to mind as of late. I'm tired and lacking passion about anything.

I've tried to sit down and do one of those weary 100 things lists before but I always draw a big blank. And anyway those things are always so laborious to write and to read.

So let's do something interesting shall we? For my own sake to see if anyone is actually still reading this thing, ask me anything you've been burning to know about me. Whatever you like. Within reason of course.

For every question you ask I'll offer up some other fact to match, until I get 100. One question per commenter only, please. Don't be greedy. If you do the math of course that means I need 50 different people to comment. I'm not an attention whore, really, just morbidly curious to see if it will happen. I'll be happy if I get even 10.

And please don't bore me. You'll get boring answers. I can't entertain you properly with things like, what's your favorite color. I'm saving those for my Tiger Beat interview anyway. Duh.

So...what do you want to know?

Sketch o' the Day ~ Riddled

1 | 2 | 3 | 4 | end

bang.

I Have Know Idea

Mr. Love Lemming, in his infinite wisdom, sent me a funny-haha flash thingy regarding the previously explored topic of ThunderCATS.

I sent it around this morning at work describing them as "bun outtakes."

The only thing I can logically think of is that I got lost somewhere between the words "dub" and "fun".

Outtakes, (also affectionately known as bloopers, flubs to make them sound wacky and fun!) being of course the mistakes, the potty mouthed and brain cramped moments of movies and tv shows. They are then squashed together and placed on DVDs for that extra geeky sheen, or shown on TV in specials that may be hosted by Alan Thicke.

After hitting "Send" and staring at my keyboard for a moment wondering what song and dance routine my fingers were engaged in when aforementioned sentence was written (a tawdry Grease revival is highly suspect) I then wrote a followup email:

"I have know idea what I was trying to type when I said "bun" outtakes."

Which was then followed by several more responses calling into question my actual knowledge on the subject, what exactly I had been doing this weekend and something about "Man Faye's ass." Allegedly.

So the lesson of course is I must remember not to type after heady, early morning discussions that may or may not subconsciously refer to the phallicy fallacy of Superman's implied package. I have know idea.