Texts from my wife II

[Dot] salted [Lump]'s head.


Your daughter just washed her sister's hair in Iodine.  And the carpet.  And their shirts.


Success!  Large quantity of pee made it in the toilet!  In other news, I'd advise not going in sock or bare feet inside for a while.


You know...They were trying to be helpful.  When you leave your scrubs laying 2ft from the laundry hamper, the girls "helped" me by putting your pants into the tub like I had their diapers.  In the tub that just drained bleach water.


[Lump] just gave [Squirt] a fist bump.


[Dot] said the corner of her sandwich was a rocking chair, and was rocking it back and forth.  I think she's developing an imagination.


Me to [Dot]:  "Crackers don't have legs.  You have to have legs to stand up."

[Dot] told me she was "listening to the block's belly" with my stethoscope.

Toddler + Puppy + Splenda = snowstorm in the kitchen.


With picture of half-dressed girls sitting together on blanket.  They are scooting across the floor singing "Row Your Boat."

With picture of [Lump] in collapsible storage container.  I told them to put all the toys in boxes.  Guess [Lump] thinks she's a toy.

[Lump] to me when I tried to straighten out her straw:  "No, don't touch!  You have hot coffee!"

And [Dot] calls Sunny Delight "Sunday juice."

[Dot]'s eyes crossing while she watched the syrup drip from her hair to her nose was pretty cute.

So the girls didn't like how [Squirt] looked.  So they colored his head & (covered) butt orange.

Your middle child is "washing dishes", wearing nothing, yelling, "Rock On!"

Negotiating with [Dot] that her vitamins are done "cooking" and if she doesn't eat them, they'll "burn."

[Dot] to me:  "I not child!  You child!  I parent!"

Discussing ages.  "[Dot]'s 3.  [Squirt]'s 0.  Mommy...*pause*...Mommy's not 3."

In an earlier post, I mentioned that part of our country's issue is that our state car is pathetic.  But this story is even worse.

During the question-and-answer session, when the association’s chairman asked Bush his favorite kind of car, Bush said he just bought a Ford Fusion. 

Here we have a presidential hopeful actually claiming to like driving a Ford Fusion.

Now, I get it, his answer is politically motivated.  He wants to get the UAW by throwing support behind a Detroit car.  He wants to get the environmentalists by pimping a green ride.  He wants to get the "common man" by riding a car with a baseline MSRP under $25,000.

I get it, I really do.  But here's the thing...so does everyone.  Jeb, buddy, your last name is "Bush":   you're not going to get the environmentalists to think you're green.  You are part of a (sadly) permanent ruling class:  you're not going to get the common man to think you're "one of the guys" by driving a POS car.   And the UAW, well, your brother started their bailout in '08 and we all saw how well that worked for his party.

There was a time when presidents had cool cars.  FDR had a Packard 12, which may not have looked the manliest, but the whole V-12 engine makes up for that in spades.  JFK had a T-bird convertible <insert-morbid-joke-here>.  LBJ had an Amphicar, which also isn't that manly, but is pretty cool in a quirky way.  Reagan rocked a '52 M-38, a '62 CJ-6, and a '83 CJ-8 (Good year, '83).  Clinton had a '67 Mustang.

You want to get some respect and popularity with we little people?  Three options:

1)  Embrace your wealth.  Get something sporty that the common man would get if he won the lottery.  Get yourself a Maserati, or a McLaren F1, or if you want to be all budget-y, an Audi.

2)  If you must go American, get something with some testosterone.  Get a Wrangler or a maybe borrow a page from your fellow Republican Fred Thompson and campaign in a red pick-up.  If you must buy Ford, get an F-150.

3)  If you're willing to restore, go classic.  As I can personally attest, you can score a CJ in good shape for well under $5,000.  Or find an old Porsche 941 for about $10,000.  Either one screams taste and commitment.

In any case, consider this:  the last time a Republican presidential candidate tried to make a big deal over his USA-made common-man ride, it was Nixon and his '50 Oldsmobile 98...and we all know how that worked out.

Well, I wish I'd have known...

...that this was a valid objection around, say, May of 2013, when the city of Ludowici, GA, was asking how often I had "conjugal fellowship" with my wife.

This bit of levity is provided by Kevin Underhill author of loweringthebar.net, one of the funniest sites out there.

Happy New Year!

Note:  I started this post the day before New Year's Eve.  Unfortunately, I spent New Year's Eve and Day, and the following day with bubbly and a headache.  And by "bubbly," I mean Alka-Seltzer Cold and Flu, and by "headache," I mean one of the top five most painful sinus infections of my adult life.

First, on the global scale, things have never been brighter.

Second, this year's end finds our family in a far better place (figuratively and literally) than last.

For the literally part, we now have our own house where I get to do stuff like put in bathroom shelves and mount D rings to the basement ceiling to swing my kids from.  The initial drain issues have been clear for 6 months or so.  We are not dealing with a front door handle that is frozen, water that stinks, windows with drafts, or a [redacted] [redacted] [redacted] landlord telling us all of the above is "just Montana."  And in our good deed for the year, at least one other couple will not be putting up with that either.

This year also saw the (hopefully) end of the Dot's craniosynostosis adventure.

Since her surgery has resulted in an explosion of development, I shall let the Dot explain her year in her own words:

Get onna air-----plane!

[Dot] fly to Te---xas!

Doctor fix [Dot]'s head!

[Dot]'s head get doo-ty!

[Dot] get a ban--nage!

Fortunately, her scalp has remained closed for most of two months now, so we may have in fact come to the end.

The Squirt added his own amount of fun and terror to the start of our year:

 

Bye-Bye Mommy!  I'll be good!

 

But came through in style and was well enough to accompany his sister on another flight two months later:

Any odd behaviours can probably be blamed on too much upper atmospheric radiation and rarified oxygen at a young age.

Our other added critter to the count, Chaos, has been a welcome addition.  No home is complete without a dog.

 

Last, but certainly not least, the real hero of the year.  While people are constantly impressed by how much of a trooper the Dot is (and she is, no doubt), in my opinion, the Lump has been the one who has soldiered on.  Being unceremoniously dumped at an emergency baby-sitter's for 3 days while Mommy and Daddy dealt with the Squirt's untimely arrival; being left behind during the surgical trip (not that it was that traumatic, since she got Grandma all to herself for a week); a short-notice move and a new dog; getting shorted attention because her siblings take up all of it; she has approached it all with an unflappable stoicism that does her Daddy proud.

Way to go, little girl.

There are several things out-of-place keeping the year from being perfect.  Mainly Nikki and Theseia.  Hopefully both will be repaired and repatriated next year.  The only other thing I could wish for right now is my antenna tuner (hopefully here by the end of January).

Other than that, I'm putting this year down as one of the best we've had.  Here's hoping 2015 will be as good.

Toddlerisms II: Texts From My Wife

The favorite parts of my workdays are when the Shieldmaiden randomly sends excerpts from her day.  This tradition started during my time in Atlanta, and has continued on since.


While in Atlanta:  

Someone was very emphatic that she wanted her Dada after I wiped her nose this morning.


Your oldest just tried to wipe my nose with a napkin she found.


She said, "Oh no," when I asked if she could wipe her face.


Me:  Can you say [Lump]?"

[Dot]:  Baby.

Me:  [Lump].

[Dot]:  Baby.


Everybody is asking about you.




After the move:

Thank you for leaving a roll of toilet paper in [Lump]'s reach.  She had fun.


[Dot] is buckling her animals in car seats.


According to [Dot], the clouds are dirty.


Me:  When we see Ms. Nancy & she says "Hi" to you, can you say "Hi," back?

[Dot]:  Hi ba.



After complaining about my crazy day:

Are your coworkers running around pantless & throwing food?  Because that's what mine are doing.


After saying, "I'm a leaf on the wind.  Watch me soar."

I'm a bigger leaf...

Spants IV: Spermite

Top Secret Government Lab Inside Northern Rockies

General from S III:  Spanthopper enters.

Scientist:  “Sir!”

General:  “How is the research coming?”

Scientist:  “Your idea was brilliant.  With the addition of the termite DNA, they can now burrow through two feet of reinforced concrete!”

General:  “What have you made their enclosures of then?”

Scientist:  “Sixty centimeters of reinforced concrete.”

General:  “Something about this seems a bit off, but carry on.”

------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------

Oh yes, oh yes, it's that time of year again!  For those of you just joining us, ever since the wild response to Spants by the half-dozen people that read it, your humble author has made it a Halloween tradition to follow up the original campy humor with even more hackneyed, cliched and generally atrocious sequels.

For the previous installments:

http://fromacj7.blogspot.com/2011/11/spants.html

http://fromacj7.blogspot.com/2012/10/sproach.html

http://fromacj7.blogspot.com/2013/10/spants-iii-spanthopper.html

This year's installment is brought to you by a decent beer and a crappy scotch.

Seriously, it's bottled Ginger piss.

----------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------


Spants IV:  Spermite


Logging Camp

Hippies:  "Save the trees!  Save the trees!"

Foreman:  "Look, Constable, I'm not trying to cause you trouble here, but the tree spiking is starting to endanger my men."

Constable:  "Tree spiking?  Geez, even Greenpeace doesn't do that crap anymore."

Hippies:  "No More Warming!  No More Warming!"

Constable:  "Have you tried pointing out to them that there's been no Global Warming for 19 years now?"

Foreman:  "Do you really think it would work?"


Top Secret Government Lab

Klaxon blares.  Soldier runs down hallway, turns and fires before being dragged off camera by Large Mysterious Unseen Entity.

Soldier:  "AAAAAAHHHH!!!"

Completely unrealistic amount of blood sprays from off-camera.

Computerized voice:  "There are now 5 minutes until failsafe detonation."

Scientist:  "We only have 5 minutes before this place blows!  Oh, if we'd only checked our unit conversion chart!  I feel like NASA!"

General:  "Don't worry!  I have a helicopter!"

Scientist:  "As Chief Scientist, I demand you save me, even at the cost of abandoning my entire team of underlings!"

General:  "I have waves of expendable soldiers to put between it and us.  We just have to get to the chopper!"


Logging Camp the following day

Constable:  "Look, I know those protesters have done all sorts of crazy things to your equipment before, but it doesn't make much sense that they would chop trees down to prevent you from chopping trees down.  Plus, I'm not sure how it would be possible for them to pull this off."

Foreman:  "Look, they're a bunch of hippies:  I never expect them to make sense.  All I know is that last night there were trees here, and this morning, nothing but piles of sawdust."

Constable:  "Look, I'll come here tonight to help you patrol.  But you get to try to get the mayor to sign off on the overtime."


Logging camp (nighttime)

Constable:  "I hope you appreciate this.  I'm supposed to be having dinner with Court Recorder."

Foreman:  "To discuss the future of your completely Platonic friendship?"

Constable:  "I assume so, yes."

Foreman:  "You are just about dense, aren't you?"

Constable:  "Why the hell did I agree to this?  There is nobody out here.  I'm going home, now."

Foreman:  "You can't.  You are contractually obligated for an entire shift.  Plus, I think I heard something over there."

Spermite crashes out of tree line.  Foreman and Constable turn and fire to no avail.

Foreman:  "To the Jeep!  To the Jeep!"

Suddenly, a helicopter appears with General, Scientist and a squad of soldiers.  In the gory-yet-completely-predictable battle that follows, the helicopter is destroyed and Foreman is killed along with the soldiers and pilots.


Interior of Jeep as it races down trail

Constable:  "So let me get this straight, you crossed a spider, an ant, and a termite, then made it grow to 20 feet long, and now it's loose in the forest around my township?"

Scientist:  "That's about the size of it, yes."

Constable:  "Guess it's time to go to my cabin."

General:  “It’s a 20-foot-tall insect that drilled through two-foot thick walls and killed a platoon of soldiers escaping.  And you think your cabin walls can save us?”

Constable:  “Not the cabin walls, what’s on the cabin walls.”


Constable’s cabin

Constable (holding up a Milkor MGL):  “Is this big enough?”

Scientist:  “How can you have these at home?”

Constable:  “It’s not just my home.  It’s also the official offices of the Podunk Township Constabulary and Justice of the Peace.  I filed a 1033.  Don’t you read the news?  If a law enforcement department says it’s for the war on terror, DHS’ll give away anything!”

General:  “These are bigger guns than my men have!”

Constable:  “Well, maybe your men should have used the words ‘Sovereign Gun-Trafficking Tea Party Militia Extremists’ in their budget request like I did.”

General:  “Do you actually have those around here?”

Constable:  “Well, the barber hasn't taken down his 'Ron Paul 2012' window sign.”

Scientist:  “This is such a waste of government resources.”

Constable:  “Oh, bite me.  How much did the 20-foot bug trying to eat us cost?”

General:  “Doesn’t matter.  That 40mm grenade launcher may be cool and all, but it’s not going to be enough.  Ever since Small-Town Sheriff killed one of our Boss bugs with a LAW rocket, we’ve armored them to withstand a TOW missile.”

Constable:  “See, now, why would you go and do that?”

Scientist:  “Well, the plan was to surgically implant a small remote control failsafe explosive in the spermite’s brain before we tested it.”

Constable:  “Let me guess, it's not there.”

Scientist:  “Well, we kinda forgot that making it resistant to a TOW missile might make it difficult to find a drill bit that could bore a hole in it.”

Constable to General:  “Where do you find these people?”

General:  "Well, the pizza boxes worked so well for the TSA..."

Constable:  "I think I might know where we could get a bigger drill bit..."


Machine shop at logging site

Outside, Hippie camp is getting destroyed by Spermite.

Constable:  "Okay, so scratch the high-velocity drill bit idea."

Scientist:  "I didn't think it would work."

Constable:  "Oy!  Say something helpful or shut up."

Screams echo from Hippie camp.

Constable:  "That is really making it hard to think."

General:  "Don't worry.  I'm pretty sure the screaming's almost all over."

Scientist:  "The fact is, we have to come up with some way of getting an explosive inside the creature."

Bloody hippie corpse crashes through window and slides to a stop between Constable and General.  They look down, then up at each other.


Cliff top

Spermite approaches propped-up dead hippie.

Spermite:  "ROOOOOOAAARR!!!!!"

Spermite bites Hippie's body in half, the lower portion falling to the ground.

General:  "Dammit, Scientist!  I told you we should have crammed it down his throat instead!"

Constable runs forward and hurriedly digs through the guts until he finds the bomb, slinging Bruce-Campbell-amounts of gore in the process.

Constable waving bomb overhead:  "Here, Big Fella!  Here you go!"

Spermite:  “ROOOOOOAAARR!!!!!”

Constable runs toward spermite, then in one fluid motion baseball-slides under the creature, tosses the bomb into the air, turns into a roll as the spermite swallows the explosives, and dives off the cliff into the river below chased by the completely predictable fireball rolling across the ground as the spermite explodes.


Survivors gathered around crater

Court Recorder:  "I think you got it."

Constable:  "I'm just glad you decided to take a walk by the river bank tonight."

Scientist:  "Well, now what do we do?"

Constable putting arm around Court Recorder:  "Do what you want.  I'm going home."

Constable and Recorder walk off toward town.

General:  "You can't just leave!"

Constable over shoulder:  "Oh, piss off--I have dinner plans.

Recorder and Constable walk off as the sun rises.  General turns to walk dejectedly away.  Scientist turns, then bends down to swab goop from a bush before following.

Coming soon:  Spants V:  Spants at Sea.

New initials

Ethan Jesiah Pedde, KG7GPB, B.S., M.T.*, EMT-B.  Notice the first thing you get when you pass is the offer to sell you stuff.

*Once I get the paperwork filed, I will once again be MLS (ASCP) CM.  For those of you counting, yes, that will make my academic and professional initials longer than my actual name.