A Terrible Poem About My Last Fishing Trip

Awake

More night than morning

All was ready the day before

Long hours on dark abandoned roads

Body on automatic as thoughts flow like the river they are about

Arrive before the glow of the morning sun

Black rocky trails and the roar of unseen water my only companion

Dim light finally filters through the trees

The gorge illuminated

A chill is felt through the waders as I slowly slide in

Buttery golden browns and silvery pink rainbows occupy the mind as I make the first cast of the day

Beautiful drift in complicated currents through likely lie but no takers

Next cast the fly carefully crafted the day before alights on a downed limb

A sharp flick of the wrist and a roll of the line should set it free

SNAP

The rod tip breaks

My favorite rod

My

Favorite

Rod

On my second cast

On

My

Second

Cast

My head hangs low

I stomp back down the rocky path

At the car I realize my backup was left

Long drive home with the sun in my eyes to screaming children and a grumpy wife

Entire bottle of cheap red wine to dull it all

Don’t think it worked

Second cast

Second

Mother

Fucking

Cast

Maybe I should take up golf

Maybe

I

Should

Take up

Golf

…

…

…

No

Golf’s dumb

 

 

At Least I Know Where I Stand

I was helping my oldest child study for a test recently when I casually mentioned that I never had to learn the particular lesson he was studying. He looked at me and, in a tone that I believe can only be produced by incredibly pretentious nine years old snots, said, “Only the kids in the gifted and talented program learn this, so…”

“Well,” I said. “I used to be in the gifted and talented program when I was in school and we didn’t go over this then.”

“What? You were in the GT program when you were in school?”

“Yup.”

“Huh? I didn’t know you were smart.” I think it was the complete sincerity in this comment that made me wish I was fabulously rich so I had a will that was worth writing him out of.

“Believe it or not some people still think I’m pretty intelligent.”

“Really?” More sincerity. “You don’t even have a job. What’s the point of being smart if you don’t use it for anything?”

That was the moment I decided that my oldest son would never be my favorite.

Never.

The 4am Train

The tracks are just a little over a mile from my house.

Every morning around 4am a train goes by.

This train, for some reason, believes that it can only go through this part of town if it lays on the whistle/horn/what-ever-you-call-it (I’m not a train person) the entire time.

At 4am every morning the baby hears this train whistle/horn/what-ever-you-call-it, sits up in his bed and loudly announces “TRAIN! TRAIN!”.

Somedays we can get the baby back to sleep.

Somedays we can’t.

I would like to tell everyone what kind of things go through my mind at 4am every morning.

But I won’t.

Because I don’t want to land on some sort of federal watch list.

Video Games: A Rant

What follows an approximant account of the lecture I found myself giving my two oldest children last night. I want to state right now that I have no problem with video games and am actually quite fond of playing them myself, but there’s only so much a dad can take…

No! No! NO!!!

I will NOT get you through the rest of this dungeon!

No I will NOT beat this boss for you!

Do you think I had someone to get me through the hard parts of games when I was a kid?!?!

You think Nana or Grandpa ever beat a boss for me?

No.

No they didn’t.

My generation was the first to have complicated games and we didn’t have parents that knew how to play.

My parents played Pac-man and Pong and pinball!

We didn’t have the luxury of living in a house with someone who’s played games for 25+ years and who knew how video game logic works.

No, when I was a kid, WHEN I WAS A CHILD, we had to figure out how to get through things ourselves dammit!

WE didn’t even have the INTERNET!

Yeah, that’s right! No internet.

Let that shit sink in.

If we were lucky we had a friend who had played before us or we knew someone who knew someone who was able to save up enough money to buy a Nintendo Power magazine that might, MIGHT, have an answer to a question about the game we were playing in it!

When I was a kid, when that old man between the fires in the beginning of Zelda said “take this, it’s dangerous to go alone”, all he gave us was that sword, because we, we were truly alone out there in the shit man.

WE figured the puzzles out ourselves!

To US, every “secret”, be it level, weapon or what have you, was an actual goddam secret that you either stumbled on yourself by chance or you had to research and hunt down  like it was the Ark-of-the-MOTHERFUCKING-COVENANT!

WE DID THAT THAT SHIT OURSELVES! 

WE, WE HAD GAMES THAT NO ONE WE KNEW COULD BEAT!!

WE WERE THE LONELY MOTHERFUCKING WARRIORS OF VIDEO GAMES AND WE ARE BETTER PEOPLE BECAUSE OF IT, NOW STOP ASKING ME TO PLAY YOUR GODDAM GAMES FOR YOU!!!

…

…

Um…

I’m sorry, Daddy didn’t mean to…

Please stop crying guys…

I didn’t mean to…

How about I get y’all through those levels and we just don’t tell Momma about this?

Ok?

I… I love you… 

 

Mice, Knives and Pain

My last post was all about how boring things have been around here. That post was a mistake. Not the information in that post. That was true. It was starting to get boring, but having the hubris to put how boring things have gotten in print? That was a mistake.

The what I now view as normalcy started almost immediately after hitting the publish button on that last post with the mouse incident:

It’s starting to get cold outside, we live in an old house and sometimes field mice get in to escape the elements, usually just to be toyed with and then brutally murdered by our cat, Swirly Rainbowtron Catinator. Yes that’s her actual name. Sometimes Swirly falls a little short on the murder part and leaves these stunned mice on the kitchen floor. This how early one morning while getting the older boys ready for school I hear, “Daddy! The baby is making a mouse swim!”

… “What?”

“He has a mouse! And a glass of water! And he’s putting them together! Mouses don’t seem to swim good Daddy!”

“Mice, buddy. Mice don’t seem to swim well…”

Then there was the incident where I heard Demon Spawn screaming for me to come and help him and I came in to find that the baby had cornered him on the couch by repeatedly thrusting a steak knife (a steak knife I had never seen before and am convinced that the baby lifted from a restaurant and had been hiding on his person prison style) at him and giggling insanely.

Also the baby, who weighs more than the four year old, has decided cuddling involves headbutts to face.

So things have gotten back to normal around here.

I guess that teaches me to complain about being bored.

 

6 Awful Things I Do (or have done) To My Children

1. Any time I’m in the car with them and they start talking to me, I slowly turn up the radio until I can’t hear them and shout “WHAT?!? I CAN’T HEAR YOU! THE RADIO IS UP TOO LOUD! WAIT, I’LL TURN IT DOWN!”. I then turn it down, wait for them to start talking and slowly begin to turn it up again.
2. I put hot sauce on most of my food just to keep them from asking for bites.
3. I tell them that the baddest of the “bad words” is the X-word. I also tell them anytime we pass a person pulled over by the police that the person the cop is talking to probably got caught saying the X-word and will most likely be going to jail for it.
4. When I see them in a situation where they’ll most likely get hurt, I judge how bad the accident will be and if it doesn’t seem like it’ll be too bad I just sit back and see how it goes.
5. Anytime I hear “Where’s Mama?” I tell them that she left for Hawaii (or some other far off location) and I that can’t believe that she forgot to say anything about it.
6. I sometimes explain the most mundane of natural phenomenons in the most terrifyingly Lovecraftian way I can come up with at the moment, wait for the horror to really sink in and then tell them the truth.

At Least I Feel Better

I have to admit that lately the stress being caused by the baby’s new stage has started to get to me.

I’ve been angry.

I’ve been sullen.

I’ve been bitter.

I’ve started to act anxious  and paranoid.

Truth be told I’ve even been wondering if this whole having children thing is worth it.

Now on top of all this, these feeling have the audacity to make me feel guilty for feeling them.

Then, this morning, I ran across the movie There Will Be Blood on Netflix. I’d been meaning to watch it because it’s supposed to be a pretty good flick and I wanted to know for awhile now why so many of my friends threaten to drink my milkshake.

So I watched it.

If you haven’t seen it or know nothing about it, it is not, IS NOT, a feel good movie. But it made me feel better. It made me feel better because no matter how bitter, angry, paranoid and sullen I get, at least least I’ll never be as bad as the asshole that movie is about.

I mean… Just… That fucking guy. Wow.

No Baby!

That title? That has been the most commonly used phrase in my home in the last month or so. Also, “No baby don’t…!”, “No! Put that down!” and my personal favorite, “That’s not yours! It doesn’t belong to you! Just stop! Stop! For the love of god why can’t you just… Just…! No, no, NO!”.

So what I’m saying is that the baby’s going through a stage. A “if I can reach it, I will take it” stage.

And he seems to be able to reach everything. I guess he’s tall for his age. He also has figured out how to drag chairs around and use them to climb on counter tops and tables.

Oh, and he also has decided that clothes and diapers were made to come off. That’s another fun stage he’s going through right now.

That’s how, just the other day, I had to quickly run into the bathroom for a few minutes due to an unfortunate encounter with some “Mexican” food, to come out and find a baby, who was previously completely dressed, naked, standing in his own bodily waste holding a large kitchen knife.

I was in there for maybe, maybe, two minutes. But it was enough time for him to strip naked, pull a chair to the counter, climb up onto that counter, pull a knife out of the block, climb back down and then poop in front of the bathroom door.

I’m not sure if either of us will survive this stage.

Ponderings

At 3pm this afternoon my home will be getting visited by my four-year old’s soon to be kindergarten teacher.

The house looks as if the interior was devastated by the world most localized and driest tsunami.

I cleaned the house twice yesterday.

I obviously must clean it again today but at what time do I start cleaning as to finish it in time for the teacher’s visit but not give the children enough time to destroy it again?

Hmmm?

And just imagine, at one time I used to contemplate philosophy, science, religion and art…

The Cupcake

“You really think it’s worth it for a cupcake?”

“Yes. Yes I do. It’s two dollar Tuesday. And this is my last chance to go.”

“Really? I mean ‘really you want to leave the house’ not about the last chance, two dollar thing. I don’t think he wants to go. And he can’t eat a cupcake because of the surgery this morning.”

“He feels better now and if he tears it into little pieces he can probably eat one. If that doesn’t work we can get him ice cream or a milkshake. And they’re really good cupcakes. The bakery won Cupcake Wars. We need to get out of the house anyway. A drive will do us good.”

“Whatever… I’ll go if you pick out their clothes.”

“Quit worrying. It’ll be fine.”

……………………

“What took so long?”

“He was freaking out, screaming and throwing himself to the floor because he didn’t want to go to the cupcake store. I told him he could try it and if it didn’t work we could get him ice cream and then he started freaking out about that.”

“So we’re not going now?”

“No, we’re going. He’s coming out the house. See?”

“You think this is a good idea?”

“It’ll be fine.”

……………………..

“I’m sorry you can’t eat your cupcake, but you have to stop screaming. It doesn’t help anything… No your brother shouldn’t stop eating his cupcake just because you… ”

“Well if we wanted to be fair…”

“What?”

“Nothing.”

“No, we’ll save your cupcake until tomorrow and… STOP SCREAMING!! We’ll stop for ice cream. You’ll be able to eat that. You’ll see. It’ll be fine.”

………………………..

“I’m sorry it hurts to… Stop screaming please! I’m sorry it hurts to eat ice cream. Just put… Listen! Stop freaking out and LISTEN TO ME! Just try to put a little in your mouth at a time and let it melt…”

“I guess he doesn’t like that idea… Hey! Don’t be so dramatic and STOP SCREAMING! Do you want me to be so distracted that I wreak the car and we all die a horrible flaming death?!?!”

“Now who’s being dramatic?”

“Whatever. You wanted to ‘go and get two dollar cup cakes‘. This is all on you. You were… SHUSH! ALL OF YOU BACK THERE! I swear if you y’all don’t quiet down none of you will ever eat AGAIN!!!!”

“I wonder where he gets it.”

“…”

“Oh so you’re not talking to me now?”

“…”

“…”

“…”

“Fine, I’m sorry, it was a terrible idea. Ok?”

“Yep… Well I hope the cupcake was worth it.”

“…”

“So how was it? Was it worth all this?”

“… It was fine.”