Bleh...

I feel like carp today. I think I have the bird flu. Miss O is sick -- I'm sure I inadvertantly ate some of her snot or something. I hate when she gets sick. It always starts out as just a head cold and then gets in her chest because she has this mild asthma thing that kicks in. She had her tonsils/adenoids taken out last September, and during the surgery she kind of aspirated some crap into her lungs. She ended up in the ICU for a couple of days and now, whenever she gets sick, we have to follow this very regimented schedule of meds and breathing treatments to make sure it doesn't get out of control. She's a trooper, though. It doesn't really seem to bother her. Meanwhile, I'm hovering by the side of her bed at midnight, listening to see if she's still breathing. Sometimes, if I can't hear anything, I'll adjust her sheets until she rolls over and then I'll feel better. Ah, she's still alive. Now I can sleep. That's me: dad of the year.

One positive about all this is that since her surgery, Miss O has gained about 10 pounds. Is that insane? Since September. Five months. Two pounds a month. Of course, now she's going to probably grow to be 6 foot 8 or something. And weigh like 3 hondo. Maybe we should have left just one of the tonsils in to keep her at a more respectable size.

Oh, Mr. Z had his first piano lesson yesterday with our friend Randy. It went pretty well. I was worried that the boy wouldn't be able to sit still for a half an hour but he did great. Amazing. Basically, he can totally focus/relax/not spaz out if he's in school or in some sort of learning-based situation but outside of that, he completely flips his lid. Maybe I should set the house up to look like a giant classroom. Or at least the kitchen. Then, I could get him to stay in his seat while he's eating by presenting a new lesson each meal. "Tonight, we're going to learn about similes... SIT DOWN AND FINISH YOUR PEAS!"

I want to lie down.

Dough!

Oh, yeah. Check that mofo out. I finally ordered the old Kitchenaid Artisan mixer for myself (in tangy 'Tangerine,' no less.) That thing kicks dough ass. Yeah, baking has become kind of a zen retreat for me, of late, and this mixer is a must-have in order to reach true baking enlightenment. With it, I made this:















Check that shit out. A bronzed loaf of challah. And yes, those are poppy seeds my friend, courtesy of Elfco (the East Lansing Food Cooperative). The bread was most awesome. Inhaled by the family in about an hour and a half. I also made some killer bagels. Real bagels, not that Lenders crap. The kind with the hard, crunchy exterior and the soft chewy inside. They rocked. I don't know why the first two things I decided to bake were Jewish. Probably because I live in the middle of Michigan and anything even remotely semitic is next to impossible to come by out here. Next, though, I'll be branching out to Italy. I'll be baking a nice Italian loaf (which is, coincidentally, what I pinched this morning after that shrimp risotto I had last night).

And while you're ogling my new mixer, check out the hideous bricky/bronzey tiles on our nasty old countertops. I think our house was built in 1982 and those counters reek of early 80s. If you put your nose right up to the tiles and take a big whiff, you can almost smell "Who Can it Be Now," by Men at Work.

Who can it? Who can it?

Drowning... in spit.

Last night I had a dream that I was on this raft in the ocean with my old lady and my kids. The raft sank and I was the only one who could swim. So I had a kid under each arm and the old lady was grabbing around my neck as I swam on my back for miles with no land in sight. Nice relaxing dream. Gee, I wonder what it means.

But I also had this bizarre dream that I was hanging out with Buddy Rich, talking about drumming. He wasn't an asshole like they say he was -- he was just really mellow and said the whole asshole thing was just an act.

Oh, and why have I been salivating so much lately? It's starting to bother me. Saliva, just pooling in my mouth. Maybe that's why I dreamt about the ocean.

I think it's consumption.

Or rabies.

Or someone's holding a Take Five somewhere near my head.

Who Wears the Pants in This Family?

So, I'm getting my daughter (heretofore known as "Miss O") ready for school and she refuses to put on her jeans. "I don't like blue pants!" she whines. "I like turquoise and light blue and all the colors of the rainbow except dark blue." This kid. It's a total battle with her. My old lady and I trade off getting the kids ready each morning. She varies up the outfits for Miss O: pants one day, maybe a skirt the next, a dress, etc. I pretty much go for the pants/t-shirt option. For one, I think dresses on a four year old are pointless. She's going to be rolling around at school, running, jumping, getting coughed on by kids whose parents wouldn't keep them home even if they had hanta-virus. For another thing, I think she looks way cooler wearing some jeans with a Clash t-shirt or something. She's a kid, dammit. Oh, and whenever I do try to do a skirt or dress or something, the old lady kinda looks at it and says something like, "Wow. [pause] That's an interesting combination." Which basically means, "Are you colorblind, you moron. None of that crap goes together." That's the main reason Miss O gets the jeans and t-shirt treatment on my days.

Anyway, she's not buying the jeans today. And they're great jeans -- they've got cool flower things sewn on them and everything. Kind of an "Oilily-by-way-of-Target" vibe. She's not going for it. So I say, "You know, blue jeans are the most popular pants in the world. And if you lived in Russia, you probably wouldn't even OWN blue jeans. They're very hard to come by over there."

What am I TALKING about?! Where did that come from? Russia?! I don't even know if they still have a blue jean shortage over there. Or if they ever did. I think I got that from that Robin Williams movie where he played the Russian defector guy. You know... [looking up info on IMDB]... ah, "Moscow on the Hudson." I hated that movie. Although it had Maria Conchita Alonso in it. Hotchie mama! I always liked her. Her and that Elizabeth Pena... how do you do a tilde in HTML? Now it looks like Peena... it's actually pronounced "pain-ya"... whatever. She's 'caliente.' But that movie sucked. I remember we saw it for school, for some bizarre reason. Why would we see that for school? Was it for history class? What a lame-ass field trip. Although I do remember going to a movie in Spanish class that turned out to be some Spanish-language softcore porn film. That was awesome. We drive all the way out to some theater in Glencoe, or something, the movie starts, they're all speaking Spanish and stuff, and then there's this totally hot sex scene within the first five minutes. Senora Wilton [what an evil hag] hustled us out of there before we even got to see the dinero shot. Now that was a field trip. You know, thinking back, it was probably that movie that made me like Spanish so much. Hell, I was almost a Spanish major in college -- all because of some accidental Mexican porn in high school. And Maria Conchita Alonso. And Elizabeth Pain-ya. Ay, caramba!

Anywhich, long story short, I got Miss O into the blue jeans, for which she has a renewed respect. Russia. What an asshole. Maybe tomorrow I'll tell her that if she doesn't eat all her Frosted Mini Wheats, kids in Ethiopa are going to die.

Blaaaargh....

I woke up at 4:30 this morning and couldn't go back to sleep. What's that all about?! I think I'm turning into my dad. Soon, I'll be going to bed in a nightshirt, sleeping 2 hours and then watching crappy movies on Skinemax until morning. I think I have a brain cloud, like Tom Hanks' character in "Joe Versus the Volcano." I love that movie. It has joined "Sixteen Candles," "Office Space," and "Tommy Boy" as a movie I have to watch if I pass it while channel surfing. God, is this a boring entry or what? How do people make these things interesting day after day after day. I'm just not that interesting, I guess. I think I'm only interesting when I'm talking about poop. I could make this blog about nothing but poop. I could call it a "log." Or a "b(m)log." Or an "online diary(uh)." Or I could rename it "crappydad.blogspot.com." Ugh.

Do you ever get the feeling that you're retarded and that everyone you know is just playing along to make you feel better. Like all the people at work pretend that I'm in charge of projects and things and put up this elaborate front to make me feel competent, and then do all the real work when I'm not around. And either my wife is retarded too, or she just really feels bad for me and pretends that I'm a good husband/dad. And the kids really like me because I'm actually functioning at the mental age of a five year old. You probably don't feel that way. I do sometimes. I guess that's pretty self-centered to think that the world would basically put on this huge show just so I wouldn't feel "different." But isn't that the way someone with the mental capacity of a five year old would think? Aha, got you there. It's like "The Truman Show," but I'm retarded instead of Jim Carrey. Makes you think...

Showering at the Y

I swim at the YMCA a few times a week. I'm starting to get in sort of a groove, finally, and it's very relaxing. No kids, no work -- just water. It's very womb-like. I'm up to about 46 lengths -- I don't know how long that is but I think it's about 80 miles or so. Anyway, enough about the swimming. It's the lockerroom where I'm having the problems. Specifically, the shower area.

All right, there are 10 showerheads. I try to pick one at either end, you know, so the next person who comes in doesn't feel crowded or threatened or whatever. I don't know. But every time I'm in there, some old hairy guy with big old balls picks the showerhead either right next to mine or right across from mine. What the shit?! And then they just start lathering the old balls... right at me. They lather forever. How clean do they want that thing? One guy picked the shower right next to me and he's up on one leg, sudsing some nether area, and he brushes my arm! I know! I'm like, "Dude, back off!" Of course I didn't say that, but come on! At least buy me a power bar first or something.

And I don't think these guys are coming onto me or anything. They're like old farmers who swim like 9000 laps all day, going about 1/2 a mile an hour. I think they just don't care anymore. They're just like "Yeah, gotta clean the old balls and I don't care who sees 'em. Maybe I'll point 'em at that longhair over there. Hey boy, check out my nads. That's what 95 year old nads look like. Here, I'll clean 'em off for ya so you can take a closer gander."

There's one guy who stands, completely unclad of course, in front of the automatic hand dryer, drying his old, prickly bird's nest of a bush for what seems like 20 minutes. Good lord, the guy's gonna have an afro down there when he's done. I expect to see one of those hair picks sticking out of there. What is with these guys?! They need a hobby or something. Go build a shed, gramps!

I'm so repulsed by the time I get out of there that I feel like I've got to rush home and take another shower to rinse off all the 'icky.' And everytime there's something else. It's like some sort of geriatric turkish bathhouse over there. I mean, I just want to swim, dudes.

Here boy!

So, I'm not going to get into why I use "Cottonelle Fresh Folded Wipes" (might it have something to do with the fact that they are moist, flushable and infused with Aloe and Vitamin E?... it might) but there is something about them that really disturbs me. No, it's not the fact that I'm cleaning my "business end" with a dressed up baby wipe. It's not the fact that you can only flush two at a time, according to the 'instructions,' or your sewer system will implode. It's not even the fact that I carry some with me whenever I leave the house for an extended period of time in a Ziploc sandwich bag, lest I be stranded in some dank outhouse with only a pinecone to swab the deck.

It's the fact that they have chosen this as their logo:












Here, let me zoom in a bit:






What's that? Why it's a cute little puppy! A yellow lab, even. Now, what are they saying here? Are they saying that wiping your ass with "Cottonelle Fresh Folded Wipes" is akin to wiping your ass with a puppy? Perhaps. Or, are they going that extra step and saying that when you wipe said ass, it gives you the sensation of a cute, yellow lab puppy licking your anus clean, as it would, say, a bowl full of Snausages. Well, having used "Cottonelle Fresh Folded Wipes" for years now, I'm going to go out on a limb and say it's the latter. And now that I have that image in my head, it's something I think about every time I use their product. I feel like bursting out of the john exclaiming, "My ass feels puppy-lickin' clean!" I don't know if that's what they actually intended, but hey, that's not a bad catch-phrase for them. And they can have it, free of charge. On me: