Mt. Krabatoa Is About to Blow...

Well, the C.T.A.C. (Crabby Terror Alert Color) has been upgraded to "orange/lid-flippingly-crabby," as the Old Lady boarded a plane for New Hampshire this morning for a supposed "conference" and won't be returning until Wednesday afternoon. The dials have been all set to "Maximum Crabberdrive," and we're all just waiting around for that inevitable rendezvous of shit and fan.

Actually, today wasn't so horrendous, aside from the fact that it was about 900 degrees outside, according to the scrotal-sack-index level of "much like a thin, leathery tarp dragging behind me along the sidewalk." We mostly stayed inside, in the air-conditioning, with a brief jaunt to the library for some books and dvds. One of the disks I got was a reissue of the old "Little Rascals" movies with Spanky and Chubbsy Ubbsy, and all those other exploited, old-fashioned ragamuffins. We'll watch a little of it tomorrow, when I'll find out if they're still as hilarious as I used to think they were, or if they're just classic examples of child abuse and racism, which I'm guessing they probably are. I'm pretty sure Mr. Z and Miss O are gonna watch two minutes of it and look at me like, "What the shit, Dad?! You thought this was funny? Mom was right -- you are a moron."

Let's see, what else. Well, Miss O has a cold, of course, which doesn't really seem to be slowing her down, and I've decided to not stress out about it, so fuck it. Mr. Z is still bouncing back from his overnight camping trip thing. He says he's glad he went through with it, but I'm guessing he's not going to spend another night away from home until he's at least 37.

Tomorrow, the spawn are off to their day camp again, which would be great for all involved, were it not for Mr. Z's dentist appointment that I have to take him to in the middle of the fucking day. So I'll get a good two hours or so of work in before I have to drive him to that, and then it'll be too late to take him back to camp, so I'll have to bring him home and do the stick-him-in-front-of-the-gamecube while I try to get some work done routine, which I hate to do but, hey, my hands, they are tied.

Oh, and I have to clean the shit-hole of a house we live in by Wednesday, before my sister and her family show up, which they are doing. We're all heading up to Traverse City to meet my parents for a weeklong 75th birthday celebration thing for my dad. And seeing as how we really haven't let an outsider into our abode since, well, since we moved in three years ago, I've got me an assload of cleaning to do. I'm thinking of renting a power-washer, turning it on inside the house, and just blasting the shit out of all the cobwebs, dustballs, booger-snots and dingle-doodies. Either that, or I'm going to wrap Mr. Z and Miss O in Swiffer sheets and just chase them all over the goddamn house.

AND, I've got to record the spawns' birthday song for my dad, buy all the birthday presents for the Old Lady's birthday that's at the end of the month (and, as usual, I have not fucking idea what I'm going to get her), AND buy all the presents for Mr. Z's birthday that's at the beginning of August -- all things that I could normally do over the course of a few weeks, but have to do this week, since we're going to be in Northern Michigan for a WEEK AND A HALF.

Shit, man. That does it -- I'm moving the C.T.A.C level up to "purple/holy-fuckstain."