SLAM!

Okay, I've hit my wall. There's nothing left in the ol' tankeroo. I'm spent. Finito. Zip. Zally. Zilch. The train has left the station. Toot toot. I'm done.

I mean, what, 624 posts is pretty good, right? And I've seriously tried to write something over the last coupla days, honest. We had this huge fucking birthday party for Miss O this weekend with 10 screaming girls and a limbo contest and a craft project and bobbing for apples and did I mention screaming and tears and fucking blood spurting from my eye sockets, and shit, you know, I sat down to write about it and nothing came out except air. Nada. After a goddamn birthday party! Bupkus!

So I'm taking a break. Probably not forever, just until the searing pains that shoot through my puny brain every time I stare at this goddamn blank rectangle begin to subside. I'll probably post every now and then... when I have something to whine about or when one of the spawnages writes a new ditty. In fact, I'm going to try to spend more time recording with them. I'd like to finish that fucking albatross of a CD of theirs that's hanging around my neck like a goddamn... well, albatross. When that's done, I'll post it here. I promise. And I'll send off those free copies I promised to all of you who ordered shitty wrapping paper and whimsical trinkets from Mr. Z last year.

So, this isn't really goodbye... it's more of a TTFN. It'll give you an opportunity to use that minute you used to piddle away here reading my insufferable pablum for something more constructive. Take up a hobby, or something. Might I suggest glass-blowing?

And, then, there you go.

Sounds Like Someone Needs to Empty Their Spit Valve...

Tonight, Mr. Z, Miss O and yours crabbily made an impromptu recording of a little "musical" number we crapped out while waiting for the Old Lady to get home from professorin'. It was a round, of sorts -- a rhythmic round. Rhythms produced using only our cupped hands and our armpits. You heard me -- an armpit fart round.

I started with quarter notes, Miss O "played" eighth notes, and then Mr. Z joined in with 16th notes produced not with his armpits, but with his behind-the-knee pits. But enough 'splainin' -- here 'tis:


Fartin': A Round by the Crabbyfamily

Z-Wrex...

Mr. Z wiped out on his bike, Friday, on the way home from school. He was apparently "popping a wheelie" when he came down on a rock and, subsequently, bit it. I got a call from him at about 3:10 and he said, very matter-of-factly, "I just totally wiped out on my bike and I busted my elbow." I almost shat my nappies, but then I remembered it was Mr. Z, who has a tendency to, oh, "oversell" a situation from time to time. So I asked him to clarify.

I asked him if he thought his elbow was really broken and he said, "No, but it's gonna need like 10 bandages. It's totally bloody." I then asked him if he wanted me to come and get him and he said he'd be okay and he could ride home.

Yobbita-yobbita-WHUH?!

At that point, I was pretty convinced that Mr. Z hadn't wiped out, but had rather been abducted by aliens, and replaced with a cyborg Mr. Z. There's NO FUCKING WAY that that calm, cool and chillaxin' "person" on the other end of the phone was the Mr. Z I knew.

But, sure enough, 10 minutes later, in walked the boy, bloodied elbow in tow, sans tears and cool as a crabcumber. As I bandaged his wound, he filled me in on the details of the wreck -- there were a lot of kids around when it happened, he got up and dusted himself off, he DIDN'T CRY, and the kicker, an 8th grade boy saw the whole thing happen and proclaimed, "Dude, you totally took that like a man!"

Now, I'm not one for reinforcing sexist declarations of "manlihood" but, FUCK YEAH HE DID! I explained to Mr. Z that if word of his face-plant flintiness got around school, he could well be on his way to gaining some serious middle-schooler "cred." He smiled, stood up a little taller, and then confidently strode into the other room... to play Webkinz with his six year old sister.

(Baby steps to manlihood.)

Gotta Hand It to Him....

So... So... tired. I've got nothin' for you, tonight. Nothing except this drawing that Mr. Z brought home from his art class today:



I can't decide which of the three is the most awesome. The one on the left, or "hand," is great because it's got that auto-peace-sign thing going on, and all the fingers look like French baguettes. The one on the right, or "hand? big," is like some sort of Lynda Barry-esque claw-hand. And then there's "cartoon hand." I have a feeling that one wasn't part of the assignment.

Mr. Z also came home declaring, "Today was the greatest day ever for three reasons! One, no homework! Two, I found a quarter! And three... B (the dickhead bully who's been tormenting the shit outta Z since 2nd grade) MOVED!!! He's gone! FOREVER!!!! Can you believe it?!?!"

Woo-hoo! Three deformed-hand high-fives for Mr. Z!

The Wart of the Toeses...

Quick update on the wart-sitch. As I drove Miss O to the doc after school, she was in fantastic spirits. We were laughing and singing and just having the grandest of wart-removal-fretting-free times imaginable. I had a backpack full of candy, stuffed animals and magazines, and like the knob that I am, I figured there was nothing to warty about.

Even in the examination room, while we were waiting for Dr. Death to enter, she was laughing and boppin' around and cutting armpit farts like there was no tomorrowart. Then, the doc and the nurse burst in and kicked off World Wart III. Now, to her credit, Miss O didn't scream this time. Instead, she somehow hooked her warty foot behind her "good" foot and refused to extend it toward the doc. At first I tried reasoning with her -- I pulled out the "Spongebob Halloween" magazine and offered her some Smarties, but she wouldn't fucking budge. It was as if she had sunk her horny, warty talons into her Achilles tendon and was hunkered down for the long haul.

Finally, I managed to wrassle her foot free and hold it in front of Dr. Feelgood, as he first sliced off some of the dead skin and then proceeded to burn those fuckers with the liquid nitrogen dipped Q-Tips. It was intense -- each time he touched the Q-Tip to the wart, there was a little "sizzle" noise and then wisps of vaporized wart-smoke would waft upwards, occasionally curling their smokey viral tendrils up my flared nares. And you haven't tripped until you've huffed wart-smoke, my friends. A heady brew, indeed.

But there was no screaming. There were one or two tears, and I could actually hear her teeth grinding down to nubs as she gritted them throughout the entire process. But she, more or less, held it together throughout. I think I'm gonna chalk it up in the win column.

Granted, the warts are still there and the doc informed me that there'll be one, maybe two more visits until those fuckers are permanently vaporized. As he put it, "Warts are like swimming upstream -- you have to make it all the way to the end, or the current will carry you all the way back down and you have to start over from scratch."

The dude's a regular Wart Whitman.

So, I scheduled the next appointment for two weeks from now and, wouldn't you know it, it just happens to fall on one of the Old Lady's afternoons. Doggone it all to heck. She gets all the fun. Doesn't matter, though... she'll schedule the one after that on one of my days. It's a regular tug-o-wart between us.

Oh well, until we wart again...

Wart's Happening Now!!

For those of you who've inexplicably been dropping by here for a while, you'll recall the joy that was had during Mr. Z's Wart-tastic Foot-a-Palooza of Winter 2006. Multiple trips to the family doc, with the freezing and the slicing and blood-curdling screaming... wait, am I still talking about warts or have I shifted to some sort of Bill-Kurtis-hosted Jeffrey Dahmer news magazine on the Biography channel?

Anywart, flash-forward a coupla years and, surprise, we find young Miss O following in her brother's papillomavirus-infested footsteps. Two mongo wartzillas growing on the tips of her tiny toes, like a couple of plantar-unicorns... shoe-nicorns, if you will. We've been futilely battling them for a few months, with those fucking worthless Dr. Scholl's wart pads, but the good doctor must've gotten his goddamn degree in Grenada, 'cuz theose fuckers ain't doing shizzle.

Miss O has been to the real doc once, so far, and the Old Lady was the lucky chaperone the first time. It was, apparently, a "fucking nightmare," what with the girl screaming bloody murder and the Old Lady and the nurse having to physically restrain her during the freezing procedure (which also didn't do shit, by the way.)

Well, guess who gets to take her to visit number two, tomorrow? Give up? I'll give you a hint -- it rhymes with "crabbydab." Yep, after school tomorrow, it's round two in the battle of "Miss O vs. Anyone-who-tries-to-get-near-her-fucking-toes"... and their tympanic membranes. That girl can fucking scream with the best of 'em. If Sammy Hagar had been an almost-seven year old girl who had warts on his toes, he wouldn't even come close to out-screaming her. (But he'd still grow up to, one day, sing on Van Halen's album OUWART12.)

The thing is, she used be fucking fearless when she was younger. She'd wipe out, get up and dust herself off, and then run off to wipe-the-fuck out again. (Remember, the crabbykids aren't the most agile of spawnages.) But she had a shitty experience when she got her ears pierced last winter -- one of the earrings was ripped out by an overzealous towel-drying once -- and things rocketed down the ol' shitter after that.

And nothing really helps. I try reasoning, bargaining, BRIBING... nada. I can get her nice and calm... have her laughing and joking around, and then the doc walks in the room and it's like the goddamn Texas Chainsaw Massacre in there. And the thing that kills me is, after it's all over, she's fine. She's like, "Oh, gee... that didn't hurt." Meanwhile, there's blood spouting out of my fucking earholes, the nurse is catatonic and weeping in the corner and the doc is injecting lidocaine into his own jugular.

But, we've gotta go tomorrow just to ensure that her foot doesn't end up looking like the Elephant Man's head. Although I could always just slip a burlap sack over the thing and rent her out to the circus. Money is tight in our troubled economy, but people always love them a good freakshow.

Hmm. Another one of them parental dilemmas I always seem to find myself in...

The Spawnish Inquisition...

I don't know what further Guantanamo-style torture sessions the spawnage have in store for me, but they've been recently engaging me in some sort of nefarious sleep-deprivation experiment that has me ready to fess up to whatever crime I may or may not have committed.

Monday night-- 1:00 AM: Mr. Z awakens me from deeeeeeep R.E.M. sleep by walking into the hallway and pronouncing, in his I-sound-like-I'm-awake-but-I'm-SO-not voice, that he "wants to talk about the astronauts" and that "he's worried about what the martians are doing." I walk him back to bed where he goes back to, er, continues sleeping, while I'm awake for a good 20 minutes.

Tuesday night -- 1:30 AM: Miss O's Tamagotchi-style "Fairy Magic Electronic Pet" starts beeping this incessant brain-drilling digital beep in her room and she wakes both the Old Lady and I up shouting for us to do something about it. In a rare move, the Old Lady attends to it, while I fall back asleep... only to be awakened moments later when said Old Lady gruffly pushes my arm off her pillow.

Last night (this morning) 5:07 AM: Mr. Z, actually awake this time, opens the door and says, "Dad? I had the all time worst nightmare I've ever had." I walk him back to bed and assure him that he's safe and mumble something like "ssssfine... mmback to sleep... think about... baby monkeys or flommbrrrgnnbrzzz."

I have no idea what's in store for me tonight... maybe bamboo under the fingernails, maybe some caning on the bottoms of my feet, or perhaps some good, old-fashioned waterboarding. All I know is that I'm about to fucking crack and spill the beans about where the Old Lady's secret chocolate bars are stashed.

Saugatuckered...

Back from our mini-vaykeigh and, while it was a great time, I'm now tired as shitfuck. Too shitfucked, in fact, to write anything longer than a sentence or two. So, here's the trip in pics/captions:


It's the famous Saugatuck neon-penis, a tribute to Chief Saugatuck, inventor of... that's right, the neon penis.



The famous Wickwood Inn, where we slept. Little known fact: the inn is run by Julee Rosso, author of the "Silver Palate Cookbook," and owner of several hundreds of Crabbydad's dollars.



The room in which yours crabbily and the Old Lady "slept." It's called the "Kyoto Room," because of its Japanese-influenced design and because, each morning after sleeping on the lumpy feather-bed mattress in the room, I'd wake up saying, "KEE! OH! T'OH, MY BACK!"



This is the nearby beach we walked along -- collected some beach glass, some driftwood and a pocketful of used syringes, condoms and a human ear.



DeMond's grocery store, where we bought the New York Times each morning. This is a mural on the side of the building, depicting the store's founders -- Lindsay Buckingham, Shemp Howard and a potato in overalls.



Believe it or don't -- Beery Field is where they held Octoberfest on Saturday night. Get it? Beery? Field? We didn't go because I get nervous when I'm surrounded by large gatherings of Germans... and kielbasas.



This is a sign at a popular local Saugatuck dry cleaners. After eating the rich fucking breakfasts, drinking shitloads of wine and going out to dinner for every meal, the fudge line pretty much starts (and ends) in everybody's pants.

And there you have it. Saugatuck 2008. It was great while it lasted but now I'm fucking tired, getting a goddamn cold and I'm crabbier than I was before I left. But, hey, at least I don't have any money left!

I Call Time Out!

So, I haven't had a vacation in, like, fuckever. The Old Lady and I were supposed to go away last spring, during the spawnages' break, but, if you'll remember, I spent that time at the goddamn Mayo Clinic, filling up five-gallon jugs of whiz and getting my death-sentence overturned by "real" doctors. And thanks a LOT for bringing up a sore subject.

Anywhich, my folks offered to watch Mr. Z and Miss O for a long weekend sometime and, well, it's about fucking sometime. We're meeting them halfway tomorrow, handing the spawnages over, and then driving up to Saugatuck for a few days of whatever one does in Saugatuck... I dunno, tuckin' in our Saugas, I guess. It doesn't really matter where we're going, though -- I just need a fucking break. My motivation is for shit, my crab-o-meter is off the fucking charts and my brain is floating around in my skull like a loose stool. I SO need a few days of sleeping in, eating good food and, most of all, not hearing a 24-7 running dialogue of who the cutest goddamn Pokemon is. (For the record, it's Diglett.)

And I don't think I'm bringing the laptop, so it's gonna be even duller than usual around here for the next few days. I think we'll all benefit from that. Frankly, posting, lately, has been like pulling teeth... outta my ass. Perhaps I shall find inspiration in Saugatuck, most likely in the form of a commemorative spoon and/or oversized novelty sunglasses.

Carry on.