2010/07/23 16:03 My brother in law asked me to stop by their house after work next week to feed their goldfish and rabbit while they're out of town. Seems like an easy enough favor but the responsibility is actually sort of daunting. Their daughter is 4 and these are her pets I'm entrusted with. If something goes terribly wrong and one or both of them die while under my care - I am faced with the possibility of damaging a fragile young child or having to enact some elaborate Weekend At Bernies type ruse to keep her happily ignorant until such a time comes that she can grasp the true scope of death as part of the natural cycle of life. Niether option appeals to me. I can't spend the next couple of years going parasailing and playing beach volleyball and sitting in a lounge chair by the pool with a long dead rabbit with dark sunglasses on. As hilarious as those antics played on the big screen, I just don't think I'm up for it. Not to mention I have no idea how to deal with the onset of decomposition. I suppose I could write a letter to Andrew McCarthy for some pointers but can you imagine how many such letters he gets every day? What are the odds he would respond to mine?
101 degrees tomorrow - heat index of 110. Fuck this summer.
2010/07/19 16:10 Yesterday Malin went into the kitchen and told us she was making us something special. So after about 20 minutes - she comes out with ice cream - 2 little dishes for Emily and Lawson of mint chocolate chip with some chocolate bar broken up in it - and 2 little dishes for Malin and I of mint chocolate chip with Starburst Fruit Chews in it. I politely ate a few bites of mint ice cream and told her I would save the rest for later and put it away - she went on the eat her fruit chews and mint ice cream together - the way only a 7 year old would.
We got Lawson a pair of hardwood drum sticks and he hasn't put them down ever since. He goes to bed at night drumming on his mattress and in the morning he walks out of his room with his drumsticks in his hand. I have been searching Craigslist for a decent little 5 piece drum kit to get him for a couple hundred dollars. The little piece of shit drum kits at the toy store with the paper heads (he'd destroy them in about 3 minutes) sell for $100 - so why not shell out $250 and get him a proper drum kit that he can have for a long time?
We had this insane wind and lightning storm hit suddenly last night. Emily woke me up from a dead sleep at 12:30 to tell me the umbrella on the deck had been blown over. I looked out back and sure enough we left the umbrella up and it was fucked but good. So I run out there in my underpants and realize i'm on the elevated deck with fork lightning all around me and I'm about to grab an aluminum deck umbrella. I say fuck it and go for it because it was seconds away from launching and doing god knows how much damage to houses/cars, etc.. So I grab it as quick as I can, throw is on the deck and push it closed and run back inside. Then I realize the collapsible canopy outside the basement sliding door is overturned and the (again, aluminum) legs are sticking straight up and it's directly under the power line and every gust of wind is lifting it to within a foot or so of the power lines. Luckily it was stuck on the fence or it would have definitely made contact. So I run out there again and once again I'm wrangling tall pieces of aluminum with fork lightning flashing ALL around and hoping I don't die every time I grab it. So I ripped the canopy off (destroyed it) the frame and bent the frame up (destroying it) and threw it under the deck. So now we're out a $100 deck umbrella and a $100 canopy but at least my naked fat ass didn't get Zapped.
2010/07/12 14:49 It's my son's 3rd birthday today. In typical contrarian fashion he has refused to allow today to be his birthday. Every time we mention his birthday he yells - No, It's not my birthday! Yesterday Emily told him he could have anything he wanted for dinner tomorrow for his birthday and he said - I don't want dinner, it's not my birthday. We tried telling him he'll get presents, to which he replied - I'll throw my presents away. He's a strange little person, but he's the boss and if he doesn't want a birthday I'm not going to force him. He also got stung by a bee for the first time yesterday which sucked for him but at least now we know neither of the kids are allergic.
Malin started day camp today - hopefully she enjoyed it. I think she's tired of being home all day with the day care kids - all of whom are considerably younger than she is. She now wants to build an outdoor turtle pen and get a turtle from my Aunt Jean who has been keeping turtles for over 20 years. I'd feel terrible if Jean gave us one and we killed it - but I think we'll give it a go.
