Guy in a Bear Suit

funny stuff

we could all learn a little something from tatu

thespian bunnies

this dude has shit figured out, especially "the 26 things a perfect guy would do"

the perfect father's day gift

not funny, just interesting.  long live rock and roll.  wait, not so fast

the man knows what he wants

of things both holly & jolly

so keaton's first xmas went smoothly.  he had three different gift opening ceremonies; at his maternal grandfather's house, his aunt on his father's side's house, and his own house with his maternal grandmother.  all in all, he received approximately 4,254,985 toys, all of which made noises that were louder than a 747 taking off during a marching band performance at a rock concert.  if he were to start today and play with each of his toys for five minutes, he would finish around the time the earth crashed into the sun.  there were that many gifts.  sadly enough, his favorite appeared to be the wrapping paper itself.

   

 

...............................................................................................................

on christmas day, we all went to my older sister's house.  keaton got to play with his cousin riley, who is two and a half.  she likes to give him kisses and pat him on the head, which will make her both very popular and a solid player of duck-duck-goose down the road.  as i mentioned before, keaton got his fair share of loot, but nothing could hold a candle to the treat that cousin riley got; the weeble barn dance, or as i like to call it, The Weeble Centrifuge of Death.

http://www.hasbro.com/pl/page.viewproduct/product_id.14695/dn/playskool/weebles/default.cfm

see, it's a barn for weebles.  if you read the description, it mentions a silo.  pressing that silo makes the dual chairs at the bottom spin around like a carnival ride.  it's all nice and pleasant for the weebles, i'm certain, as they spin gently to the music.  however, BASHING THE LIVING SHIT out of the silo over and over again will spin the hapless little things with such a velocity that they are ejected from their ride and LAUNCHED ACROSS THE ROOM with enough force to fell a charging rhino.  and the sound of the bashing is pleasant for all within a ten block radius.   allow me to describe the sound, if you will; bangbangbangBANGBANGBANGBANGFUCKINGBANG....VOOOOOM...CRASH!  that last "voom" and "crash" being the sound of airborn weebles and their subsequent violent collision with the wall.  i'm sure riley's mom and dad are pleased with that gift. 

i was also on vacation from december 17 until december 27.  it was almost as glorious as it sounds.  i did have to get up and get keaton ready for daycare (yes, we still sent him to daycare because we're bad parents, and because it's already paid for).  there was much sleeping and drinking and time at the gym without worrying about getting home to feed/change/bathe the baby.  here's a quick vacation quiz for you; which of the following did not happen while i was off from work:

1.  it snowed in dallas

2.  i drank every night for eleven straight nights

3.  i lost the use of my hands for about a day and a half due to tendon strain from playing an old school nintendo that i hadn't used in over a year.

what's your guess?  ah, it's a trick question.  they all happened.  here's the proof of the snow...

i don't have proof for the other things, but my liver could back me up on #2 if it's still alive and not floating in a great lake of vodka.  and #3 sucked really hard, mainly because it confirmed that i'm now as old as a motherfucker and can't do any new activities without getting sore.  it was actually kind of scary at first because i thought i had a stroke or carpal tunnel or something.  nope, just old man-itis.

oh, and keaton is sick again, most likely with croup.  he coughs like a rabid dog and sometimes gets going so much that he gags and throws up.  if you're really lucky, you're holding him when it happens.  cause you know, it would be a shame for the carpet to have all the fun.  nothing says "i love you mommy and daddy" like sharing warm vomit.  huckleberry likes it though.  if he feels we're being stingy with the food, there's plenty of recycled baby food to go around if we're not quick enough with the cleaning.

so xmas was a success and as always, i'm bummed it's over.  i don't see my family enough and we always have such a good time.  my sisters are both hilarious and they both married well.  and i could talk for days about what a great lady my mom is. 

i'll part with some non-holiday-related advice.  when buying breakfast in the company cafeteria, you might want to look behind you in line before apologizing for paying with a $20 and jokingly telling the cashier that you spend all your $1s on strippers.  cause you never know when your boss' boss might be there.  he might not find it as funny as you.

next time...on an all new ER

illnesses/issues that keaton currently has:

• small amount of croup left over from last week
• yeast infection
• severe diaper rash
• thrush
• diarrhea

evidently the antibiotics that he is on are contributing to the yeast infection, thrush, and diaper rash.  he was on the antibiotics for the eye infection that he had.

we believe he has diarrhea due to daycare feeding him too many table foods too quickly.

medicines/treatments that keaton currently receives:

• breathing treatment (for croup) - twice daily
• antifungal cream (yeast infection) - once daily
• this shit called butt paste (diaper rash) - with every diaper change - approximately 2,654 times a day
• some medicine for inside his cheeks (thrush) - thrice daily
• antibiotics (eye infection) - once daily, but only for one more day
• soy-based formula (diarrhea)

i didn't know i needed a dual degree in pharmacy and nursing to raise a child.  that shit was not in the manual.  i expect next week he'll contract lou gehrig's disease, yellow fever, and scurvy.  we've developed such a relationship with the pharmacists and clerks at cvs that i'll probably be best man in one of their weddings.

and butt paste?  really?  that's the best name the marketing folks at this company could come up with?  it sounds like something you should apply with a brush to keep your ass minty-fresh and tartar-free.  new colgate butt paste, with whitening.

"hey guys, we've developed this new product for diaper rash".

"what is it".

"well, it's this paste-like stuff that you smear on a baby's ass".

"oh, like a butt paste"?

"exactly".

"well let's put that right on the goddamn label.  you know, to avoid confusion".

AND, to top it all off, we woke this morning to the sound of huckleberry (the dog) retching on our bed.  i processed the sound in my sleep, sat up with catlike reflexes, and not-so-gently placed him on the floor, where he proceeded to christen a previously untouched by dog vomit spot.  two spots actually.  he always throws up in twos. 

i'm telling you, it's a fucking circus at my house.  a circus of the damned.  and i'm the co-ringmaster.  all we need is a bearded lady and thirty clowns riding in the same car and we can take this thing on the road.

pictures of my lil' monkey

our boy. 

he's quite a little ham, always lighting up for pictures.  i will say that he looks adorable in these, even though he's been making us crazy by averaging two blowout diapers a day for the past week due to the rapid introduction of table food to his diet.  i'll also ignore the fact that he has been sick approximately 3,256 times in his 8 months of life.  cause really, when he looks like this, i could overlook if he came out of the womb with 666 on his scalp.

a boy and his dad

ok, in my first entry, i promised very little sap on this site.  however, this entry could potentially get a little sappy.  i haven't really planned this entry out and it will evolve in a stream-of-consciousness sort of way, but my sap sense is tingling.

just over a month ago, my dad came to visit so that he and i could build a wooden deck in my backyard.  i'm not very "handy" like that, but he is extremely so, and i bribed him with room, board, and a chance to visit his grandson.  here's what our project looked like:

 

...........

..............

my parents divorced when i was six (or maybe seven - i don't remember what month) and therefore my dad and i haven't had an extremely close relationship.  it wasn't not close either, just not the same as it would have been had i grown up under the same roof as he. 

at first, my sisters and i spent every saturday night at my dad's apartment.  he had a pool table and a tv in the living room and a love seat in the little dining area.  other than some bedroom furniture, that was it.  we ate on the living room floor in front of the tv and watched things like hee-haw, the mandrell sisters' show, love boat, and fantasy island.  we'd stay for a bit on sunday and then go back home.  my parents had a fairly friendly divorce and things were always cordial.   

prior to my parents' divorce, my dad was kind of distant with us.  he worked a lot of hours and from my memory, was in a bad mood a lot.  i never got the feeling that he didn't love us, but in my house, kids were better seen and not heard and we had to tread lightly around him at times.  after the divorce, that started to change, as it commonly does.  my dad shifted a bit into that "best friend" mode as he tried to play a bigger role in our lives.  we went to some baseball games, we worked together on cub scout projects, played catch, went camping, etc.  even though there were more activities, i still didn't feel as though i knew my dad very well and neither did he know me. 

he got remarried along the way, and our visits to his place were now visits to his new home and life with his new wife.  she was (and is) really good for him in my opinion.  he mellowed quite a bit and together they pursued things that he might not have done on his own.  they traveled, bought land in the middle of nowhere and built a house on it, and more recently, started attending church. 

in fairness to my dad, i probably was not the easiest child to relate to.  i always had my nose buried in a book and when i did talk, it was usually some weird-ass thing that i had been thinking about.  i've never confirmed it, but it wouldn't surprise me if my dad and stepmom thought that i was either retarded or an alien.

as the years went on and my sisters and i got older, plans with friends sometimes superseded our saturday visits.  eventually, we began visiting on sundays to watch football and dropped saturday night altogether.  as i graduated college and eventually moved about an hour away, i saw him less and less.  on average over the last few years, i probably saw my dad once or twice a year.  our relationship is not strained in the least, although i still wouldn't say i know him inside and out, like i do my mother.  in addition to loving him dearly, i genuinely like him as a person and am very grateful that my being from "a broken home", as he likes to say, has not hurt the way we relate now.

back to the present: i was definitely looking forward to his visit in october of this year.  we hadn't slept under the same roof in probably fifteen years and hadn't been around each other for more than a few hours in six or eight.  i took vacation on a wednesday through friday and he came down from oklahoma, where he now lives. 

once he showed up, we went to work almost immediately.  we capped sprinkler heads, mapped out the deck's dimensions, and headed off for our first of what seemed like thousands of visits to lowe's.  it was a great few days.  we'd work from 8:00 to 5:00, with a short lunch and lots of breaks that i made him take - he's 63 years old.  we'd clean up and go out to dinner with my wife and son, and then come home and watch postseason baseball.  we talked while we worked, never about anything too serious, just chit chat to fill the time.  during our days and nights together, i caught myself noticing many times how similar we are.  whether it was the way we positioned ourselves while watching tv, or the ideas we had about the deck, it was obvious that i was his son and it felt comforting to look across the room or the yard and see him there. 

we finished up on a saturday afternoon and he had to get going.  the days went by too quickly and i was more than a little sad to see him go.  i feel like even though there were no heart-to-heart talks or Big Moments, i'm closer to him now than i've ever been.  seeing him leave that afternoon made me realize just how much i've missed him in my life and also made me wonder how things would have been had my parents stayed together.  but they didn't.  and even though i didn't see him day in and day out like some kids do, i wouldn't trade our adult relationship for the world. 

as an extra bonus, every time i look in my backyard now, i see a tangible representation of the four great days in october 2004 that my dad and i bonded through regular old lumber, concrete and screws.  and even though one day i'll no longer live here or the wood will need to be replaced, the memory will stay with me.

love ya, dad.  i hope i can be half as good a father to my own son as you have been to me.

i'm infected!!

starting at age seventeen and continuing until age thirty, i was almost never sick.  i'd get a cold about every third year or so and it would always disappear pretty quickly.  i never went to the doctor and i never missed work because of sickness.  i used to scoff at flu shots, sneer at others' sniffles, for my immune system walloped some serious ass.  of course, my hubris made my inevitable downfall all the more painful.

you see, when you put a child in daycare and that child sits around with eight other children all day and they all sneeze and put everything, including their grubby little hands, in their mouths and then come home to you, your immune system is under constant attack.  you might be able to fend off the advancing horde a few times, but the germs are all "once more into the breach" and suddenly you're calling in sick with a cold for the first time in years.  and then it happens again the following month.  and then once more.  it sucks.

yesterday was such a day.  when i woke up, i could hardly breathe and my voice sounded like harvey fierstein after a month of screaming and smoking non filters.  also, my eyes, which had been watering a ton for the previous few days, were matted shut.  it was really nasty.  anyway, i decided to go to the doctor.

he gave me the once-over and then delivered the bad news; sinus infection and......AN EYE INFECTION!  i've never had one of these, but evidently, they're quite contagious.  i wear contacts and the doctor told me, quite sternly, that i needed to THROW THOSE AWAY RIGHT NOW.  i told him i couldn't drive home without them, so he let me out of there with the promise that i'd junk them as soon as i got home.  he also told me he was glad i had come when i did because eye infections are serious and blah, blah, blah.  then he started listing all the things that i needed to throw away in addition to my contacts; the contact case, any eye drops i'd used, and the bottle of solution (since i'd most likely touched it with contaminated hands).

then it got ridiculous:

dr.:  you should throw out your toothbrush and toothpaste.

me: why?

dr.:  well you probably brushed your teeth after taking your contacts out at night right?

me:  yeah, i guess. 

dr.:  and your mouthwash

me:  i didn't touch the mouthwash

dr.:  not all weekend?

me:  ok maybe once.

dr.:  you'll need to get rid of your nightstand.

me:  ok, this is absurd.

dr.:  you touched it right?

me:  i'm not throwing out the nightstand.

dr.:  and your television.

me:  what?

dr.:  you looked at it, didn't you?

ok, so some of that isn't true, but he did overreact a bit in my opinion.  but i'm not wearing contacts today and my glasses were purchased in 1990.  they're HUGE and i refuse to wear them other than while i'm driving.  so i'm sitting really close to the monitor and keeping my head down when i walk around so that people won't think i'm rude when i don't acknowledge them because i can't see them.  and i have to put this goddamn ointment in my eyes three times a day, which feels like ten pounds of vaseline.  all in all, i look stunning today. 

i'm also taking (1) a z-pack of antibiotics, (2) certuss-d for congestion, plus my normal drugs (3) zoloft, and (4) lipitor.  i took an excedrin right when i got up and used some nasal spray when i got to work because I STILL COULDN'T FUCKING BREATHE.  if i died today, my toxicology report would be longer than river phoenix's and chris farley's combined.  you name it, it's in my system. 

please join me in crossing your fingers that i don't pass this mess along to my son.  i imagine eye ointment on a baby would not be pleasant for all involved.