Something Worse and Why I Hate Fridays

I've been getting a lot of mileage this week from the "cutesy" cartoons on Nick Jr, and so I suppose that the fickle witch Karma has shown her face in my house again. You wanna know what's worse than Little Bear?

How about the episode where Little Bear learns to play the recorder!!

NOOOOOOOOOOOOOOO!!!!!!!!!!!

I don't have bangs anymore, how can I hide the lobotomy scars?


This was the worst half hour in the history of television. Way worse than Oprah. Jim Carey only wishes he was this annoying. Everyone in the house is now dumber for having witnessed this. My ears started bleeding. It was like poison mixed with acid. Like guns that shoot rattlesnakes. The reciprocal of the chocolate peanut butter cup. The worst combination EVER!!! I didn't think that lime green and polyester had a TV show equivalent. But there it was. Little Bear puffing away on a plastic flute. And let me tell ya, the bear was not the only thing that blew.

Right after this abomination, I had to change one of the runts. I won't say which one it was to protect the future of the guilty, but let's just say that the term "blow out" doesn't quite cover it. I've never seen anyone poop their shoulder blades before. And I got to clean it up. Wheee!!!!

Beak rolled in about one and found me curled up in the fetal position, laughing hysterically. The living room looked like a directionally challenged suicide bomber mistook it for downtown Beirut.

Mom has what she calls ten minute blitzes designed to keep her house clean during the week. Every day, you crack the whip and make the Runts clean for ten minutes and then they can be done. It works pretty well. But by Friday, the little things getting missed during the daily blitz have piled up and the house looks like it does right now. It's clean enough that I don't have to die when Beak comes in, but its a long way from comfortable. I'm tired from chasing mini-terrorists all week and the last thing I want to do is clean the house and fix dinner. It's why I hate Fridays.

But I'm gonna go do it. It's why I get paid the big bucks.

And because I'm afraid the kids will turn on Little Bear if I don't.

The Fearsome Lizard

Every so often I envy the imagination of these kids. The other day when Motor was over, they were playing with the little plastic sword that Peff had gotten at FatCats. Motor had a plastic toy bucket on his head for a helmet and he was giving instructions to the other kids.

"Peff, you are the King. You sit over there. Reaggers, you are the Queen and Bub is a prince. I am a knight. And Squizzos is a fi-o bweathing dwagon!"

Right on cue, Squizzle the fire breathing dragon stood up in the baby jail and hollered, "Bwa, blah, da, ma!", which I can only assume is dragon for "Step forward, Sir Knight and we shall strive by blade and claw to determine the supremacy of power and fortitude."

Or it might have meant, "Dude, I could really use a bottle and a clean bum."

I'm gonna go with the first one.

Pizza

Sorry that the post on baking day is one day late (I know you are waiting with baited breath), but my Internet provider had some goof up or another (there's that techno-crap again), and I couldn't log on until this morning. I think it went pretty well. Beak brought about thirty pounds of fruit, so there was plenty of topping.

I mixed up a batch of sugar cookie dough (already posted) and I was thinking that I'd use a cookie cutter to cut out big circles, but I couldn't find my big cutter. Inspiration struck and I thought it might be fun to cut the cookies into triangles like pizza slices. They looked much better than regular mini pizzas, I thought.

For sauce, we mixed a package of cream cheese, a jar of marshmallow fluff, a half jar of strawberry jam, and however much strawberry Quick the kids wanted to squeeze in the mixing bowl.

I set up the card table, covered it with paper, sauced a crust for each of them and turned them loose with the toppings in the middle. They could choose from banana, pineapple, peaches, frozen berries, melon balls, grapes, and kiwi fruit. The Boss got the clever idea of dropping red and yellow food coloring into a Ziploc full of coconut and letting the kids shake it up. It looked for all the world like that yellow and white shredded cheese they sell for tacos and pizzas.

Squizzle sat in his chair and ate his cupcake until he passed out, amid a giant mess. Fortunately, he slept long enough for the kids to finish their pizzas so I could clean the kitchen up a little and get them settled down before I had to go hose him down.

One mess at a time, One mess at a time, One mess at a time......

Only two really good keepers amongst the Runts chatter.

Motor asked Peff to "Pass me the key weed, please." I can only assume that he meant the fruit and was not orchestrating a drug deal with Peff.

Peff had another one (he is his father's son), at one point declaring, "I'm going to make another slice just like that one, except different".

Perhaps I ought to stop letting him watch Bill and Ted.

Enjoy the Pics.

Poll Topics

You may have noticed that the poll question this week does not involve the next baking treat. Grandma has requested that next Wednesday's treat be the pumpkin chocolate chip cookies that are found in this months issue of the Friend, and since I spent the first thirty five years of my life driving her insane, the least I can do to thank her for her tolerance is to bake whatever she tells me to.

So this week's topic will be "How Early is Too Early for Christmas".

Squizzle Likes Cupcakes!

Squizzle is ten months going on five. The is no more sure fire way to make him mad than to leave him in his baby jail (our very non-PC term for a playpen), while the other kids get to bake. So yesterday while we were all making fruit pizzas, Squizzle stood in his jail and sobbed until I brought him into the kitchen and set him in his high chair. His attitude was immediately adjusted.

He began having a grand time slapping the tray and shouting "Bla, bla, bla, bla!! Da,da,da,da!!!" I'm not all the way certain but I think this means "Why the #&!! didn't you bring me in here to begin with, bonehead?"

As I have repeatedly told people, my children have their mother's good looks and their Old Man's mouth.

Unable to leave well enough alone, I decided to see if I could send the child into nirvana by giving him one of Tuesday's chocolate cupcakes.

As if fruit pizza wasn't making my kitchen enough of a FEMA relief site.

Therefore, in direct response to the requests of some of my loyal readers, I give you the ever popular messy child photographs.

Bowling for Big Bucks

We took the kids to FatCats last night for the Boss's work party. There was an all we could eat pizza buffet (always a plus with me), Bowling, pool, and tokens for the arcade. There were a ton of people there, so we weren't able to get the kids on a lane, but that was actually a good thing. If we had, we might still be there waiting for Puzey to get her ball to the end of the lane.

I love the child dearly, but how she got sent to this family is a complete mystery. I swear the child is part hummingbird. I think that somehow the Boss and I got one of Beak's kids to raise by accident.

Now, I have a philosophy when it comes to golf. If I'm gonna pay 45 bucks for greens fees and a cart, I'm gonna hit that ball at LEAST two hundred times. What kind of scam is a sport that tells you the less you play it the better you are? It's like going to a shooting range and they tell you that if you really want to have fun, you should only fire your machine gun one shot at a time. What fun is that? I want my money's worth!

It would seem that Puzey has this same philosophy when it comes to Skee-ball. I have never seen a Skee-ball game last a full half hour until last night. The child rolled every ball a minimum of three times before she got it high enough on the board to beat the auto-return.

We actually called time out to replenish her fluids so she wouldn't cramp up. The Boss was waving smelling salts. And poor Puzey battled those Skee-balls to a standstill.

Time and again she wound up and rolled the wooden sphere, only to have the merciless ramp send it right back to her toothpick ankles. By the end, she looked like she had just ran the Boston Marathon. But she won two whole tickets so it was well worth the Herculean efforts. I shudder to think what that child would have done to a bowling ball. Anybody seen Uncle Buck?

Anyway, the Eldest and I played a little pool, though with two bad eyes and differing levels of sight in each of them, depth perception was a major problem. Let's just say that if I drove like I shoot pool...well, there's a reason I'm not allowed to renew my licence.

The kids all got prizes and everyone had a good time. The Boss's Boss, the owner of her franchise, even came over to tell her that he had seen the results of her inspection and that he was very pleased and proud of her hard work. I thought that it was very nice of him to do that.

The cookie dough timer just went off so its time to go cut pizza crust and get 'em in the oven. More later.

Nice Cupcakes!! (Snicker)

The Boss is home from her inspection and she passed with flying colors! I followed through and made her some cupcakes and further offered proof of my adoration by adding mint to the chocolate cupcakes and the frosting (Blechhh!), which is her favorite.

I'm not going to post the recipe, you can read the box better than I can. I did get some pictures and a few more good lines from the kids.

The best of which are:

Reaggers: "What's inside this egg shell?"
Fatdaddy: (long pause) "Roast Beef"


Or

Reaggers: "Who was on the phone?"
FD: "Aunt M."
R: "Oh, I just love Aunt M. I could hug her and kiss her and love her all day long."

Or

FD: "Please do not throw packages of cake mix at one another."

And my personal favorite:

R: "Can I have a cupcake now?"
FD: "I don't think your momma wants you to eat a chocolate cupcake in your pretty white shirt, but I'll let her decide."
R: "Mom, can I have a cupcake?"
Beak: " I don't know..."
R: "Uncle Fatdaddy said yes."

Can't live with 'em, Can't sell 'em on EBay. What ya gonna do?

As I was saying....

Here is photographic evidence of what I was saying about how just because a five year old tells her three year old brother what to do, it doesn't mean they can (or should) do it. Bub seems to still lack the coordination required to dress himself. But I give the kid an A for effort.

Fruit Pizza it is! (and then Spaghetti-Os)

The people have spoken (at least 17 people have), and the winner of the first weekly poll for baking day is fruit pizza. As I have never made a fruit pizza, this may get interesting. The Boss says it isn't that tough; you just make a giant sugar cookie for the crust and then mix yogurt, cream cheese and strawberry jam for the "sauce".

The thought does occur to me (contrary to popular opinion, I do think occasionally) that it may be more fun for the kids to make their own "mini-pizzas" by using regular sugar cookies instead of a big one. That way they can put what they want on it and I don't have to cut the bugger into slices to send home. I'm not sure you can even slice a sugar cookie. I guess you could but it would have to be much more moist than I am capable of making.

The Boss is a little sad because she was hoping for cupcakes. I think I may do a supplemental baking day today and make cupcakes just for her (Is it cannibalism for one hot cupcake to eat other cupcakes?). Her big inspection is over this morning, and after working basically non-stop from Sunday afternoon to today (she got three hours of sleep each night) The Boss deserves a treat of her own. Actually, she deserves alot of things she never gets, so I try to make sure that she at least gets showered with praise. She is the Queen, after all.

Tonight is her work party at FatCats bowling with a pizza buffet, so we will have something to entertain the kids AND I don't have to fix dinner! That's like the perfect night! That settles it, I have to make the Boss cupcakes, there are no excuses not to. I'll take the camera and get pictures of the kids bowling, that ought to be good for a few giggles.

Beak just brought the kids over and gave me about a half case of Spaghetti-Os. Ah, the Breakfast of Champions!

I, personally, have not been able to eat Spaghetti's-Os since that fateful day when I was 8 or 9. I don't really like to talk about it, as it is a painful chapter of my life but seeing that white and red label on those cans just brought the pain crashing back up to the surface (sniff).

It all started when Mom had somewhere to be and so she sent us to the neighbor's to be babysat. All was well until the neighbor's son Orson, who was a bit younger than I, decided that those damnable pasta hoops were just the right size for expectorating. He....he (sniff)filled is mouth with a big spoonful...(gasp!) and then he went all Animal House Belushi on me.

Great globs of carbohydrates encased in gooey, red, tomato blood went spewing out of his mouth and into my perfect, blond hair. (I did too have hair! Stop laughing, it's not funny!) And since the washcloth could only mop up some of the ooze, I spent the better part of my day smelling spaghetti-Os and feeling my crusty hair try to pull away from my sticky scalp (Geez! No wonder I'm bald!). I think this may have been the beginning of my theory that five year olds are the perfect instruments of destruction.

And I'd really like to thank Beak for bringing it all back in one horrible moment! I may never recover......

OK , I'm over it. Time to go make cupcakes!

No Wonder the Kid Threw Bricks...

A week ago last Friday, the Boss took the Eldest to California for a night. The Eldest had taken the online Jeopardy! test twice and both times she had received an Email inviting her to Culver City, California to audition and interview (She spent much of the time looking for "Red Feathers" but to her disappointment, found none). The first time she passed, we had no way to get her there. And we were too poor to pay attention. The second time, we were able to swing a few things and get her to the interviews.

We found out back in August, but didn't tell her until about two hours before she and the Boss needed to head to the airport. The Boss had even packed for her, so she was on the plane before she had a chance to even think about it.

(I wish someone would surprise me with a trip somewhere. I'd even be happy with a drive to Provo, as long as there aren't children screaming in the back seat.)

Anyway, they left Friday night and were due back on Saturday at about 9 p.m. When they got to the airport, the hotel shuttle that was supposed to pick them up drove right past them. The Boss called the hotel and they sent the shuttle back. It went past them again. The Boss gave up and took a cab.

They got to the Hotel around 10 p.m. and got checked in(I won't tell you the name of the hotel but it rhymes with "Badisson"). They went up to their room and the key didn't work. The boss double checked the floor and room numbers, but no dice. So she and the Eldest schlepped back down to the front desk. They re-swiped the keys, checked the room number, and sent them back up the elevator. Again, the key didn't work. Back downstairs, and this time a maintenance man was sent to help. When the key still didn't work, he opened the door to find that the room already had someone staying in it.

In this age of techno-crap computers, how they could double book a room and not have sirens going off thirty different places at the registration desk is beyond me, but there you have it. They promised to get them another room on the floor, but after another 15 minutes were informed the floor was full and they were going to get an "upgrade". An hour and fifteen minutes after arriving at the hotel, they got into the "upgraded" room which included a refrigerator that didn't work, complimentary bottled water (one bottle), a lamp that was dangling on the wall by its cord, dirty wall paper, and a bathroom complete with a torn and dirty bathmat.

Never one to complain (she is married to me, after all) the Boss just said the heck with it and put the Eldest to bed.

Meanwhile back at the ranch...

I was trying to order pizza from a joint that rhymes with Pizza Nut. All I wanted was one of those pasta things and one large cheese lover pizza. 10 minutes and three "Hang on just a sec while I make sure this is right" and then another five minutes of register fumbling and manager checking go by and finally the lady tells me my total is thirty seven bucks.

"Wow!" I said.

"The pizza is seventeen dollars by itself", the lady says.

"Really? Like the kind I can buy at Little Ceasers for five?" I asked.

"Yeah" she says.

"Forget it", says I. "I just want the pasta."

"Sure. It'll be about two hours; we're kinda busy."

"Let me help you to be less busy. Cancel my order, I don't want it."

I BBQ'd hot dogs instead and then sent the kids to bed. Just as I was sitting down to the ballgame (about two hours later...) there was a knock at the door. It was the Pizza Nut guy with an order of pasta. I thanked him, told him I had cancelled the order before I had even hung up and closed the door. No wonder it was taking two hours, they kept trying to deliver orders they didn't have.


I tell this story for two reasons.

First, my life is so ridiculous that there is no way even a mind as twisted as mine can make this stuff up. It's too bizarre not to be true.

Second, that kid on Home Alone 2 was right. If you can't get a decent Hotel room OR a lovely cheese pizza, then it is time to start hurling paint cans and bricks off of rooftops!

I gotta go, Joe Pesci is at the door.

And Now...Time for Something Else...

Well, I guess I can go two days without posting something, though I did think about new posts every couple of hours. This journal writing is addictive.

The weekend went pretty good though there were two bits of tribulation. First, the cellulitis infection in the Eldest's foot worsened and she had to go back to the instacare. They upped the antibiotic to something with a little more umph, which was fine except for that it meant the ten bucks we spent on the first antibiotic is now literally flushed down the tidy bowl (When did I become a skinflint?).

Second, the pie I baked for the Ward Harvest dinner was less than even my pathetic standard. I didn't know I was out of no-stick spray and I didn't have the Boss to send to the store (this is when not being allowed to drive really stinks), so I just buttered up the pie pan and hoped for the best. The result was an extra flaky crust that flat refused to come out of the pan. Very J.V. Several of the sisters told me that it was still a good pie, but I know better. The pie sucked out loud and I can do better. Oh well.

***Editors Note***
(If Vince and Jerry ever read that last paragraph, the Man Card suspension will become a revocation.)

Reaggers and Bub are back today, and Beak found out that her current assignment will have her working four days a week until January. So good news everyone, the blog will stay updated until at least then!

Reaggers has a little habit that always makes me laugh. When we watch cartoons in the morning, she is constantly asking to watch "something else". So I change it around a little, and still she'll say "I want to watch something else."

Beak explained to me that in Reaggers-speech, "something else" translates into Nick Jr. So when she says "something else", what she means is Max and Ruby, or worse, Little Bear.

Now I'm a cool kind of Dad. I bake, and wash dishes and do laundry (did I really just write that?). I truly can appreciate a good SpongeBob. Phineas and Ferb has its moments. And Fairly Oddparents is fall down hilarious. But Little Bear? Little Bear? Really?

I know it's cutesy, not funny; and that it's supposed to be educational. But if it is, then why does my IQ start dropping points I can't spare the moment it starts?

And let's take a moment to talk about Max and Ruby. Just where in the blinking #&!! are the parents of these little rabbits? I'm the worst parent ever, and even I know that if you leave a five year old sister in charge of a three year old brother, NOTHING GOOD CAN HAPPEN!!!

Who's running the show at that joint, AIG? There is zero parental supervision. Ruby has parties for all her friends. No one calls the cops. DCFS is no where to be seen. I'm not buying it. She tells Max to do something, and he doesn't screech "you not da boss a me!", he just obeys.

Are you kidding me?

And who exactly pays the mortgage on that little house of theirs? Nothing gets covered in crayon or finger paint or barbecue sauce. The drapes do not have paper dolls cut out of them with pinking shears, and the sink never fills with dirty dishes. The trash never looks like Sarah Cynthia Sylvia Stout lives there. I CALL BULL!!!

Is it really too much to ask for a little realism in an animated program about rabbits? I mean c'mon! It's not just me either. Mom is the one who pointed me in the direction of truth on this one. I think it is morally reprehensible that they put this stuff in front of my kids.

P.S. If "Something Else" is actually Little Bear and Max and Ruby, does that mean that the "Something Else" on the poll question means I'll get to roast bear and stew rabbit on Wednesday?

It's not too late to change your votes!!!!