Best Idea Ever!!

Just spent a few minutes cranking out the greatest lunch menu ever! Macaroni and Cheese with Kool-aide. It is very hard to top because it's cheaper than water and what kid won't eat Mac-n'-cheese?

But since I am a curious fellow and I like to experiment on my monkeys, I try to mix it up a little now and then. It's hard to mess up the classics and the more variety you can toss at 'em, the less bored they'll get with the cheap stuff.

Last week, I tried leftover breakfast bacon in the Mac and Cheese. I liked it; the kids thought it was poison. But today?

Today, I am a genius.

Macaroni and cheese mixed with Cheetos!! Don't ask me where I come up with this stuff, its like...a gift...or something. Why hasn't anyone ever thought to mix mac and cheese with Cheetos before? It's a perfect fit. They both use the same cheese like powdered substance for "flavor", so it's like adding extra cheese to the mac; plus, you get a little crunch for your munch. It's win-win!!

The kids loved it! Especially Squizzle, who seems to think it is better as war paint.

We had more red vines for dessert, as shown by Bub.

Sorry, Beak.

Kinda gives new meaning to the old saw about "eat it today, wear it tomorrow", don't it?

Lemon Trees

It's alright. I'm cool again. Had to spend a couple days on the IR (that's the "injured reserve" to you non-sports fans), but the swelling has gone back down and the itchy, watery, burning sensations in my eye are diminishing. At least as much as they ever do. But hey, I didn't switch to Geico, and I still just saved myself a lot of money.

If I'd gone to the doc, he'd have charged me a fifty dollar co-pay, and then charged the insurance three hundred dollars for sticking a needle in my eye.

****Editor's Note
If I haven't mentioned it to you before, you want NO PART of that whole "cross my heart, hope to die, stick a needle in my eye" crap. It's really not worth it. If my blindness is not the direct result of "soap poisoning"(it very well may be), then it is almost surely the fates coming back to bite me for all the times I used the "Cross my heart, mom! Hope to die...." line to get out of trouble I deserved. Needles in the eye hurt. A lot. Trust me. I've had more than a dozen. Whatever punishment a kid is headed for, it is absolutely less painful than a needle to the eye.
****

Shortly after this funtastic time playing pin the needle on my bull's eye, the doc would then tell me to come back in a week to "See where we are at". This would cost me another fifty bucks at which point he would say, "Well it's looking better. I know you still can't see very well, but it's getting better. Come back in two weeks."

Another fifty bucks and I'd be told we were almost ready to talk about transplanting the other eye, and to come back in another week. By then I'd be up to 200 dollars in co-pays in just over a month, and it would be about time to go back into rejection again, thus starting the cycle over again.

It's a lot more cost effective to just accept a day or two of misery (which is STILL better than the shots) and not spend a dime.

Who says health care isn't busted? And no; that does not mean I am in favor of the President's health care reform. Shifting the bill collectors from one bunch of crooks (insurance companies) to another (the government) is not a solution. After all, look at what a fantastic job the boys in Washington did when they took retirement programs over! Can't wait to see what they do to health care...

Anyway, two days later, and I'm no worse off than I was on Monday. I just have fewer debts.

And that's probably a good thing, because it's time to register the van again.

Speaking of throwing good money after bad lemons, do you know what's the difference between our car and my eye?

There's two. First difference? We can't survive with out the car. The eye is optional. Second difference? The eye actually works once in a while.

Allow me a moment to use the Internet to register my disgust.

****Editor's Note
You'd think I was in a bad mood this morning, but I'm not. I'm actually laughing my butt off thinking of all the snide, snarky things I can say about what's annoying me. I got my comedy mojo workin' again! It's been awhile. Enjoy!
****

If there is a bigger lemon in the car buying universe than the Dodge Caravan, I'm sure I would have bought it. But I bought the Caravan, so that is all you need to know about it's reliability. That two ton chunk of metal represents the single worst decision I have ever made in all my life; and that's coming from a guy who chose to cheer for the Chicago Cubs and who is known for occasionally smashing soda cans against his head.

We purchased the hunk of junk just before Peff was born. Waiting until we had to buy was our first mistake. We knew that with four kids, we could no longer smash into the sedan we were driving. We HAD to have a van. I was still working so we figured that having two cars would be a blessing for us (mistake #2). We looked around for a while, studying prices (a good idea), but mostly looking for the most cost effective purchase price.

My hindsight is twenty-twenty, even if my eyesight isn't; so I know now that I should have spent a little more time researching "cost of ownership" issues (mistake #3).

My dad had bought one of the original Caravans while I was in Taiwan on my mission and he owned it for five years. He had the transmission replaced six times. Yet for some reason, we went to the Dodge dealer anyway (mistake #4). I asked about the transmission issues and the salesman assured me with written reports that the trannie problem had been fixed.

Again with the hindsight, but I now realize that they must have fixed the transmission by stealing parts from the electrical, exhaust, and fuel systems.

We have owned this crap car for almost six years. Due to the um...questionable? service record of the Caravan, we were upside down in it almost before we drove it off the lot. Every year that we have owned it, we have had to make major repairs in order for it to pass safety inspection. The average is about $1,100 a year. This time we got off fairly easy. In order to make lemonade, we need:

Two new tires (I'm not kidding when I say that we change the tires on this car more often than we change the oil. I have literally lost count of the flats, blow outs and too worn to pass inspection tires we have replaced. Ten pairs is not an exaggeration. It's been balanced, aligned, rotated, you name it. The Caravan chews up tires like a big leaguer chews Redman.)

Both front end sway bars replaced (fortunately, not as scary as it initially sounded).

New brake light (at least that's cheap).

The emergency brake repaired

We won't count the fact that the bonehead inspector tried to unroll the passenger side power window which will probably never go back up. I missed feeling the breeze, so I'm not too upset, but the kids keep whining about 40 degree temperatures.

Wussies.

At least that won't cause it to fail inspection.

We got lucky and found a guy who will do the sway bars and the emergency brake for under a hundred bucks and the Boss found a couple of slightly used tires for fifty. The brake light is only about three bucks and I can do that myself (unless its the symptomatic result of some early stage, massive electrical system shut down. Don't laugh, it's entirely plausible. I give it even money odds).

If we throw in the fifty bucks to inspect it and the hundred and twenty five to register it; we're talking about three, three and a quarter to drive for another year. And that's getting off easy? Thank heaven our rainyday fund will be able to cover it (for once).

We finally got the heap of scrap paid off this year, but if you add up all the repair costs we've shot into it, we could have bought a brand new Honda or Toyota for less money and now had much, much more to show for it.

The good news is that when we buy a new car, I will feel no compunction whatsoever about not trading this heap in. They wouldn't give me a dime for it anyway. So I'm gonna park it in the drive way, wake up every morning and beat it with a sledgehammer until I can no longer swing. Then I'm gonna light a different part of it on fire each day just so I can pee on the flames (Sorry mom, it had to be written...too funny to pass up!). All my "fat guy aggression" will get channeled into that "quality" piece of...American engineering.

I can't wait!

PS: Speaking of waiting, I'll try to have more vacation up after Beak gets her kids this afternoon and I'll put up a special Saturday edition post tomorrow to make up for missing yesterday.

The Downward Spiral?

It's been a pretty good year so far. It really has; and I feel like our life is turning upward and for the better. It dawned on me as I was typing last night's quick post about "Squizzle and the Paint Chips" that it has been a while since I was frustrated enough to rant and rave and say smart-mouth things (mostly).

While this is a VERY good thing, it has cut down on the funny posts quite a bit. I suppose that the old saw about humor being the stepchild of misery is probably true in my case. But there is something to be said for tranquility, and you may remember that not long ago I promised not to take good times for granted.

Hence my now weeklong project to document our vacation. I realize that this is probably boring most of you to tears, and I apologize if that is the case. But I did intend for this to be a journal of sorts, and heaven forbid that I record the times in my life when I feel blessed instead of put upon. I can't help it if it's not as funny. Rest assured that the bitter, raving, lunatic that is Fatdaddy is lurking just under the surface; waiting for the next disaster to unleash his scathing sarcasm and lethal irony onto the blank screen of my word processor.

Waiting for days like today...

Usually, I can hit the little magnifying glass on the bottom of my screen, blow things up to 150% and can see enough to type just fine. This morning, I woke up with the worst eye day I've had in years. My good eye was glued shut and it took a good half hour with hot water and towels just to get it open. It is all puffed up so that I'm even squintier (is that a word?) than usual and I can't see nothin'. I had to type this on Word with size 16 font and the screen blown up to 250, and I'm still having a heck of a time seeing what I'm doing. So typos and bad syntax probably abound. Sorry.

I can't really see the kids, but I can sure as heck hear them. Someone turned the "whine" dial up to 11 and it's starting to annoy me...A LOT!!! I'm still fighting that headache I wrote about last night, so the piercing tattle-tale voices of four year olds is causing my face to melt like that guy at the end of "Raiders of the Lost Ark". On the good side, maybe my eyeballs will fall out like that dude's did, and I can get them replaced. Anyway, if you are a parent, you'll understand what I am talking about when I say that I have reached the point where the more they whine and complain to me, the less sympathetic I am likely to become.

I made scrambled eggs, they wanted cereal. I turned on Spongebob, they wanted to watch Max and Ruby. I put Squizzle in his chair, he wants to play on the floor. I want them to get dressed, they want to run around all day in their pajamas...

OK, I may give in to them on that one. But for the rest of it, I say tough tukas. It's a Fatdaddy way or the highway kinda day. Be obedient or be toast. I'm ready to go mythical on these runts.

"Look out, Odysseus, here comes the Cyclops!!!"

Wait a second. I don't like the way that one turned out for the cyclops. Bad example. Where's that $%#@ delete key...?

Anyway, IF I can get everyone settled back down and IF I can get my eye issues worked out enough to review pictures and IF I still have thirty seconds this afternoon, I'll try to put up more on the vacation.

In the mean time, I'm going to take some asprin and think happy thoughts. I'd just as soon mornings like this become the exception rather than the rule. Otherwise, I'll start running out of FedEx envelopes again.

Did You Live Under Power Lines as a Kid?

Here's an emergency post from the "Wow-I-never-thought-I'd-have-to-say-that-to-one-of-my-kids" department.

Just got home from the grocery store. While at Wal-mart, we had done a little pipe-dreaming in the paint section on the off chance that we can do a little improvement in the upstairs bathroom. We looked at a few different colors and then went about our grocery shopping. Squizzle felt that he had been pushed about as far as he was willing to go and by the time we got him through the line and out to the van, he was, as my father likes to say, "a bear with a sore butt".

Excedrin headache number twelve was blooming at the base of my shriveled brain stem and this bear was feeling a little chapped himself. The boss buckled him in and in an effort to keep him from splitting my skull, handed him some spare papers from her pocket. The boy got quiet and by the time we got home, he was silent.

We pulled into the drive, got out of the car and started to bring in the groceries. I was just opening the tailgate when I hear Haggis say "Squizzles, why are you eating paint chips?"

It seems one of the papers the Boss gave him to keep him quiet was one of the sample paint cards. The boy felt that it was pretty good eatin'.

All I can do is shake my head. As if the boy didn't have enough challenges in the brain department with me as his old man.

Chew away, Squizzle. Just stay out from under those powerlines.

What's Bub Doing?

Me(finishing my vacation post for this morning): Hey Peff, what's Bub up to?
Peff (Playing Lego Batman): I think he's dead.
Me:Huh?
Peff:He was playin' with me, but now he's out.
Me: Yeah...I guess you could say that. Where's the camera?

Away From the Things of Man Day 2-Mardi Gras and Dinner

Well, that weekend shot by like it came out of a rifle, didn't it? The "jet lag" caught up with the Boss and I on Saturday night and we slept right through the alarm on Sunday morning. Oops. I do now have significantly more energy to face the horde this morning though and I need it. The Angels have been into everything and they have been playing the divide and conquer game to perfection.

Let's say I needed to change and dress Squizzle but the diapers are downstairs. I took him down and trusted that the quality cartoon entertainment was enough to prevent disasters. As usual, I am mistaken. Bub finds the package of cookies left on the counter from making the girl's lunches. Reaggers and Peff pile all the couch cushions and pillows onto the living room floor and pull the dinning room chairs into the living room to serve as "tent poles" for their "Fort".

I set Squizzle down and try to wipe pink crumbs off Bub's face, while Peff and Squizzle decide that this is an excellent time to sample Squizzle's favorite delicacy; red licorice. Ever see what a one year old does with a piece of red licorice? He looks like a Picasso clown. I was so irritated that I threw him into the tub without taking a picture first. DOH!!!!

I now have the "fort" picked up, Squizzle washed off and in his chair, and the rest of the runts are dressed and upstairs fighting over the toy Nerf guns. I might get a minute to finish up Day 2.

Uh-hu. Here goes...

After lunch, we could go check out our rooms, and I have to say that for a inside (no window) room on a boat, it was not bad. It was clean; much bigger than I was expecting and didn't feel very claustrophobic at all.





The bathroom was a little on the small side but very clean and all the fixtures were working. Frankly it was a step up from the joint we stayed at in Houston; even if it was a little (OK a lot) smaller. I started thinking about how many rooms there were on the boat, and what a logistical nightmare the plumbing must be. Trying to cram all those pipes for every bathroom, plus the electrical for each room, air conditioning, not to mention all the space needed for normal boat operations...I bet there isn't three square inches of wasted space on a boat like that.

They had a behind the scenes tour of the boat that I thought would have been really cool to take, but it was seventy bucks a pop. I might have a curious nature, but I'm way too cheap to blow that kind of cash on a walking tour. Besides, they did have a TV channel in the room that was devoted to all kinds of trivia about how the ship worked. It showed the engine rooms (very cool), the electrical generators (enough juice to light up West Jordan), and the desalination plant. They also used waste heat from the generators to heat the water, so it was pretty much impossible to run out of hot water. Some very interesting info.

One of the other channels had information about the boat's navigation, like position, speed, wind direction, course, and ocean depth. I tried to get pics in the morning and before bed that would show where we were, or if the wind was blowing really hard or if the water was extra deep. I thought it might be like a kind of passengers log.


We got unpacked and then headed up to the Mardi Gras party that Coke was throwing for our group. We got cokes and hors d'oeuvres (What an asinine way to spell a word) and they tossed cheap plastic beads at us. The Boss and I hunted down as many strands as we could because, hey...Free treats for the girls!!! I also got to wear a ridiculous foil "snitch" hat.

They played a scavenger hunt game but we didn't come close to winning. The food was good and it was fun to watch others make dopes of themselves.

When it was over, we went to dinner in the dining room. I had a duck salad (really good; it was cold, smoked duck and tasted a little like ham), a tasty steak with garlic mashed potatoes and curried carrots, and Blackforest cake for dessert.

The Boss had broccoli cheese soup (she said it was OK but more broccoli than cheese which is actually an unforgivable sin) BBQ ribs, and cheesecake for dessert. The cheesecake was a real disappointment, apparently. Almost everyone at the table ordered it and not one person finished their piece. It had a funny taste that no one was very impressed with. The one thing that the Boss was looking most forward too, and they blew it. Oh well. Overall, dinner was a thumbs up from me and a neutral from the Boss. We said our goodnights, and went to bed, but not before I caught the tail end of the US whooping up on the Fins in Hockey. We also found that our room steward, in a Carnival cruise tradition, had done a turndown service, leaving mints, a schedule for the next day's activities, and a towl animal. The first night it was this sealion with sunglasses

It was not a bad way to spend a day. And I enjoyed every second of it.