Abandon All Hope Ye Who Enter Here

"Abandon all hope ye who enter here"

Cheery ain't it? According to the esteemed poet Dante Alighieri, this is the sign that hangs over the doorway to Hell. I read a translation of "The Divine Comedy" while I was doing my research on Joyce, so I guess my English degree should have warned me.

It didn't.

Today has been my own little Dantean trip through the afterlife; limbo, purgatory, and finally paradise. All I needed was the poet Virgil to act as my guide (guess that's you, mom). I'll be honest, you wouldn't believe the whole story even if I was willing to tell it so we will sum it up thusly.

When I woke up, we were going to get to go. Then we were going to go if certain conditions were met. Then we were NOT going to get to go. Then we could go if OTHER conditions were met. Then that fell through and we were back to No Go.

All this before noon.

It was the worst kind of tease imaginable. It was Limbo. Every time I found a potential land mine, we found a way to avoid it only to find another, larger landmine blocking the path behind it. At noon I found an insurmountable obstacle and it was over. I had to call and tell the Boss it wasn't going to work.

I cannot tell you how very badly I did not want to make that phone call. She has busted her attractive backside off for this opportunity and to have it taken away not once but twice seemed like the most awful thing imaginable. I really didn't want to do it. I was in Hell. Dante was right; abandon hope, 'cause dude...it's over.

The Boss took it well, all things considered. I felt bad for her...she felt bad for me...and we chalked it up to the Anti-Midas touch. Shouldn't have been surprising, but it was.

Then the Boss called back with a solution. We could go under another condition. It was not a best case scenario, but it would work. We decided to go for it.

Then the Boss called again and the condition was no longer required, so we could go without worry. Heaven.

ARE YOU KIDDING ME?

I felt like I was on "As the World Turns" or something. It was one of the oddest days I have ever been through. Holy cow, it was weird. Up and down like a yo-yo.

I won't say we are back on because I know better, but it looks like we may get to see Mexico after all. I just ain't gonna hold my breath.

What I will do is profusely thank those friends, employers and family who are doing their best to see if they can't get us on a cruise ship someday. All you do is noticed and appreciated. From the people who offered babysitting help to those who just listened to me gripe all afternoon, you know who you are. Whether we finally end up going or not, I say thank you for your love and support anyway.

Now I'm going to go lie down. I've got class tonight and a doozey of a headache to get rid of.

Did That Just Happen?

And still one more sign that the world is going to Hell in a FedEx envelope...


After I got done with class last night the Boss stopped at a sandwich shop to get me a bite to eat. We went in and there were two friendly girls waiting behind the counter to help us. One of them was particularly chatty and asked if it was still warm outside. (It was slightly warmer than average yesterday, but by then it was way past sundown and colder than a Siberian Well-diggers...you get the point).

"No", said the Boss. "It's gotten quite cold.

"Oh, that's too bad", replied the girl. "I don't mind snow, but I want the cold to go away. What did the Groundhog say this morning?"

"Six more weeks of winter", I said. "Apparently, the 'Global Warming' people haven't gotten to the Groundhogs yet."

****Editor's Note
I spent most of the morning thinking about a post that explains the long-standing enmity between groundhogs (who are pro-winter traditionalists) and gerbils (who are toiling in the cause of global warming) though I decided against it. But it may appear somewhere down the line...
****

The second girl took this opportunity to enter the conversation.

"Yeah? I'm still not sure I really believe in that stuff, you know?"

"You don't?" I asked, expecting to hear her launch into a anti-Al Gore tirade against climate change.

"Nope", she said seriously. "I mean, I guess it might be true, but I'm just not convinced that a Groundhog can change the weather. How do they do it, really?"

It was at this point that I realized that I was going to need a trip to the emergency room to reattach the large portion of my tongue and lower lip that I had just bitten off in order to not laugh out loud.

The Boss and I were still giggling about it this morning. It was the blondest thing I have ever seen.

Chocolate Cake and Snotty Noses

Made chocolate cakes for baking day. Nothing special, just the mixes from the box, but a good start up to get us back into the swing of things. I'll let their mothers decide to buy frosting or drop vanilla ice cream on them. I'm feeling a little lazy today.

****

This weeks winner of the "Whole World is Going to Hell in a Fed Ex Envelope" award:

Just heard the title of today's episode of Max and Ruby. It's called "Ruby Scores".

I can't even bring myself to finish the joke. Too easy.

Almost as easy as when Elmo visited (and I kid you not) the "Skin Channel". That one required a carpet cleaner to clean up the mouth full of coke I spewed across the room. Just what are the folks at PBS thinking these days?

****

Between Squizzle and Bub, I have emptied an entire box of tissues in less than two days. I cannot believe how snotty these kid's noses are. Ford Motor Company should take lessons on production efficiency from the booger assembly lines found in the noses of the under three crowd. Output, output, output.

I'm not a germaphobe (I often wonder how people survived before the CDC told us we should all be dead), but even I've been soaking my hands in anti-bacterial hand sanitizer. And since it's grossing me out, it can now gross all of you out as well.

****

A couple of important Blog Milestones are coming up. We are currently at 595 visitors, so six hundred should happen by the end of the day. Hurrah!! So many poisoned minds...

Second, this represents the 95th post on the blog so by the end of the week, we should have post number 100. Woo Hoo!! So much poison for so many minds...

Next, I think I want to have a membership drive to boost the number of followers. We've been stuck at 22 for a while now even though I know there are more who read. Perhaps we should work up some official "Destroying Angel Membership Cards" or get some "Fatdaddy Secret Decoder Rings" or something like that to entice new followers.

Never mind.

****

Squizzles gets new teeth!

Yeah. And it has not been pleasant for him or me. Since the Boss has to work all day, I volunteer to take the night shift when kids get sick or whatever.

Squizzle has some bigger teeth coming in on the back bottom of his mouth and it does not seem to be a happy thing for him. On Sunday night, he slept from ten until one and then woke up screaming. He kept screaming until three thirty or four.

Then on Monday night, he didn't bother trying. He just started screeching at around eleven. I took him upstairs so he wouldn't disturb the Boss. By midnight I dosed him up with infant pain reliever and sat on the couch while he dozed on my lap until three. Then he woke up screaming and did not go back to sleep. At all. Around five, I was pretty sure why mother tigers sometimes eat their young.

For those of you that have not seen "Anchorman" (probably most of you), the sportscaster comes into work after a bender and says "I woke up in some Japanese family's rec room, and they would NOT stop screaming!"

For most of the early morning Tuesday hours, that line kept going through my mind. "I woke up at three A.M. with a teething toddler who would NOT stop screaming!" I mean, I know he's in pain but does that mean I have to be in pain too? Sharing is for things that gross you out like snot stories...

...Never mind. I'll stop complaining. (For a sentence or two)

So last night I came loaded for bear. Anbesol, children's pain reliever, frozen towel to chew on...I was ready. I hit him with a dropper of pain reliever, and he fell asleep in less than ten minutes. And slept the rest of the night.

Fatdaddy luck strikes again. Closing the barn door after the cow gets out.

What are ya gonna do?

Where's that FedEx Envelope?

I am pretty sure that I'm going to Hell.

That's a bold statement, I know. But I just fed four children under the age of five Ice Cream for lunch. If that doesn't earn me Damnation, nothing will.

It's not the first time my sense of what to eat and when has been called into question. Early on in the blog, I wrote a post called "Bill Cosby is a Liar". That day, I had fed the kids chocolate cake for breakfast. They sang me no praises, and did not dance in my honor. They just got really hungry again, really quickly.

I started today with good intentions. There was no cake for breakfast, just bowls of cereal. Squizzle started screaming at about 9:00 which meant he needed an early nap, but didn't want one. While I was fighting him, the other kids snuck into the kitchen and helped themselves to the last of the string cheese, some apples, crackers and they may or may not have eaten the last brownie in the house. They didn't finish any of it, they just took a bite or two of everything and put it on the counter.

So when I finally got Squizzle asleep and found the mess when I came in to check the blog, I knew the three horsemen of the Dadpocolypse were full of it when they told me they were hungry.

But I'm a sucker, so I decided to give in rather than have them hollering at me every thirty seconds that they were REALLY hungry. I looked in the fridge and because tomorow is grocery day, the fridge is devoid of even the basic elements of food. I found some hot dogs in the freezer, but that would have made it four of the last ten days and I could not bring myself to cook them. As soon as the door opened, Peff started the call for ice cream and the others quickly picked it up and turned it into a Benedictine-like chant.

"Weeeeeee Wanttttttt IIIIIIIce CRRRRRRRREEEEEAMMMMMMM!!!!"

"Weeeeeee Wanttttttt IIIIIIIce CRRRRRRRREEEEEAMMMMMMM!!!!"

"Weeeeeee Wanttttttt IIIIIIIce CRRRRRRRREEEEEAMMMMMMM!!!!"

What's a dad gonna do?

I dished 'em up.
I'm Evil.
I'm an abomination.
I sinned.

Whatever.


It's not as bad as trying to sell them on EBay. I do that all the time.

And really. Let's be honest for a second. Ice Cream is essentially milk, sugar and flavor. Hot dogs are....Well, hot dogs are hot dogs. Why is it ok to have hot dogs for lunch, but if I feed them ice cream, someone calls the Mommy Union?

The only good news is that the probation officers from the Man Card Police showed up while I was dishing the kids their vanilla scoops. When they saw the dirty dishes, the half-naked baby sprawled asleep on the couch, and ice cream on the counter at 11:30 they immediatly removed my probation and returned my Man Card with benefits and privleges intact. One of them told me he was going to put me up for honors and medals.

So I got that going for me.

Even if I will be a little extra-crispy in the afterlife.