Frenzied Daddy

So, I’m cooking dinner. The kitchen window looks out over the deck, the back porch, and the grassy knoll we call a back yard. It’s lovely. Not quite weed-infested, but it will be before autumn. The TT is amusing herself by letting Perrin out onto the porch and picking him flowers and trying to get him to eat them.

She comes into the kitchen ( she comes through the back door, through the adult’s room, through her room, through the hall, through the living room, and into the kitchen) with a bright yellow flower from the yard. She presents it to me like it’s a treasure. Of course, it is a treasure. It’s also a dandelion. “Oh, honey, what is this? Thank you”… She tells me it’s a flower. “Ok, this particular kind of flower is called a dandelion. Can you say dan-de-lion?” (drmrffleon). “That’s great. ”

In all honesty, I’m trying to get the cheese grated, the spaghetti noodles cooked and the sauce properly tomatoey. I’m not totally focused on accepting her gift and giving her a learning moment.

She runs back out the door ( all the way through the house ), runs back outside, and I stir the sauce as I watch her bend down and pick a single flower and come running back into the house, into the kitchen. She breathlessly presents me with … I don’t know what sort of weedy looking flower it is; it kind of looks like baby’s breath, but stringier.

“Oh honey, this is lovely. I’ll put it here with the dandelion. I don’t know what this one is called though.”

“Daaaaa-dddd-dd-d-dddy, ” she announces, “It’s a flower. Can you say ‘flower’ ? ”

“flower?”

The recent spate of sunshine here has brought some of the craziness in our house to the surface. The TT, for instance, asked if she could go outside and play in the sprinkler. Keeping in mind that it was only 65F and only partially sunny, I said “no.” Naturally she whined. I’m trying to tell them my reasoning more than not, so I went to the mat and told her the truth… “It’s too cold, honey.” She promised to wear her jacket.

Yeah, I laughed at her, and then we went for a walk around the block with her.

The DQ, on the other hand, went to a boy’s birthday party on Friday. They went out to play laser tag and had cupcakes and then were hanging out at the boy’s house with his mother. I was supposed to collect the DQ at 10PM but hey, she’s coming home at nine. My excuse was that I had to be on call early in the morning, but the truth is that I’m not ready to loosen the strings that much yet.

And then she called asking if she could spend the night. At a boy’s house. In a mixed-gender sleepover. Am I crazy? Am I wrong? Am I a nervous nellie? I said no to that too— I know that when she spends the night at Sage’s, they stay up until the wee hours of the morning playing games, and I’m not ready yet to deal with late night truth or dare OR spin the bottle OR elevator to paradise. Yikes.

It’s bad enough that when I went to pick her up they were playing truth or dare. Oh god. My heart rate doubled. The mother was around though, they weren’t getting too bad. But, the mother came up to me and said “Can you imagine? It’s been only a year. Last year they were playing video games and monopoly. A year later, just a year later, they’re talking about who likes whom and boy-girl stuff.” Gaah.

I’m really not ready for this. I’m just getting used to an eleven year old. I’m not ready for a fifteen year old.

I could have used this refresher course a few years ago. When I took the Tiny Tyrant out and hosed her down after feeding her chocolate Ben and Jerry’s Ice Cream. Darn.

Well at least I used a towel to dry the screaming kid off.

Wow. The French President must be laughing his fanny off. He’s marrying Carla Bruni, a supermodel, next month ( according to cnn ). This woman has also dated Donald Trump and Mick Jagger.

It’s interesting because generally the French, like me, tend to value the privacy of their public figures, but on the other hand, news of his engagement to Carla Bruni seems to be affecting his … whatever approval ratings are called in France.

… Last night was terrific fun. A friend we play evercrack 2 with has flown into town (and leaves tomorrow, sadly ), and we got together at E and A’s house. You can see E here in this video playing the Guitar (in the middle). Our friend P is on the drums ( left side ), K is playing the bass ( on the right, in the chair ), and A is in the back singing. The song is a cute little song called “Maps.” No, I don’t know why; I don’t even recognize the song!

I took another video of one of my favorite Bon Jovi songs; in this song, S is playing the Bass and J is singing in the back. Unfortunately, the battery on my phone gave out during this one and I have only about half of the song. You can see the video over at youtube.

What have I learned?

First, my rhythm hasn’t gotten any better. I did ok singing ( doesn’t really grade on pitch, just voice moving up and down and trying to hit the words ) but my drums sucked. My rhythm is so bad that one girlfriend in my youth was moved to exclaim “Damn, you’re white!” The drums were awful. But awfully fun, too.

If you’ve played guitar hero, the layout is similar; you have a … moving road of what colors you’re supposed to hit and when, so you can estimate the times for smacking the keys. With the drums, you have a cute little drum set, and you smack, smack, smack, pause, smack, smack, … you get the idea.

It really is a fun game, and it was a great way to have fun last night. I still liked the apples to apples game more than trivial pursuit, but it was fun to play a trivial pursuit with questions from the nineties!

Oh, what else have I learned? Use the damn video recorder instead of the phone!

I’m sure the author of this book meant this seriously. But I found it over at Reddit, and a lot of people were laughing at it.

I had a new experience yesterday. I was driving heck bent for vinyl to Vancouver for a couple of reasons; a meeting and some benefits. I was in a hurry because I had an hour to get back and get ready for the DQ’s parent teacher conference. I zipped through the bank drive thru, barreled up the road to Marine Drive, turned the corner, and after the light, the Ford was running kind of slowly.

Perhaps I needed to give it more gas. I was doing 20 in a 45 MPH zone. I pressed the gas pedal to the metal … wait. It was already at the metal. I had the damn thing floored and it was going 20, no make that 15 miles … and then it sputtered and died. Imagine my surprise!

I guess the only “idiot light” for gas in the Ford is the match I light after I go through Taco Bell.

I pushed it into a handy parking lot and walked over to the security booth to explain my problem. They seemed to understand, but I was speaking into an answering machine, so maybe that’s wishful thinking.

Never had a car run out of gas before. A smart person would have flipped open his cell phone and dialed AAA. I, on the other hand, had left my phone at home to be charged. I told myself all the way home that I was smarter than this. Luckily it wasn’t raining or my mood would have been really damp when I got home. It’s only about 2 1/2 miles home, so I made it just as Ms B was pulling around the corner to take us to the appointment.

Ms B dropped me off with some gas and stuck around to make sure I got it running; no problem. We were only about five minutes late to the conference.

Or a trip back into the dark ages. There’s gasp no cd player!! Ohhh the horror! And there are no cup holders!AIEE!!

But it’s great. It probably gets 20-25 mph on the highway, we’ll see about around town. It’s clean, it drives well, and it does have a fm radio. So those are all strong points. But there is one thing that makes me ignore the lack of cd player and cup holders; those can be replaced, after all. But I can control the windows in the back seat from the front, and I can lock the kids out of them.

What’s that? Your hands are out the window? Guess you lose it. What’s that? You’re falling asleep on the way home from school? MUAHAHAHAHA how about a blast of cold air! Hurray!

So, aah yeah, we have the 93 explorer, and it’s pretty cool. There’s some minor damage but overall it will last us a year and then some.

And after driving it? I may just name it “Sherman.”

Miss K is working hard at getting potty trained. Yeah, it’s a lot later than Miss B did, but she’s been in disposables, so I expect her to be training late. That and I’m a slacker. So right now, she’s in a pullup overnight and she’s in regular big girl panties during the day.

Thursday, I was getting her ready to take to the sitter’s to play while I worked and I had to change her panties. I wrestled her out of the pullup and tossed her the big girl panties to put on while I walked the pullup to the garbage. ( Dogs. Don’t ask. ) I came back and, while she’s had lots of practice putting on her panties, she had both legs in one leg hole and they were stuck coming up her knees. I helped her out of them and explained them to her, and put them on and pulled them up to her knees ( so she had experience pulling them to her knees and past her knees, sort of an overall whole-experience thing ). I turned around to get her pants, and she started hollering at me —

“Daddy ! My bottom’s up here!”

Uh, ok, honey.