Sunday, March 29, 2009

Down by the river

Sundays are meant to be silly. If you're a Johnson, that is. If you're Conor, whose last name is not Johnson, you're actually quite normal. The peace sign does lead a tad bit towards the hippy side of life, but hippies are normal, right? Ok, flowered bell-bottoms and butterfly collars look pretty damn silly, so I guess Conor does fit in with the Zoo crew, even without the silly face.

Angie and I were at home trying to enjoy our silly Sunday when we both realized that without a lot of pushups and sit-ups, the boys would not burn off all of the energy they had built up by an energetic morning of washing down chocolate bars with Kool-Aid. Our boys normally want to be carried down the whopping one flight of stairs to the ground floor, so physical concepts like pushups and sit-ups are, well, just silly.

Since I do silly things like working all week, I was volunteered to take the boys out for their 'energy walk'. I was in the Navy for five years, and as every squid knows, Navy actually stands for Never Again Volunteer Yourself. Luckily, my gal in this port volunteered me. Luckily for her, we don't make wenches walk the plank anymore.

I started walking with the boys, absolutely unsure of where we were going. Somehow, my in-built navigation system took us to The Brass Monkey, the coolest pub in town. I'm not sure how I ended up there. Oh, right - they have Guinness. Karen and Gill, the owners, also have a young hippy wanna-be named Moonbeam, also known as Conor. Conor is older than Peter, so Peter adores him. I am older than Peter, but I guess this logic has its limitations.

My love of Guinness almost got in my way of my goal, which was to walk the youngins to the point of utter exhaustion. Almost. When we left the Pub, our party of three picked up Gill and Conor.

I chose the river as our playground and thought it would be cool for the boys to toss pebbles into the rapids. On the way, David prematurely thought it would be groovy to pick up boulders bigger than his head and chuck them over the railing. Directly below the railing was the bike path that ran along the river, so I can only hope that he didn't get more than one stone off before I yanked his ear and explained how unsilly that was.

We walked upstream, stopping approximately every twelve seconds so that the Flingstones could send a bunch of innocent rocks to their watery graves. Each stop took approximately fifteen minutes. Our rocky tour went about a mile and a half, so you do the math. I suck at math and hate people that don't suck at it, so if you're a mathematical braniac, go punch yourself.

At one point, I asked Peter to stop being silly and pose for a picture.

He either needs a clearer definition of 'quit being a jackass and smile' or his mother needs to take him back to the ear doctor´s for another round of de-waxing. One thing is for sure - Peter is going to absolutely hate me when he starts getting interested in girls; especially if they have access to the Internet.

After tossing 458 pebbles, rocks, stones, and bricks into the river, we needed a beer. By we, I mean Gill and me, so WE 'convinced' the boys that they needed tall glasses of Sprite and peach juice.

At the pub, Conor was considerate enough to teach our boys the fine art of burping. Not just one 'accidental' burp. No, I mean that Conor was burping the entire freakin' alphabet and our boys were sucking up every belch of it. I guess Conor has earned his ranking with the Zoo crew, since they spent the rest of the night burping and belching like the French. Merci beaucoup, Karen.
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Ladder Talk:
1) What was the best part of your day?
Peter: When we were throwing the big stones in the water with Conor.
David: When we saw Conor and we did wa-kah in the water.

2) What was the worst part of your day?
Peter: When David hit me with the sword in my side.
David: When Dalia come not here.

3) What would you like to do tomorrow?
Peter: To play football.
David: When I want to cuddle with Peter again.

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