The Johnson's Zoo

Lost and Found

2012-01-15T22:19:00.002+01:00

I'll get into how I almost killed our family pet later; first, I'd like to pick up from the last blog. For those of you with short attention spans, it's the one that ended with a triumphant Mama flaunting her de-piping skills and gloating about digging out Peter's tooth from thirty years of yuck. Yeah, bravo, honey. You do realize that you've now stereotyped yourself as the one to tackle the disgusting jobs. By the way, Tommy's on the toilet and he's calling for you.

After getting Gap boy back to bed, I came out to find Plumber chick putting on her coat.

'I'm going out.'

'Hard day at the office?'

'Very funny - don't forget Peter's loot.'

As the front door shut, I realized that I've never actually done the whole tooth-for-cash switcheroo. My first thought was 'how hard can it be?' Since I always trust my gut and its feelings, I decided that the best course of action was to ignore the tooth factor, drink a beer and try to piss off people on Facebook.

After an hour of visiting various Farmville fan pages and posting 'Farmer Dell called - he'd like his life back', I decided it was time to head to bed. As I was brushing my teeth, I remembered that I had forgotten to deceive my son. How could I forget? That's normally the highlight of my evening.

I rushed into his room with a handful of coinage thinking 'this can't be that hard'. I inserted my money hand under his pillow and was about to release when his eyes popped open.

'Papa?'

[awkward pause]

'Peter, I thought I heard you screaming. Are you okay? Did you have a bad dream?'

Peter didn't answer; he just drifted off back to sleep. I waited a second for my heart to stop pounding and for Peter to start snoring. Then I dropped the money load and held my breath, waiting for the clinking of metal to wake him again. Luckily, he gets his sleeping patterns from Mama.

I went to bed, content with myself that I had not only lied to my son quite convincingly, but that I had also continued on a tradition of making him believe in things that will probably not last more than another year. At least for Peter.

As I laid down to go to sleep, I thought about what I should dream about. I hate nightmares, so I ruled out the U.S. elections right from the start. I was still debating between mustard-flavored beer and bacon-scented candles when it hit me. Shit! I never took his tooth!

I leaped out of bed and raced into his room, tip-toeing the last few steps. I lifted his pillow gently and started frantically fishing around for Gap boy's calcium deposit. Where the hell is it? For the second time, Peter's eyes popped open.

'Papa?'

[awkward pause]

'Listen, Peter - I can't keep coming in here every five minutes. If you need the bathroom, just go. If it's a nightmare, you need to tell me. Otherwise, stop calling for me to come in here and just go to sleep!'

'Okay, Papa - sorry.'

It's the 'sorry' that made me almost cry. Luckily, I'm a manly man who would never shed a tear. I'm also the guy who pawns off plumbing chores to his wife so I'm fully aware that there are some minor inconsistencies with my whole 'manly man' image. Shut up. I'm Metro.

In the end, I was able to steal Peter's tooth for Angie's slightly less than disturbing little collection. I was also able to sleep easy, even after lying to my son. I went with the bacon-scented candles, by the way.

In the morning, I was awoken by Angie accusing me that I had killed our cat. Talk about your attention-grabbing wake-up calls.

'Good morning to you, too. Glad you made it home safe.'

'Luke is gone! When I left, he was here. Where is he?'

Angie didn't even wait for an answer. Instead, she yelled her theory at me that I must have let Luke out on the balcony while getting a beer. Luke was no longer on the balcony, which clearly meant that he had jumped down two stories and ran away to quietly freeze to death in the middle of the night.

I have to be honest; she did have me feeling guilty enough to launch a series of search expeditions. Angie and Peter demanded the first shift and I was next on the duty roster. We took turns and spent several hours combing the streets of Heidelberg for a cat that likes to attack toilet paper. I even asked the homeless people in a park nearby if they had seen a cat. Most shrugged, but one guy with huge pupils actually responded.

'Cats? I've seen millions of them - they're everywhere!'

Before crazy dude decided to join the search party, I gave up and reluctantly headed back to explain to the Zoo how sorry Papa was that he had killed the family pet. Angie gave me eye-daggers when I walked in empty handed and decided that a little salt needed to be added.

'What are we going to tell Davey? He's spending the night with Grams and Opa, but it was HIS cat.'

The 'how could you?' wasn't verbalized, but it was definitely there. Angie has a knack for ignoring the fact that you already feel bad and making sure that you pay for your mistakes. It's almost biblical.

I was on the computer preparing 'Missing Pet' flyers when our elderly neighbor from upstairs rang the doorbell. I answered.

'I think I've found your cat.'

'I love you.'

Despite the confused look she gave me, she pointed to a spot in our stairwell that was lined with potted indoor plants. It took me a second to see the two gray-blackish ears poking out from behind the greenage.

I scooped up Luke and pranced back into the house to find a very red-cheeked woman scrambling to save her soul.

'My theory is that Luke jumped from the balcony and ran around the building and waited in the freezing cold until someone opened the front door. He then sneaked back into the house and hid out in the stairwell.'

'Thanks, Watson, but my theory is that when YOU came home from your girl's night out, you might have possibly - and I don't know, this is just a guess - left the front door open long enough for Luke to escape like he does anytime anyone leaves the front door open, but not long enough for him to come back in. Because, for me - call me crazy - that would explain why our cat was cowering behind one of the plants located in the stairwell just outside our front door.'

I've learned at work recently that 'silence is acceptance' so I accepted Angie's silence and moved on. It took all of the afternoon and a good portion of the evening before Luke would even hiss at us. At one point, we reached what I would like to call 'a tit for tat'. The 'tit' would be us (Angie) locking him out in our heated stairwell. The 'tat' would be that Luke scooped up one of Angie's new white slippers. I actually cheered him on as he ran off to find a suitable hiding place.
--------------------------------------------
Ladder Talk:
1) What was the best part of your day?
Peter: That I go to Arman's and the tooth fairy gave me more money and that we found Luke.
David: That I woke up at Grams and Opa.
Tom: To look T.V.

2) What was the worst part of your day?
Peter: When we didn't know where Luke is.
David: That I wanted to lay on the bed but I banged my head on a book.
Tom: When you said 'Come!' as I play cars with Peter.

3) What would you like to do tomorrow?
Peter: I want to go in the school and say 'Kaboomba!'
David: To sleep by Grams and Opa.
Tom: I want to play in kindergarten cars.

Remote Controlled Birthdays and Teeth

2012-01-14T22:40:00.059+01:00

Before we get to the pint-sized cases of nuts, let's recap the morning, pre-coffee.

Today started out with me waking up in a strange bed. As juicy as that might sound, it was Tommy's. With eyes half shut, I stumbled my way into our bedroom and head-butted my pillow. My snoring was immediately interrupted with what I would classify as mild nagging cleverly disguised as curiosity.

'Did you go out last night?'

My first reaction was wondering if I had somehow missed an opportunity to go out, since Angie was not foaming at the mouth. Then I remembered chapter 5 of 'The Hubbie's Guide to Chains and Balls' that clearly states that answering rhetorical questions in the affirmative will immediately result in nightly confinement to the sofa.

'No, of course not. Don't be silly.'

By 'silly', I of course meant 'human', but we were still in the pre-coffee hours of what would be a long day, so I thought I would continue my strategic sofa avoidance by telling the truth.

The truth was, Tommy had starting hacking last night like a retired coal miner with a two-pack a day habit and a penchant for Churchill Cubans. Angie had laid down with him with the same 'wake me if I fall asleep' comment that she gives me on a bi-nightly basis.

As per usual, Angie fell asleep. As per unusual, so did Tommy. As per usual again, my attempts to wake Snoring Beauty resulted in a big fat fail. Tommy did stir, though, prompting me to vacate the room quickly and enjoy the evening, which I did.

After watching T.V. shows that I actually wanted to watch and reading a book, I made my way to the bedroom. As I approached the door, I was reminded of my time in the Navy when I flew on jets off of an aircraft carrier. We were forced to wear ear protection, something that should be mandatory for any husband trying to sneak into bed with a woman and her sick child.

My first observation was that there was no way in hell I was climbing into bed unless I undid the big X that Angie and Tom had formed in the middle of the bed. I'm a big fan of letting sleeping dogs lie, so I crawled into Tommy's bed instead.

There is always a problem with my logic. It's scary, actually. I'm beginning to wonder if I am really that unlucky or if I'm just stupid. Please don't ask Angie.

The problem was that the night before, Mama had promised the boys that Papa would build them a super-duper-cave-night-fortress that they could sleep in, which we did. My thinking at the time was that I would still be tucked away nice and cozy in MY bed when they awoke in their super-duper-cave-night-fortress and began to freak out on each other. Unfortunately, I had managed to arrange front row seats for my morning wake-up call.

'Oh, man. This is the coolest thing EVER!'

'I know, should we go steal some candy?'

I'll give you one guess as to who made the last comment and yes; his name does rhyme with Deeter. Oddly enough, they did not notice me sleeping in Tom's bed and I was curious enough to keep quiet as they babbled on. There was no real 'dirt' to their conversation, but it was really cool just to eavesdrop on semi-innocence for a while.

The lack of full innocence was quickly drowned out by guilty demands for breakfast from the naggy room, so I slapped on my French Toast hat and whipped up some Freedom Bread.

After two pots of coffee, I was ready to start the day. I got David dressed and took him and Alessio to the University square to terrorize innocent pedestrians with motorized cars. It was awesome.

David surprised me with his motor skills. I began randomly throwing the camera case around the square and David practiced how quickly he could run it over with the monster truck. Alessio was more preoccupied with trying to run over pigeons. Unfortunately, he did not share David's success.

A brief side-note to dads everywhere: If you happen to ignore your wife's nagging the day before about needing to charge the remote-controlled cars and only remember to plug them in an hour before leaving - they do not run for an hour.

So, yeah. After twenty minutes, the cars almost simultaneously came to a halt. As luck would have it, Alessio's car stopped directly in front of a flock of pigeons. When one of them landed on his car, Alessio started spastically bashing his finger on the controller. I was pretty sure that he was going to break a digit, but luckily his growling noises eventually scared off the wildlife.

When we got back home, Angie made some smart-ass remark about batteries. I'm not sure what it was - I tend to tune out directly after any snippets that begin with 'Remember when I told you...'. Instead, I counter-posed a smart-ass question about her abilities to pour boiling water over dehydrated coffee crystals.

Over instant lunch, Angie I and worked out who would be taking Peter and David to Lena's big 30th birthday bash that was planned almost a year ago. Unfortunately, Tom the Sick-o had thrown a monkey wrench into our previous plan of making a collective Zoo appearance. In the end, we agreed that Angie would take Peter and David and I would be in charge of Typhoid Tommy.

I only had one condition, which was that I could get a haircut. Unlike women, it only takes me 20 minutes to get shaved, so the agenda item was approved. Thank you.

After being reincarnated as a bald eagle, I found out that Master had changed the itinerary. I discovered this as she shoved a bag of gifts in my hand and told me to hurry; otherwise I would be late.

'Late to what', I innocently asked, since I still assumed that I would be staying home with Tom.

'To the party, Moron. I don't have time to explain, just go!'

'What about Peter?'

'Peter went to a movie with Arman.'

'But I thought he...'

'Ba-bye, have fun!'

If thoughts could speak, I would probably spend WAY more time on the sofa. Instead of arguing, questioning, and/or whimpering, I simply scooped up Davey and headed off to what I will now refer to as 'THE LOUDEST KID'S BIRTHDAY PARTY THAT MY EARS HAVE EVER BEEN SUBJECTED TO'.

Lena can try and argue that it wasn't a kid's birthday party. Bullshit. We have three kids and we never invite more than 7 to any of their birthday parties. The simple parent-to-ankle-biter ratio just does not allow for such reckless behavior. Either Lena doesn't know the rules or she just doesn't give a damn. My ears certainly did.

Lena's first party trick was a bathtub full of balloons that are apparently made of the thinnest material known to man. David discovered this within two minutes on his first of many balloon attacks against unbelievably patient teenage female-types who had the unfortunate task of 'defending the tub'.

At one point, I scooped up Davey in a rather silly attempt to calm him down. The silly bit was when I flung him upside-down and dangled him over the ceramic floor tiles. The sillier part was when I decided to tickle him. The not-so-silly part was when he wiggled in delight and I accidentally dropped him on his head.

It always takes a second or two for an injured kid to muster up enough breath to really bolt out a wail of pain and displeasure. It's always those few precious seconds that bad parents like me frantically use to try and come up with what I like to call 'an exit plan'.

My exit plan involved scooping up Davey and using the sleeve of my sweater and some minor pressure to muffle his screams until I could get him to the recovery sofa.

Yes, I look guilty. Yes, I was truly sorry. And finally - yes, David, in twenty years, when people keep asking if you were dropped on your head as a kid, you can say 'yes'.

The next party favor in Lena's BIG BAG of kid-friendly tricks was fire. I'm sorry, what was that? Did you honestly just give a bunch of hyper KIDS tiny sticks of FIRE?

Lena didn't actually respond to my curiosity, but yeah, she did. I asked what I thought were very straightforward questions about fire insurance, only to be answered by nervous chuckles. Um, okay - I was serious.

Angie never takes me seriously, so I wasn't exactly shocked when people that haven't even spawned offspring with me openly laugh in my face. I ignored everyone and took a silent mental note that I did ask about fire insurance.

When David left the recovery sofa, he asked if he could have the camera. When I was growing up, we did not have digital cameras, so the answer was always an inevitable 'HELL NO' or some other short and very direct response. Luckily, I have grown quite fond of the delete button and am full-on okay with my kids taking two hundred pictures in order to land that lucky one that might end up in a blog.

Veris - you might hate me now, but I should remind you that David took this picture. Blame him.

After Lena's 'House of Noise', I found out that I had been volunteered to take David to Grams and Opa's for the second attempt at spending the night. You might ask about the first attempt, which I now affectionately call 'the night that Angie forgot to pack David's pajamas'.

See, last weekend, David was also penciled in for a sleep-over at Grams and Opa's. All was fine and hunky-dory until an idea was born to watch 'The Star Wars - The Clone Wars'. It was a taped episode that thrilled David until one of the main characters was dramatically killed.

At that point, he declared that it was bed-time, only someone (and I won't mention the ditzy blonde's name) forgot to pack his pajamas. Needless to write, David lost it. We subsequently got 'the call', which prompted Angie to look at me. I thought about verbalizing my utter disbelief that a mother, packing for her son's over-nighter, might glance over something as brain-dead obvious as packing pajamas. Instead, I chose a different approach and tossed her the car keys. 'Drive safe'.

Today, Angie proved that old dogs can learn new tricks and actually managed to pack the boy's jammies. At one point, David asked if he could bring something for Grams because 'she is always giving me so many nice things every time'. Angie damn near cried and gave him a piece of paper so that he could draw Grams a picture as a thank you.

Yup, that's right, Grams. Soak it up. In return for the past five years of dishing out clothes, toys, sweets and pure love, David has come up with the perfect token of appreciation - a crab, a shark, and a fisherman reeling in what looks to be an airplane. As if this was not enough, David threw in a baby penguin key chain just for good measures.

As I got the boys ready for bed, Tom was still hacking away, so I laid down with him in an absolute futile attempt to get him to sleep. See, he had had a four-hour power-nap earlier, courtesy of Mama, so he was wired for sound.

Peter was whimpering about how he had to sleep alone in his bed, so I caved in and told him that he could crash on David's bed, since he had apparently hurdled the 'sleeping over' barrier. Tommy was almost asleep when I heard the first of many loud whispers from Peter.

'Pssst. Papa - my tooth is wiggly.'

'That's great.'

Two minutes later, Peter announced the next mind-blowing statement.

'Pssst. Papa - my tooth is wigglier.'

'Okay, listen. I don't need bi-minute updates on the wiggliness of your tooth. If it actually does pop out, let me know. Otherwise, shut up and sleep.'

No shit, two minutes later, Peter decided to test my authority and patience. I have neither, by the way.

'Pssst. Papa....'

'Listen! I get it, okay! Your tooth is loose, but the last time, this took TWO months! Just suck it up like a man and....'

'Papa, it's out.'

Okay, I must admit - I felt like an ass. But only for a second. It never takes me long to forget that I was a jerk. I have Angie to thank for all those years of unintentional practice.

Peter started jumping up and down and squealing like a little girl, which puzzled Tommy, who sat up and asked Peter if he had gotten stung by a bee. Peter paused for a fraction of a second to stare at Tommy before he disappeared down the hallway to show Mama his latest calcium trophy.

After explaining to Tommy that Peter had lost a tooth, he crawled out of the bed and asked for a flashlight. I asked him what the hell he was doing and he just looked at me like I was a moron.

'I'm going to go find it. Do you have a flashlight or not?'

I sighed and simply accepted that it was going to be a long night. I finally got Tommy back into bed and had just tucked him under the covers when I heard a scream. I often hear David or Peter scream while I am putting Tommy to bed, but I normally ignore that and leave Angie to take care of whatever minor scrape or bruise the boys have managed to inflict upon themselves or each other. Sometimes both.

This scream, however, was more of a blood-curdling wail that made my heart stop. I raced into the bathroom, trailed shortly by Tom, followed by Angie, certain that we would find that Peter had poked his eye out or had somehow managed to decapitate a foot. Instead, he was hovering over the sink and spastically blubbering something about his 'toof' and pointing to the drain.

When we finally grasped that Peter had managed to drop his tooth down the drain, I ran to grab the camera, prompting Angie to call me an ass. If you've been reading any of this, though, you can probably guess how long it took me to stop feeling bad about photographing pure tragedy.

When we realized that there was no way in hell we could get the tooth out without dismantling the entire sink, I told Peter to go get some towels from the other bathroom and quietly whispered our options to Angie.

'Okay, listen. Option 1: we explain to Peter that the tooth fairy knows where to find his tooth, no matter where it is. Then we dump the loot in the sink for Peter to find tomorrow morning. Option 2: You've kept every tooth that Peter has lost so far. To be honest, I've found that to be a rather sick and twisted pastime, but it might actually help here. Just go to your little box of human trophies, find a tooth that hasn't decayed too much, cup it your hand and pretend to dig into the sink. Wallah! Here's your tooth, Peter - go to bed.'

'Yeah, no. We shot option one down with the last tooth that Peter lost and as for the other teeth I have, none of them are the same size or shape - he'll know.'

Peter came racing back in, leaving no more time for discussion - Angie was obviously hell-bent on un-piping the bathroom, whether I found it funny or not. As she brought out wrenches and hammers, I reflected on her response.

She was right about Peter noticing. I showed him a card trick the other day where you pick three 'random' cards and then separate them using cards from the top of the deck. Peter took one look and innocently commented 'Yeah, Papa, but you showed me 2 black 8's and one red one and now there are 2 red 8's and one black one.' I shit you not, I have been doing that trick for well over a decade and the only other person to figure it out was, yup, Angie.

I hate it when Angie is right once, which rarely ever happens, but twice in one night? I thought again about her reluctance to option one and came to the conclusion that she wasn't entirely wrong.

The last time Peter lost a tooth, he was also spending the night in David's bed. He freaked out that the tooth fairy would not be able to find him, so I told him to write a note to the tooth fairy, explaining that he was in David's room. He took it to the next level and added a map that showed the tooth fairy how to go from his pillow to David's bed. A bit overkill in my opinion, but still cute.

That night, we had friends over for poker and one good hand led to another and before we knew it, we were being shaken awake by a toothless kid who was furious that the fairy had not visited.

Angie may have the 'book smarts', but I definitely have the 'lie to your kids convincingly smarts'. I leapt out of bed, telling Peter that he surely must be mistaken. Then I tried to convince my brain to think without coffee. Against all odds, a smile crossed my face and the plan was hatched.

I told Peter that I wanted to see this note of his and he disappeared into his room. I then raced to the computer and wrote a quick note of my own.

'Dear Peter, I could not find your tooth. I found the map, though - I hope I left your treasure in the right place.'

I had just finished as Peter came racing up to me, slightly out of breath and clutching his note/map. I looked at it and shook my head.

'Well, of course, Peter. You wrote the note in German. Tooth Fairies are global - they can't possibly know every language out there. The common international language for fairies is English!'

'Oh.'

I then reached in my pocket when he wasn't looking and fished out a wad of pocket shrapnel. Next, I pretended to discover his loot in his hammock, cleverly dropping my note in the process. I then proceeded to criticize his map with statements like 'what the heck is this? No wonder the tooth fairy couldn't find you. Duh - I would have guessed the hammock as well.'

Somehow, my lying and treachery worked and Peter believed the whole thing - hook, line and sinker. Angie kept giving me the stink-eye, but deep down, I know that she approved.

Angie was right, though. If I had tried to explain that the tooth fairy automatically knows where the tooth is, he would have busted out the story about not being able to find his last tooth, even though there was a detailed note and a map that, despite my false criticism, was actually pretty accurate and easy to follow.

So in the end, Angie had no option other than to rip of the sleeves of her dress, break open pipes and dig through 30 years of spit and hair. After dislodging several black clumps of mysterious sink-gunk, Angie had the daunting task of poking her finger through the mess to find small hard objects that might be a tooth. After several extremely disgusting false alarms that might explain Jimmy Hoffa's disappearance, Angie poked a winner.

Peter was ecstatic that Super-Mom had rescued his tooth. I felt slightly less than manly that my wife was the one volunteering for plumbing detail, but I almost killed one of our kids a few months ago while trying to change a light-bulb, so I waved bye-bye to simple man-tasks, whether I like them or not. Tom was starting to get sleepy, but still totally confused as to how Peter's tooth could have fallen out into the sink; he even started nervously wiggling his own tooth.

As I finally tucked Peter into bed, he looked me in the eyes and made what I would call a knowing statement.

'Papa, I'm sleeping in David's bed again but I would REALLY like it if the tooth fairy could find me this time.'

Shit. I think he knows.
--------------------------------------------
Ladder Talk:
[David was busy not watching Star Wars episodes where people die, but Angie did Ladder Talk with him the next day]
1) What was the best part of your day?
Peter: That my tooth fell out.
David: The balloon-laser fight and that the girl didn't get the purple one.
Tom: That Peter find his tooth.

2) What was the worst part of your day?
Peter: That it fell in the sink.
David: I didn't have one.
Tom: That Peter was stung by a bee.

3) What would you like to do tomorrow?
Peter: To go to Arman's.
David: To go back home to you and Mama.
Tom: I want to play cars.

Merry Christmas!

2011-12-24T11:29:00.003+01:00

Or would you rather be a snake?

2011-12-21T22:16:00.008+01:00

I went to pick up David today. Yuki, one of his friends, promptly informed me that David was in the 'nap room'. The nap room is normally reserved for the younger kids, so I was a tad bit curious as to why David would be sleeping there. When I asked Yuki, his only response was that David had made 'trouble'.

I went downstairs and asked one of the teachers where David was.

'He's sleeping.'

'Please wake him up.'

Sleepy Dave came out looking guiltier than our cat with a mouthful of toilet paper.

'David, what did you do?'

'Nothing.'

Okay, well - glad that was settled. What a load off of my mind. I can be quite cynical sometimes, though, so I thought that David and I would pop by his teacher's room to clear the air and say goodbye.

'Five times! I told him FIVE times to stop, but did he listen?'

The busted look on David's face answered the rhetorical question and I couldn't do anything other than apologize and assure her that there would not be an encore.

When we got home, I forced David to explain to me what exactly he had done. Instead, he plopped down on the floor and gleefully showed me.

In addition to Peter's birth, I have been witness to many, many strange things, but most of them didn't have the added value of making me laugh. As I watched David slither around on the floor, I really had to fight the urge to drop to the ground and get my wiggle on.

He explained that he had turned into a 'super snake monster' and that he couldn't possibly hear his teacher because snakes don't have ears. He also claimed that his friends were laughing too loudly. I reminded David that his teacher has quite a powerful voice, but then he reminded me that his friends can laugh really loudly. Damn, he's good!

I then explained to Snake-boy that there would be no TV, no games, and no dessert for him. The new reality apparently didn't sink in, because his next question was 'Can I play Angry Birds?'.

As if on cue, Angie came home and demanded a re-explanation. Talk about your angry birds.

Micro Mama

2011-12-16T22:04:00.011+01:00

Seconds before this lovely image, a microphone was shoved into Angie's hand, preceded by a curious question from Alex, one of her colleagues.

'Here ya go - you're opening the ceremony, right?'

'Uhh, no.'

'Yeah, funny - here's the mic.'

Before I dwell on emails from colleagues that Angie should have read weeks prior that explained silly little organizational details like that she was expected to open the school's Christmas church service, allow me to flash back to our simple breakfast.

'I'd like an egg.'

'I'd like a Mai Tai.'

'Not funny, Steve - we've been practicing this play for weeks and I'm nervous.'

'I see that, which is why I'm thinking a Mai Tai would help much more than an egg - just saying.'

I'll let your imagination figure out who won that logic round.

As Angie was leaving for the church play, I reminded her to switch off her phone.

'Right! Thanks! How do I do that again?'

'Well, here - give it to me. You just need to flip the switch here on the...oh, never mind - it's already on silent.'

'It is?'

With that innocent question, a sudden wave of realization came crashing down on me. I had honestly wondered why Angie had been ignoring my calls since OCTOBER!!!??? That's right, I bought my lovely wife the iPhone for her birthday and she's had the damn thing on silent since then. Her big 'I'm just trying to help' comment was:

'Oh, I wondered why I had so many more missed calls than with my old phone.'

Doesn't matter - at that point, my number one goal was getting valley girl out of the house. I succeeded and when I came home from work, Angie gave me an encore rendering of her impromptu speech:

'Uh, Hello.......Welcome students and...uh.......Welcome parents...and...Welcome teachers....yeah, uh....I hope you enjoy the service.....Thank you!'

Something tells me that she might not be asked to open the ceremony next year.

Shut Up and Heal!

2011-12-01T23:02:00.021+01:00

Angie and I are not morning people by any stretch of the temper, but with Angie I would definitely capitalize the NOT; I might even underline it as well. I'd probably then encrypt that statement and only fork over the decryption key after her second pot of coffee. And all this is under the silly assumption that we actually get the five hours of beauty sleep that we've grown accustomed to over the past seven years of childatude.

The fact that Tommy was up for three hours last night coughing, crying and, for the grand finale, throwing up meant that neither one of us were exactly perky, let alone peachy and keen. In addition to the many, many joys of parenthood, one of them is flipping the coin on who gets stuck on sick duty. As a former squid, my knack for deck-swabbing somehow volunteered me to man the mop and bucket. Thanks, babe.

Before leaving, Angie actually had the audacity to ask me to make her a coffee to go. One telling glare later, Angie was quickly and silently closing the front door. Sans coffee.

After two cups of coffee for me, I called up Angie's address book on the computer and looked up the doctor's number. Organizing a doctor's visit in Germany is never fun and can often take hours to even get through to someone with a pulse, so I allowed myself a third cup before making the call. I was pleasantly shocked and awed when a human picked up on the second ring.

'Hi, my name is Johnson. My son Tom is sick - can I make an appointment?'

'I'm sorry, Mr. Johnson. We have a Peter and a David, but we don't have any record of a Tom. Has he ever been in for a visit?'

'Yeah! Try every second week for the past three years.'

'It doesn't matter, Mr. Johnson, just please bring in his medical card and we'll add him to the system. We don't have any appointments left, but if you come by at 4.30 we should be able to squeeze him in.'

So, yeah. I showed up at the doctor's at 4:30, as prescribed.

'Can I help you?'

'No, but you can try and help my son, Tom. I called earlier - Johnson. I was told to come by around 4:30.'

'I don't know who would have told you that - I've been working all day and we are completely booked. You don't have an appointment?'

'No.'

'Ummm, okay. Please have a seat in the waiting room, Mr. Johnson.'

After an hour of hanging out with vertically challenged sick-o's, I stormed back to the front desk.

'This is ridiculous! If you couldn't see us, you should have just said that instead of telling me to come in.'

'But I didn't....'

'Look, stop the games, lady! I've got to get back home to my family. Can the doctor see my son today or not?'

'Tell you what - just take a seat over there and I will try to squeeze you in the next time the doctor comes out. Just please don't tell any of the patients in the waiting room.'

As we were waiting, Tommy broke down into a slobbering mass of cranky sickiness. I did what any sane father would do when confronted with such a public display of tears and embarrassment and promptly shoved two sticks of sugar-packed gum into wailing boy's mouth. Yup, that worked.

Eventually, the sacred door to the doctor's room opened and we were ushered in like we were in the witness protection program on the eve before testifying against the Godfather. Not surprisingly, he gave us the expedited version of a check-up and gave the whopping diagnosis that Tommy had 'a cough'. The wise doctor wisely ignored my loud clapping and applauds and instead wrote a prescription for cough syrup. As we were leaving, he kneeled down in front of Tommy and mistakenly tried to be funny.

'You were such a good boy - I would have given you some gummy bears, but since you have a mouthful of gum, there is probably no room for...'

With that, Tommy spat his big wad of gum out. It landed with a splat next to the surprised doctor's boot. The doctor looked at me, not exactly happy. I shrugged, trying my damndest not to crack up. Wisely, the doctor motioned to his nurse, who rushed over wearing latex gloves and scraped up Tommy's response. He then forked over a couple of gummy bears and we left.

After running to the pharmacy, we got home at the same time as Angie. As on any given weekday, Angie made a bee-line to the computer to check her number of friends on Crackbook. That's when she let the hammer drop.

'Why do you have Dr. D's number up? We haven't been there for years.'

It only took a second for the complete hilariousness of it to kick in. I had called our old doctor, who of course had no entry for Tom, since we had moved away long before he was born. I had then threatened and bullied my way into an appointment that we didn't have with our current doctor by trying to convince his innocent receptionist that she must certainly be losing her mind.

My first thought was that I absolutely had to hide this minor screw-up from my wife. My second thought was that I needed to apologize to Dr. W's assistant. I often have second thoughts, so I delivered a box of chocolates to the poor receptionist who was now questioning her sanity. As for Angie, I'm guessing this blog will pretty much let the cat out of the bag. Hi Sofa, long time, no see.

Super Shopper

2011-11-26T22:32:00.020+01:00

Lately, Tommy has volunteered to be Papa's 'helper' while shopping. By 'help', I of course mean 'knocking breakable shit off of the shelves, screaming at other shoppers, and terrorizing the cashier.' Today, Tommy decided to kick it up a notch by demanding to be dressed up as Superman. Whatever.

I tried to explain to Angie the weirdness of Tommy's brain, but as you can see, Mama's 'me time' got in the way of logic.

'If he wants to go as Superman, let him go as Superman.'

'Thanks, oh great lady of wisdom. That was deep.'

'I'm running a bath. Ba-bye.'

I did make one interesting discovery. Apparently, Superman shares my enthusiasm for barley and hops.

Okay, in Tommy's defense, he had no idea that he was screeching down beer heaven; he was actually streaking this pose on just about every aisle. To be honest, I was negatively shocked that security guards did not intervene. What the hell kind of establishment is this?

After promising copious amounts of chocolate if he would calm down, Tommy-man was actually cool. Until we hit the cereal aisle, of course. Then all bets were off and screaming-boy was back on the scene. Whatever.

When I got home and finally finished unloading our grubs for the next week, I checked my beer watch and was quite ecstatic to see that it was happy time. As per usual, Mother Time crushed my wishful liver with what only sounds like a question.

'Do you want to take the boys to the Christmas market?'

'Well, actually I was thinking about just kickin' back with a...'

'That's nice. BOYS! SHOES ON! LETS GO!!!'

Super Tom was too busy rescuing cereal boxes today to have a nap, so he was, hmmm.... how should I put this? Angie doesn't like the word 'pissy' so I'll just go with 'tuckered out' to make sexy-hot women that can't cook happy. You can thank me later.

As we were getting ready to go, I noticed that Tommy already had the 'annoy Mama' box checked, so I wisely decided to escape with Peter and David.

'I've got the two bigguns.'

'Super. Do you happen to know why Tommy is screaming his head off about a Fire-Fire Snake?

'No, but you have fun with that puzzler. Meet you downstairs.'

Downstairs turned out to be just as puzzling. Peter has been taking karate lessons and somehow convinced David to allow him to practice his latest trick. The move involved grabbing David by the wrist and catapulting his face into the cement wall outside of our building.

After the crying stopped, Peter decided to whip out his newfound ninja moves and started climbing the doorway to our building.

Angie came down seconds after I had gotten Kung Fu weirdo down.

'Let's go - the boys are hungry.'

'Really? 'Cause they told me they've been eating all afternoon and....'

'No, they're hungry. LET'S GO!!!'

Needless to write, our first stop at the Christmas market was to get a bite to eat. Without pointing out Angie's tongue, I'll give you one guess who repeatedly 'tested' Tommy's sandwich to make sure it was edible.

I am sure that Tommy was quite relieved that his dinner wasn't poisoned, but his royal belly kept screaming things like 'Hey, Mama - that's mine' and 'Can I eat my food now?' I provided what I thought was a helpful reminder that we can only devour the leftovers when the kids say they are done, but, like in Outlook, most reminders are simply ignored.

Speaking of being ignored, Peter has been a real jerk lately. I've 'lectured' him enough times, but he continues to dish out cruel and unusual punishment.

What? Oh, I'm sorry, you don't see the 'cruel and unusual' bit? Well, just look closer. What seems to be a sweet and innocent picture of two brothers enjoying a ride on the merry-go-round quickly turns into 'Older Brothers Gone Bad'. In case you're still baffled, just ignore Peter's smug mug and check out the two bunny ears poking above Davey's head. Evil, pure evil.

Innocent Dave did not pick up on Peter's treachery. In fact, he even volunteered for a second photo op.

It was at this point that Superman finally came to the rescue.

'Davey! You no see Peter, but he making you a funny bunny!'
--------------------------------------------
Ladder Talk:
1) What was the best part of your day?
Peter: That we go'ed to the Christmas market and that Cecilia came.
David: The candy man!
Tom: That I did like that - baaaaahh-ding ka-smash!

2) What was the worst part of your day?
Peter: I didn't have a worst.
David: That Peter smashed me in the wall.
Tom: That Mama was bad.

3) What would you like to do tomorrow?
Peter: I want to see when Cecilia has something and I want to go to her.
David: I want to go with you and Mama in the swimming pool.
Tom: I sleep by Grams & Opa.

Tommy's Ute

2011-11-23T21:23:00.010+01:00

Most normal kids cling to stuffed animals and make possessive claims like 'My cheetah!' or 'My gorilla!'. As a Johnson, Tommy had no choice but to distance himself from the normal pack with corrective shouts of 'My Ute!' every time someone mentions Ute.

Aside from being one of Tommy's possessions, Ute is a good friend of ours who helps out occasionally with watching the animals while Mama and Papa play work. It was also her birthday today and, despite fully knowing the consequences, she still invited us over to celebrate. It's okay; we got you earplugs this year.

In keeping with the Johnson tradition, we showed up an hour late. I made a beeline to the keeper of the beer, also known as Alex. No shit, it took less than two minutes for Tommy to full-on body-crash into the corner of their coffee table. What, parties are supposed to be loud, right?

Ute immediately scooped up Tommy and started spastically blowing on his forehead. After two minutes, Tommy finally stopped wailing and explained in broken sobs to HIS Ute that actually, he had hurt his elbow.

After some mild elbow blowing and heavy cuddling by HIS Ute, Tommy was released back into the wild. The wild was actually Peter and David, who had already been kicked out to the hallway to play with their Beyblades. They are basically New Age spinning tops for those of you who have yet to experience the joys of procreation.

Within seconds, Tommy had managed to spin his top under HIS Ute's cabinet. At first, this seemed liked a disaster, but it actually turned out to be a blessing in disguise. In addition to being tougher than a honey badger, my brain puts dolphins to shame. My huge cranium whipped out a flashlight and *POOF*, sulky kid was gone for almost an hour looking for HIS toy.

The silent hour was well appreciated, but it went by too quickly. By the time Tommy realized that there was no way in hell he was getting his toy back, it was time to kiss HIS birthday girl goodnight.

HAPPY BIRTHDAY, TOMMY'S UTE!

Documenting Harmony: Music Education in the Holy Land

2011-11-11T21:49:00.008+01:00

This if for my little sister, Vena - the one that smells like soup and cannot distinguish between landing and take-off times on a flight itinerary. Vean-bean plays a mean violin and is trying to fund a charity trip to Palestine to teach music to children. They've reached 80% of the target so far, but they're not there, yet. It's a worthy cause, so if you'd like to spread the savory smell of beef vegetable across the Holy Land - donate. Or not.

Scratch and Fix

2011-11-09T22:47:00.004+01:00

Our cat either really likes the guy that came to fix our radiator or he hates repair folk with a passion.

We haven't had Luke long, but he normally just hides under the stove whenever someone new comes over. For whatever reason, he chose today to break out of his reclusive shell.

Angie had run into the kitchen to get the repair guy something to drink. When she came back into the living room, Luke had clawed his way up to the guy's shirt and was just clinging out. If the guy hadn't been screaming his head off, I bet we would have heard purring.

Who let the dog out?

2011-10-27T22:56:00.013+02:00

For the past year and a half, Angie has been the Quiz Mistress at The Dubliner, our local Irish pub that is conveniently located within crawling distance. The Quiz, for you non-German-Irish types is a weekly trivia night, where Angie reads out 30 questions and people huddle around in teams of six or less and try their damndest to not get caught looking up the answers on their iPhones. Yes, we also know what you did last summer.

The difference tonight was that it was her birthday. A rather tragic event that started at 00:01 with an innocent but completely serious question.

'So, you didn't forget my birthday again this year, did you?'

For those of you with short memories (and Angie is definitely not part of your posse), I had a birthday malfunction last year that has resulted in me being stuck in the doghouse for 365.25 days. Not that I was counting.

So, yeah - back to the not-so-innocent question, which was followed by my carefully thought-out guilty answer.

'Honey, I tried to pick up your gift today, but it simply was not there. They promised me that I could pick it up tomorrow, though.'

'Okay.'

Now let me tell you, the 'okay' you see in text above probably looks cute, sexy and innocent, but it might as well have read 'O.J.' I tried to explain my defense, but the plaintiff adjourned early and went to bed. Love means never having to say 'you're forgiven'.

The next morning was awkwardly quiet, if you exclude the noise being generated by three boys screaming 'Happy Birthday' at the top of their lungs.

When I came home from work, I had to break more earth-shattering news to Angie.

'Look, I'm sorry, but I went to pick up your gift and it's still not there.'

'Okay. Whatever. I'm getting in the bath.'

I made Angie a warm glass of tea that is supposed to calm stressed people down and brought it into her.

'Did the boys at least make me a card?'

'Of course they did - all three of them. They're just finishing them up now.'

In my book of love, lying is allowed if it involves a naked chick and her emotions. Two seconds after leaving melancholy Mama to shampoo her misery away, I raced into the living room, flipped off the T.V. and started chucking crayons at the boys.

'QUICK! You guys need to draw a picture. NOW!!!!'

Peter immediately broke out into a sweat and began furiously scribbling. At least he didn't start crying. Tom freaked out and for some reason demanded that I help him draw a dragon - 'a mean one'. David took everything in and rather calmly explained to the collective freak out crew that 'Mama does not like scribbles' and 'she certainly does not like dragons.'

It was at this point that I yanked David up and somewhat gently placed him on the table.

'And what, exactly, do you think would make Mama happy?'

'A super-duper pattern with no white on the paper, of course.'

'Great, then why don't you draw that and leave your brothers alone?'

'Okay.'

I hovered over the trio like a coach on the eve of a big game, loudly encouraging them to finish in showers of spittle. In the end, my threat tactics and vocal tutoring paid off. Angie came out in a robe and gave all three boys a super-big hug. In the end, Peter was so thrilled with himself that he asked Mama if he could have the drawing back so that he could take it into school. Even with only two drawings, she looked genuinely happy. Then she turned to me.

'I'm going to Quiz. Bye.'

'Okay, ba-bye. Happy birthday again! Love you!'

Other than a totally non-flirtatious glare, there wasn't much of a response that did anything for me. That's okay, though, I was busy preparing my surprise and waiting for the baby-sitter that glare-chick didn't know about. Yet.

When I showed up at the pub, Angie was certainly surprised, but it was more the 'what the hell are you doing here?' surprise than the 'oh my God I'm so happy to see you because you put Brad Pitt to shame on a daily basis' surprise.

I think I scored some points when I forked over my homemade birthday card.

Okay, maybe Angie wasn't so thrilled about the funny team name, but I had also organized a birthday cake - that's gotta count for something, right?

Truth be told, I did not know about the cake that Sarah had spent three days baking until I got there, but I still gleefully took credit for it because Angie had suddenly started to warm up. It probably had more to do with the 39 flames blazing on Sarah's Torta di Trionfo, but whatever - one bark closer to leaving the doghouse.

Not only did Angie damn near collapse a lung blowing out Sarah's mini forest fire, she also made Signora Cucinare reel back from what I can only hope is garlic breath.

I didn't have a paper bag to help out with the pursuing hyperventilation attack, so instead I whipped out the big guns. That's right, I brought out the iLuv.

iLuv my shit-eating grin as it finally dawned on Angie that I had actually not forgotten her birthday and that I had even taken some measures to organize a kick-ass evening. Oh, ye of little faith.

A nice googly-eye look is okay if you're not a hairy alpha-beast that can crack coconuts with his stomach, but I needed at least the PG version of a thank you. Luckily, Angie is an avid movie-goer and planted a PG-13 special right on the smacker that immediately opened the door to my cage. Right on, right on - you gotta dig on that!

It was nice to be out of the doghouse for a while. Three hours, to be exact. And before you ask, no - I did not do anything house-worthy after three hours. We actually had a great time just sitting at the pub and hanging out with old friends. We even played the Name Game, a drinking game that we haven't played since our B.C. (before children) years.

Back then, Angie had bangs, but other than that, not much has changed. I still won. She still claimed that she had won, and I had to yet again explain my view on drinking games.

See, in a drinking game, the more often you lose, the more you drink. Angie's goal was to lose less, which she did because she hates not winning at anything. For me, the only reason to play a drinking game is to drink - it's even in the name. By that logic, and my liver can confirm it, I won. Besides, it's my blog.

My three-hour tour was over too quickly, but I did not want to keep Ute waiting. She had been awesome enough to babysit on very little notice, so I did not want to push it. Thanks again, Ute - you made Angie's night. Actually I did, but you definitely helped. No wait, actually, I think the iPhone is what did the trick. Hey, wait a minute! I see now that she doesn't need either one of us any more and I just sent material girl off to get her party on with all of her new iFriends. It's okay, though. I still thank you for your help. To show my appreciation, I thought I would write you the longest side narration I have ever, ever written. Enjoy. Or not.

--------------------------------------------
Ladder Talk:
1) What was the best part of your day?
Peter: Papa! Did you see my picture? It was so cool, that was my best ever.
David: That Mama like my drawing the best.
Tom: When Mama have a birthday and we sing 'happy birthday' but the funny one with Mama smells like a zoo.

2) What was the worst part of your day?
Peter: When my friends ring the doorbell and I had pajamas on.
David: That Tommy hit me right on my nose with a book and he laughed.
Tom: When I bonk Davey on the nose.

3) What would you like to do tomorrow?
Peter: To go swimming in the pool.
David: To go to the pool and spring in like a water bomb.
Tom: To go to Grams and Opa.

Toe-jam Tommy

2011-08-20T10:16:00.001+02:00

Today was the 10th anniversary of Anno 1589, Judy's gallery that's full of valuable paintings and things that are made of glass. It's a great shop for anyone in their double-digits, which leaves another seven years and two months before I consider letting the collective Zoo crew inside.

After a brief trip to breakable city to say hi, I chaperoned the kids to parts of the city that they could break.

It only took an hour of trying to kill themselves and others at the playground before the boys asked if we could go buy new 'Wheelies' because, according to David, 'I are so good being'.

'But what is a Wheelie?', the kidless readers ask.

Well, like the name implies, it's a wheel. That's pretty much it. You can roll them. And you can...uh,...um,....did I mention that you can roll them?

Okay, Wheelies are dumber than My Pet Rock, but at least they are cheap and they keep the yappity ones quiet. Hmm, maybe I should pick up one for Angie?

We picked up Barb along the way and headed off to the store that sold bags of broken car parts to morons with cash. The boys thought it was cool that the store had a revolving door. Of course, they also thought it was cool that we were buying a wheel.

On the way in, I carried Tommy. On the way out, I did not. Mea culpa.

What happened was Peter went first and like a normal human, he continued to walk outside when it was time to 'get off'. David went through next and like a normal David, he did not get off and instead kept going around in circles laughing.

I was holding Tommy's hand when it was our turn to 'get on'. At that point he saw David jackassing his way back into the store and decided to run in the opposite direction of the revolving door. If you ever wondered what it sounds like when someone's foot jams a revolving door to a grinding halt, it goes something like this:

'AAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAGGGGGGGGGGGGGGGGGHHHHHHHHHH!!!!!!'

So, just to recap - I'm stuck inside with Toe-jam Tommy trying to unwedge his foot. David has proudly made his way back into the store and is gleefully announcing to the forming crowd 'That is my BROTHER!'. Peter is stuck outside bawling his eyes out and screaming 'I'm sorry!' and will most likely be traumatized for life.

In the end, Barb was the one that came crashing to the rescue with a full-on shoulder attack against the glass wall that was pinning my third-born down. As Superchick pried back the wall of pain, I snatched up flat-foot and raced outside. Tommy and Peter were still screaming their heads off, but at least David had the sense to rejoin us on the sunny side of the death machine.

In America, I would have sued the shit out of the store for not hanging up a sign that clearly warned stupid dads against wedging their kid's foot under a revolving door. I'd be ree-yatch.

We were in Germany, though, Land of Customer Friendliness. Needless to say, we fled the scene before one of the helpful store workers could present us with a bill for a broken door. Dankeschön.

As we made it back to the shop, Barb asked if we wanted to come in to say goodbye. My response was a mix between an answer, a curse and a laugh. Barb gave me an understanding nod and went inside to tell Grams and Opa that they would have to come outside to say goodbye to Toe-jam Tommy and the Wheelie boys.

Smackouch!

2011-08-19T22:36:00.001+02:00

As early as seven years old, I always knew that my brain was special. I discovered this one day while riding my bike. The sun was warm and soothing and I had just eaten lunch.

My gifted brain convinced me that, because I had done such an awesome job of driving my bike in a straight line with my eyes open, it made perfect sense to try it with my eyes closed. Brains are overrated.

It actually worked for about ten seconds; when I opened my eyes, I was still cruising a straight line down the middle of my block. Great! Lovely! I bet I can do a full minute!

It's a damn good thing that brains have no spending cash for betting; after approximately thirty-four seconds my head smacked into our mail box in a not-so-subtle gambling lesson to 'keep your eyes open, moron'.

Tommy is apparently a competition freak - he pretty much has to be with two older brothers and a father that rivals Evil Knievel. His challenge began in the kitchen as Mama was telling me about her day. Who the hell let Angie into the kitchy?

'Blah-blah, the kids had a ball at the blah-blah playing with the blah-blah-freakity-blah. Have I told you today how hot you are?'

'Yes, several times. Umm, why is Tommy wrapping a towel around his head?'

Before either of us could scratch our heads, Tommy took off running, full speed, towards a corner coming soon to his face.

'Smackouch' does not begin to describe it. As the scream levels rose, my inconsiderate brain chose to taunt me with thought-snippets like 'you waited until you were seven? That kid's got you beat by FIVE years. Wuss.'

Beach bums

2011-06-18T22:42:00.010+02:00

We couldn't travel to the east coast and not go to the beach. By that logic, we could not travel to the beach without David face-planting Tommy into a breaking wave and cackling like a beach bum.

Okay, it was David's logic, but I'm sure it made sense to his brain. Tommy's gray matter didn't quite comprehend the action, but his lungs seemed to pick up on what was going on. They then apparently commanded Tommy's limbs to pick up a plastic shovel and start beating the crap out of David's ear.

When I finally stopped laughing, I tried to calm down wild things with a nice cousinly photo op.

Believe it or not, this was the best shot out of over 20 as I tried to get all five rug rats to look directly at the camera.

After swallowing a few gallons of salted water and building castles in the sand that Tommy liked to un-build with his foot, we decided to bring the sailors to shore.

Between the kitchen and the bathroom at my dad's place there is a beaded curtain that Tommy has named 'the wall of death'. Since Tommy is still diaper-bound, he unfortunately had no use for the room on the stinky side of death and up until today was quite content with staying in the kitchen with Angie. Uh, what the HELL is Angie doing in the kitchen??!!

After two bowls of Fruity Pebbles and half a glass of cherry Coke that he was not supposed to gulp, Tommy finally found the courage to just go for it.

This went on for about two hours until my dad came in and kicked all single-digit types into the pool.

Today was apparently the day for Tommy to learn new things. Let the lesson begin!

Today's lesson began when Tommy decided not to go in the pool. He chose instead to hang out on the patio and lock out slightly hung-over adult types. By Tommy's logic, this was cute and amusing - for the first twenty minutes. After that, a certain hairy-chested beach bum brought his logic to the patio door with pleading threats like 'PLEEEEEEEEEEEASE open the frickin' door before I kick it down and lock you behind the wall of death!' In the end, Papa's logic ruled. As it should be.

--------------------------------------------
Ladder Talk:
1) What was the best part of your day?
Peter: When we go to the beach and I go in the water with Patrick.
David: At the beach and I build a super-duper castle for Stephanie.
Tom: When I go vrrrmm-boom and then I go in.

2) What was the worst part of your day?
Peter: When I wanted to stay on the beach but you say no.
David: When Tommy whack me in the ear with a shovel.
Tom: When you so mad why I lock the door.

3) What would you like to do tomorrow?
Peter: To see Oma.
David: To play with Stephanie, maybe War.
Tom: To go to the big pool again.

I solemnly do retire

2011-06-17T22:32:00.006+02:00

I WAS A SAILOR ONCE.
I WAS PART OF THE NAVY,
AND THE NAVY WILL ALWAYS
BE PART OF ME.

--Vice Admiral Harold M. Koenig USN (Ret), M.D.

My dad joined the Marine Corps in 1967 and served a tour in Chu Lai, Vietnam. After the war, he was honorably discharged and apparently felt mentally and physically prepared enough to have children. What followed is now more commonly referred to as Christine and Steve, whose constant screaming, fighting and bickering may or may not have influenced his decision in 1977 to return to the military. I will say that this time around, he chose a branch that guaranteed long, tranquil months at sea on big metal thingies that float. That's right - my dad became a United States squid and the adventure began.

Today, my dad ended one job and embarked on another adventure that involves suspenders, hobbies and cereal rich in fiber, but more on the melancholy retiree-type later. For now, he was still in his element.

'Ah, Dad - are you sure you want to eat breakfast with Angie's children wearing your dress whites?'

'Good point, son. Maybe I'll just check if the surprise has pulled up yet.'

'Surprise? What surprise?'

Nobody tells me anything.

Vena had apparently discovered Dad's surprise and picked up the bat phone to announce the news to someone from the 50's who still had a landline.

'Holy shit! There's a limo in our driveway! Tweet you later - bye!'

The limo driver obviously moonlights as a photographer specializing in capturing the essence of masculinity. I mean, come on - just check out my shoulders. That's not photo shop, baby.

The limo driver's skills did not stop with being able to photograph pure manliness; he could also drive limos. Dude, this guy totally ROCKS!

We felt the need to keep up with the guy rocking the steering wheel, so I showed the boys 'the wet bar'. This consisted of three root beers in a champagne bucket of ice. What a freakin' waste!

Angie was apparently irritated at something or someone, but this happens on a bi-minute basis, so I chose to ignore her, even though this tends to irritate her further. Welcome to my vicious circle.

When we finally got to the retirement hangar, something, and I still don't know what, made me think that David was hungry.

'Holy shit! Davey's trying to eat Patrick!'

Luckily Christine, A.K.A. 'Snack Attack' had packed 500 sandwiches. It was kinda like Famine Day, just without the Irish pub full of people laughing and pointing fingers at the gullible Asian guy. Sorry Johnny.

After a rather disgusting grape jelly frenzy, the boys found my dad's auxiliary gear.

Before David could try on the hand-shaped napkins and the paper-towel hat, we were summoned to be seated.

As the ceremony began, I tried to get a nice shot of Angie's forehead. No reason, really; it's just been a personal challenge of mine for years, kinda like those people who spend decades trying to photograph the elusive Big Foot. For a change, I was successful. Jackpot!

Holy crap! Check that out! God surely broke the mold after crafting that noggin. I'm just glad that Angie finds my sense of humor sexy enough to overlook minor and temporary lapses in mental judgment when it comes to publishing photographic content of what I now lovingly refer to as her cranial landing surface. Hi sofa, long time no see.

Speaking of landing surfaces, check out Davey. Then check out the pilot's name engraved on the side.

I can only hope that the taxpayers did not really buy my dad a jet as a retirement gift. My dad wisely chose to ignore Goose and proceeded to get awards from people like the president. Yes, You Can. Retire.

Gee, thanks, but did you get anything from the Mayor of Philadelphia?

See, my dad grew up on the streets of Philly and when he was asked if he would like a letter of recognition from anyone special, my dad mentioned the Mayor of Philadelphia. Unless a 'thanks, but screw you' counts, the closest to brotherly appreciation for my dad's 40 years of service was a soft pretzel and a pack of cream cheese. Yo, thanks, Nutter.

The ceremony was great. After the speeches came the gifts. The first was an original Marine footlocker that was standard issue at Parris Island.

The inside was covered with patches, stickers and memorabilia from my dad's various units over the decades. Hurrah!

Next was a shadow box that took two grown men to hold. That should say it all.

The next scheduled event was more of a walk down memory lane. Growing up, I was forced to watch the Godfather trilogy at least 240 times. Don't ask me why - even my therapist can't figure it out. At least my dad's odd bond with dead horses and cannoli was not limited to his immediate family. No, over the years he has obviously imposed his odd infatuations with his extended military family. As soon as Vena and Jerrell started playing the Godfather theme, the collective crowd laughed and roared all too knowingly.

Vena and Jerrell nailed it. Really. Marlon Brando would have been proud. He probably would have still boycotted the ceremony, but I think that was just his thing. Kinda like my dad and his weird quirk to fall backwards while cutting retirement cakes.

The after-retirement ceremony was a class act. The wild thing was, the class included Peter, David, Tom, Patrick and Stephanie and trust me, their acts were worthy of retirement. If not high treason.

As with any party, there is always an end and I was proud to see that my father walked the green mile in stride.

I can only imagine the emotions that were going through his head as he made his final departure in dress whites. Not so hard to imagine, let alone visualize, smell or hear was the departure of three liberty hounds on their way to the next party.

As we headed to the second party, the boys wanted to goof a mile in Pop-Pop's hat. Considering that he no longer needs to have a presentable cover, he felt no reason to object.

At one point, we hit traffic. The boys didn't mind, but I think our limo driver did. See, to put it discreetly, Tommy had crapped his pants and we (Angie) had stupidly forgotten to pack spare diapers.

Yeah, he was really heart-broken about the whole 'stinky limo' thing. So was my dad, who jumped out of the limo before it came to a full stop and asked for the bar. Come on, Jack's waiting.

The good thing about hiring a limo driver is that they are pretty much at your beck and mercy, even if it involves driving a forgetful mother back home to change her stinky son. Ba-bye!

Inside, the Johnson brothers proved their bloodline by immediately pounding drinks.

I love that Angie is in the background, bellying up to the bar after returning from operation poop-sack. She's not a Johnson by blood, but for some strange reason, her liver has been accepted as one of the family.

Tommy wasted no time in finding expensive shit to break.

As Vena taught clean-bottomed children how to annoy guests with sensitive ears, my cousin taught diaperless boys how to be silly. Um, yeah, thanks Nancy, but they don't really need help.

As everyone lined up for the buffet, Vena and Jerrell played the first encore rendition of The Godfather theme.

As soon as the tune started, Tommy took his cue and ran up to his God-Uncle and whispered 'I know it was you, Bob. You broke my heart. You broke my heart!'

Luckily Uncle Bob followed my approach and simply ignored weird children that quote The Godfather.

After dinner came the show. It started with a series of speeches, followed by songs, culminating with a rendition of Gunga Din that shook the room.

I was a little worried because speeches and poetry are not really their thing, but the boys seemed to be enjoying it. Kinda.

After the show, the manager in me felt compelled to whip out a flip chart and hold a presentation that highlighted the values that I have learned from my father.

TRUST

It's important to teach kids the value of trust, but some fathers apparently find it equally as important to teach their gullible son not to be so trusting. It all began on 'Italian night'. Mom was in the kitchen dishing up meatballs and spaghetti, which left Dad alone with me. Enough foreshadowing? I was just a young punk and like David, I was a very curious creature. I asked my dad what the red flakes were in the glass jar on the table. He glanced casually to the kitchen to confirm my mom was still preoccupied. Then he leaned forward and whispered 'candy - you wanna smell?'. Well, duh! Of course I wanted to. I snatched the shaker out of his hands, shoved it up to my nose, and gave it a snort that would make Marion Barry proud. Two seconds later, I was twitching on the ground with two fingers shoved up my nose, trying to liberate the crushed red pepper flakes that had lodged in my nasal canal. The only sound that could be heard above my snot-bubbling wailing and coughing was my dad's gleeful laughter. Thanks, Dad.

FEAR

The night before Halloween is called 'Devils night'. It's when little kids are allowed and sometimes even encouraged by father figures to engage in petty mischief. So yeah, Dad was supposed to be babysitting, but this was apparently too boring. He came into the living room and dropped a duffel bag full of gear - camouflage paint, shoe polish, eggs, rice and soap. As Dad painted war faces on us, he explained that we were going to play a trick on his friend Ralph. Christine was charged with applying shoe polish underneath the door handle of Ralph's car and soaping up the windows. I was tasked with chucking an egg at his living room window, followed by fistfuls of rice. Move out! When we got to Ralph's, my dad parked the car down the street and informed us that he would wait in the car, in case a quick getaway was needed. Chris and I nervously tiptoed down the sidewalk to Ralph's house. As we approached his front door, a monster jumped out of the bushes and tried to eat us. Christine and I bolted towards the car and were completely baffled. My dad was standing by the car laughing his ass off. Um, hello DAD! There is a freakin' monster behind us. As it turned out, the monster was just Ralph in a cheap rubber mask. My dad had apparently called him in advance and convinced him to lurk in the bushes and attack innocent children. Thanks, Dad. Thanks, Ralph.

WEAPONS

Growing up with a complete lack of trust and an overabundance of fear played a big part in my early interest in weapons. My dad fueled this obsession by bringing back knives from ports around the world. He also supplied me with swords, BB guns and archery supplies that kept me entertained, even if it was often at the expense of my older sister. Thanks, Dad. Sorry, Chris.

RESPONSIBILITY

Parents are normally accountable for their actions and try to instill that sense of responsibility in their offspring. I'm sure my dad was getting ready for that lesson, but apparently learning how to fish is a prerequisite. The first thing I learned was that one cannot go fishing without a beer. The second thing I learned was that mothers are not so amused when their underage son comes home from catching seafood and passes out on the sofa. Thanks Dad. Sorry, Mom. Buurrppp.

FORGIVENESS

So now we jump forward to my junior year - the year I discovered house parties. We were living in Japan at the time and my parents would go to Tokyo every couple of weeks and spend the night. As every high schooler knows, if you are a junior with an empty house and you don't throw a party, you better get yourself a pair of horn-rimmed glasses and sign up for the math club. I hate math, so I began a short-lived series of house parties that rocked, unless you ask my older sister, who very strongly objected. She likes math. The first couple times, it worked like a charm. Mom and Dad would leave at 7:00 sharp and at 8:30 we would turn the party lamp on. I always taped big DO NOT DRINK signs in front of my dad's bar and his Fosters in the fridge. We would then fill the washing machine with ice and voilá - instant party. Just add liquid. What I did not count on was the one time my parents drove two hours to Tokyo, found out that their reservation had been cancelled, and then decided to drive back home. My mom opened the front door and let me just say, she was a few notches below amused. She disappeared and left my dad to deal with me. By this point, people had already dived out of windows and cleared the place. I watched nervously as my dad stepped over empty beer cans and pizza boxes as he made his way to his bar. He noted the sign I had placed there and continued to the fridge, where he saw the taped X placed in front of his beer. The whole time he had not said anything, which I took as a bad sign. He eventually sat down in his lazy chair and motioned for me to come over. 'When I was your age, I did the same thing and my parents beat the hell out of me. I swore to myself then that if I ever had a son, I would let him get away once.' Then he leaned in close and raised a single finger in front of my nose. 'Once.' With that he went to bed and we never spoke about it again. Thanks Dad. Sorry Mom.

RESPECT

After graduating from high school, I decided to go on an adventure of my own and joined the Navy. After boot camp, I flew back to Japan to visit. At the time, military personnel traveling on international flights had to wear their uniform. My dad knew this and even though he was picking me up on a Saturday, he showed up in his uniform. At first, I thought 'You bastard! You put on your uniform just so that I would have to salute you.' Okay, it was true - I was enlisted and required to salute an officer in uniform, but I realize now that the act was one of respect - mutual respect. Thanks, Dad.

DREAM

Over the years, my dad has taught me to dream. To have a goal and work hard to achieve what you want in life. Work hard, play hard. Growing up, my dad has shared with me some of his personal dreams and a good majority of them have been fulfilled. For years, I've asked 'What do you want to do when you retire?'. The answer was inevitably 'move to Alaska, grow my hair long, smoke pot and ride motorcycles'. I've avoided the bubble-bursting reality check until now, but I think it's only fair to tell you, Dad - pot is still illegal under federal law, even in Alaska; you still haven't learned how to ride a motorcycle, which is what I would call 'a new trick'; and you're hair, well - good luck with the pony tail. Sorry, Dad.

Speaking of dreams, the boys visibly enjoyed my presentation.

Needless to say, there was no Ladder Talk tonight. Instead, I will close with a father-son note.
--------------------------------------------

Hey Padre,

I know today was one hell of a day for you. I can't imagine how difficult it was to hang up a hat that you've worn for 40 years and I was proud to see that you made your exit in style and with dignity. I was glad to be there with my animals to share the moment - it will be cherished forever.

Your son, your friend, your shipmate,

Steve

TODAY WE ARE HERE TO SAY
'SHIPMATE... THE WATCH STANDS RELIEVED
RELIEVED BY THOSE YOU HAVE TRAINED, GUIDED, AND LEAD
SHIPMATE YOU STAND RELIEVED... WE HAVE THE WATCH...'

'BOATSWAIN... STANDBY TO PIPE THE SIDE... SHIPMATE'S GOING ASHORE...'

--The Watch

Goggle boy and the pool-side munchers

2011-06-16T22:37:00.008+02:00

From an early age, Peter has always had a thing for goggles. Don't ask me why - like most weird quirks our kids have, I blame Angie. This time, though, I actually have proof. I thought it was funny that nobody else questioned why Peter was wearing goggles while we devoured burgers. Yeah, funny.

Today's agenda consisted of swimming, eating Play-Doh, and waiting on the steps for my dad to come home.

Notice the weird-ass skeleton behind the step-brothers. If you find it unusual, you've obviously never been to my dad's place. His house is a museum for the normal-challenged, which did explain why my children felt so at home.

The room behind them has been named 'The Quarterdeck Lounge' by my dad. It's also where I was working on a secret project for my dad's retirement party, so I kept yelling at the boys to stop scooching up the steps. They're crap with instructions, though - not to mention secrets.

George decided to come to my rescue by running up the stairs, hitting the lock button on the inside of the door, and then closing it. He then proudly explained that when we wanted to go back in, we just needed a screwdriver to turn the 'unlock' button.

'Ah, George? I don't see an unlock button.'

'Crap.'

For the next fifteen minutes, I heard muffled grumbling and door rattling as George sweated through his self-assigned mission to get the door back open.

When I finally heard the victorious click, George whipped around triumphantly.

'See, easy.'

'Yeah, that's great, George, but how about we just use normal threat tactics to keep the kids out of the room?'

At one point, Dad ran to the store to buy steaks and came back with a cow. I tried to explain that on a hungry day, our boys might eat half a steak between the three of them, but like Angie, he just ignored me.

'Cut 'em up, I'll fire up the grill.'

After a gluttonous dinner and another round of W.A.R. with the Commander in Chef, the boys were starting to crash. I was, too, but we were all stuttering in anticip-p-p-p-pation for Vena and Jerrell to show up. The retirement ceremony is tomorrow and in keeping with her unusual visiting tradition, Vena would only be staying for 24 hours. Odd, I know, but it did explain why some of the odder ones were so happy to see her. At least goggle-boy finally had retired his costume.

--------------------------------------------
Ladder Talk: [Tommy crashed early]
1) What was the best part of your day?
Peter: When Vena come and I meet the Jay Rell.
David: At the pool, when Pop-pop he throw me in the water.
Tom: zzzzzzzzz

2) What was the worst part of your day?
Peter: When Davey threw the chair on my head!
David: When Patrick bonk me on the head with the sword.
Tom: zzzzzzzzz

3) What would you like to do tomorrow?
Peter: To go to Pop-pop's party.
David: To eat 500 bowls of cereal 'cause it is so yummy!
Tom: zzzzzzzzz

Cousinly Love

2011-06-15T22:17:00.015+02:00

It's amazing how quickly weird kids bond with each other; it's like they can sniff bizarreness from a mile away and come racing in for a whiff of each other's peculiarity. It's been over two years since the last reunion of the oddballs, but it only took two minutes for the future nutcases to bond. It took another 2 seconds for their true colors to come shining through.

'Great! Lovely! Now let's get this freak show on the road!'

Speaking of, we couldn't find Angie, so I went back inside to try and find her. I heard strange grunting noises coming from the kitchen and walked in to find her hyperventilating into a bag. I raced over to see if she was okay, only to realize that Angie had her head shoved halfway down a bag of potato chips. I guess Mama likey American chips.

'Yo! Snack attack, pack up your feedbag and let's go!'

Whackos one through five kept with the whole 'normal and crazy theme' as we got ready to board the ferry.

'Ferry? What ferry?' you ask. Personally, I don't think you really care. I know I didn't. It was a boat and this was enough to entertain five normal-challenged kids. Does it really matter where we were going?

The Love Boat was way before David and Stephanie's time, but I guess nautical romance has no boundaries.

Cute, but in a weird way. I broke up lover boy and told him to go look for a boat built for ten. Instead, his fault-riddled mind instructed him to run his hand along a wooden railing that looked like it should have been replaced back when Angie still had bangs.

'Buddy, don't do that - you're just going to get a splinter.'

'No, you're the spinter, not me.'

'Okay, have fun.'

Luckily, Mama Tweezerhands is trained in treating pint-sized morons that don't listen to their incredibly wise and undeniably hot fathers.

I've been known to brag on occasion, but Angie took the cake when she gloated repeatedly - 'who got the splinter out of David's hand? Oh, that's right - I did.'

'Yeah, that's great and I congratulate you and your massive cranium on being able to pull out the pencil-size toothpick that had barely broken the surface. Bravo, mein Schatz! Bravo!'

Honesty can sometimes get you into trouble. But every now and then, if you're lucky, it can make crazy-mad-furious women scurry to the lower decks to fume as their more-than-fit hubbies bond with the weird class.

We docked and herded the odd ones down the street to a nice German restaurant that Christine had picked out.

'Um, Chris - you do know that we just came from Germany, right?'

'Yeah.'

Peculiar, but at least they served American beer, so I felt it was culturally balanced. Angie thought that she might have spotted a Marshalls and ran across the crowded street screaming like a madwoman. My wallet and I looked at each other in surprise. Had Angie really just disappeared to go shopping until the food comes?

Angie came back as the food was being served. The good news - it was not a Marshalls. My wallet and I breathed a collective sigh of relief. The expensive news - it was still a store that accepted cash and Angie had taken spending money.

Halfway through their first bite, the craziest three tried to impale themselves on metal spears. I, of course, grabbed my camera and raced off to shoot first and save later. Better get used to them bars.

After 'Three Flew Over the Cuckoo's Nest' we grabbed some popcorn and settled in for part five of 'Puff, the Nutty-ass Dragon'.

On the way back to the Ferry, Mom bought us a round of coffees and we stood on the corner playing Charades. 'Cause that's normal, right? At one point, Peter asked if he could have a coffee. I shit you not; I laughed and chuckled the rest of the way back to the ferry. Thanks, Peter - good one.

At one point, Angie noticed that she was missing one of her earrings. I gave my most sympathetic 'shit happens' shrug, but apparently this is not the preferred reaction from husbands that give a damn.

'We need to go back!'

'Go back where?'

'Everywhere!!!! We need to find it!!'

'Uh, the boat's leaving in three minutes. Can you maybe narrow down the search any?'

Angie didn't exactly say that she hates me, but her eyes did. For about three minutes, I felt really bad that Angie had managed to lose an earring. After that, I was perched at the front of the boat putting Leonardo DiCaprio to shame. As he should be.

After anchoring at the home port, Angie took the new recruits for their first liberty call. My first port visit did not involve sitting on the dock of the bay, but I did not have my mom as the tour guide. I can safely say that we're both glad about that.

Angie is fascinated with seashells, so when she began frantically pointing and screaming 'LOOK!', Peter probably just assumed she was pointing out the 500th mollusk of the day. I tried getting a picture of Peter's reaction, but it only took a fraction of a second after getting a glimpse of what Mama was pointing at for Peter to run away screaming like a little girl. Damn, I need a faster camera.

'Peter, where are you going? Come on, it's just a jellyfish.'

'Aaaaaarrrrrggggghhhh!!!!!!!'

We caught up with Peter ten minutes later. Actually, I almost tripped over him, thinking 'Man, the homeless are getting younger and younger.'

I guess he was slightly out of breath after escaping from those 'evil jell-o fish that can jump out of the water and suck on my eye'. With that statement, Peter won the prize for being the least sane person. Not an easy win, trust me.

Shortly after, we headed back home to let schizoid-boy swim a victory lap in Dad's pool. The problem is, Peter cannot swim. Instead, he decided to jump in a raft with Tommy and squirt water into his face.

I tried to figure out where Peter gets his 'mean prank' gene, but I was too busy laughing my ass off. Don't worry, Tommy - you'll have your day.

Just when I thought things could not get more bizarre, my dad came home. It's amazing how quickly weird kids bond with strange grandfathers.

We (I) somehow managed to get the kids in bed. When we (I) came back down, we (I) found Angie, in the kitchen. With a bag of chips. Again. At least this time she was not inhaling cholesterol; she had the bag inverted and was gobbling down the last few crumbs.

'Hey! Here's my earring!'

Before I could even congratulate her, I sensed her regret in vocalizing the discovery. I'll lay out what I think her thought process was: Steve knows that I had my head in a bag of chips this morning > Steve's an ass > Steve knows I lost an earring today > Steve's an ass > Steve just caught me with the same bag of chips > Steve's an ass > Steve is probably going to put two and two together and write some embarrassing story about how I lost my earring this morning in a chip-eating frenzy that tasted sooooo good. At least my wife knows me well.
--------------------------------------------

Ladder Talk:
1) What was the best part of your day?
Peter: Patrick and the boat.
David: When Stephanie she laughed and she is so little.
Tom: When we go on the boat.

2) What was the worst part of your day?
Peter: When you laugh at me over the jell-o fish.
David: When Oma go home.
Tom: When Peter shoot the water in my eye.

3) What would you like to do tomorrow?
Peter: Go swimming in the pool with Patrick and Stephanie.
David: To go to Oma.
Tom: To shoot Peter in the eye.

Bells & Duck Calls

2011-06-14T21:47:00.344+02:00

My dad will be retiring from the Navy in four days, so I can completely understand that he needs to go into work; we were jet-lagged from hell anyway and could really use the extra sleep. Unfortunately, 'we' turned out to be Angie and me; the boys had somehow recovered after 4 hours of sleep and were ready to party. And Pop-Pop likes to boogie...

The party began at 5:45. Sorry - 0545 in the Foxtrot Alpha Mike for you military types. I raced downstairs to see who the hell was ringing something that sounded like a ship's bell and why. In doing so, I made two discoveries. And all this before the crack of dawn.

First, and least interesting to my ears - Peter is apparently a natural born bell ringer. I didn't know this because I am a sane parent that doesn't allow satanic noise-makers in the house. Knowing that parents are supposed to encourage their kids, though, I immediately started thinking about locking Quasimodo in a church tower so that he could further develop this newfound skill. Thanks, Padre.

The second discovery was that my dad is a complete ass. If I look back on my childhood, there were so many opportunities for me to come to this earth-shattering realization sooner, but it was not until I caught him sneaking out the door, giggling like a schoolboy.

'Have fun.'

As my brain tried digesting this latest discovery, I heard something from the living room that sounded like a duck call.

'Davey, what the hell do you think you're doing?'

'Pop-pop showed me. Listen, I'm a duck!'

A rhyming game popped into my head, but before I could vocalize my jingle, sleeping beauty walked in, asking why the world was so loud. I explained to Angie the concept of Karma and my recent revelation that my father is an ass.

'Oh, thanks for the news flash! I kinda knew that you got it from someone and hello - your Mom is too nice.'

'Shut up, woman - I'm nice!'

Luckily, the combination of bell ringing and duck calls made it completely impossible for me to understand Angie's next babble. I'm practiced in ignoring women, though. Instead, I suggested that we head to the river out back and look for real ducks.

'Oh, Davey, look - A TURTLE! How cool is that?'

'I don't see it.'

This went on for about an hour until David was close to tears. I suggested to Mama Nature that maybe she should stop irritating our sleep-deprived kids. Apparently, Frumpy could have used some more nappy time as well.

For the rest of the afternoon, we decided to go terrorize my Mom. It started with a nice childish interrogation.

'Hi, Oma. When are Patrick and Stephanie coming?'

'Well, Aunt Christine called and the traffic is really...'

'Are they here yet?'

'No, I just tried to explain that they are stuck...'

'Are they here yet?'

Eventually the boys got tired of testing my mom's patience and decided to go for her nerves instead.

'Look, Oma - no hands!'

'Uh, I normally don't let kids climb the tree. Can you come down now?'

'You want me to climb higher? Sure, no problem.'

'No, that's not what I...'

'Are they here yet?'

So, yeah - Chris and George were stuck in a mega traffic jam that meant we would have to wait another day for the Great Cousin Reunion. My ears weren't exactly devastated.

On the way back to my dad's, we stopped by the store to get cereal for what will hopefully be a quieter breakfast tomorrow morning. David was, well...hmmm, how do I put this...impressed...yeah, that's it - impressed with how many more types of cereal they have in America. Yeah, impressed.

Shortly after this lovely snapshot, David grabbed three boxes of cereal and took off running screaming 'you'll never catch me!'. I had the keys to the car, though, so I wasn't worried.

We caught up with the Cookie Crook on aisle 7. He was sitting on the floor with his stash - four Hershey's chocolate bars and a bag of powdered sugar. I asked him where the cereal was and he just laughed at me. Whatever.

When we got home, I realized that energy levels were high. I repeat - energy levels were high. I didn't earn the self-proclaimed nickname 'wise-ass Papa' for no reason. I immediately commanded the gooftards to go jump in the pool. Peter was the first one ready.

It's amazing how tired children get after swallowing a gallon of chlorine. If I were a business man, I'd sell sugarless chlorine gum to desperate parents. There's plenty of them out there.

As I was trying to get Tommy to drink his third glass of 'Papa's sleepy water', my dad came home and whisked the boys off to WAR. Gee, thanks, Dad!

My dad will be retiring from the Navy in four days, so I can completely understand that he needs to get his war-face on every chance he gets. I didn't understand why he had to jump up and ring the bell like a mad man every time he won a hand, but at least the kids loved it. I can't wait to be a granddad.

--------------------------------------------
Ladder Talk:
1) What was the best part of your day?
Peter: The pool.
David: The pool.
Tom: The pool.

2) What was the worst part of your day?
Peter: When I go under the water.
David: That I not see the turtle in the river.
Tom: That my popo hurts.

3) What would you like to do tomorrow?
Peter: To see Patrick and Stephanie.
David: To see the turtle.
Tom: I want to eat cereal.

Coming to America

2011-06-13T22:28:00.020+02:00

Being a parental member of the Johnson Zoo carries with it certain responsibilities and obligations. The first being - procrastinate like hell and push lateness past the limit. Easy, simple guidelines that I have lived by for years, but apparently Angie wanted to draw lines in the sand before we had even made it to the beach of Virginia. My version, as if there might be any other, is that Angie had a full-on freak-out attack the night before our trip.

'We haven't packed yet - aaaaagggggghhhhhh!!!!!!!'

'Here's an idea - how about you pack then?'

'Yeah, but we don't even have a checklist! We need a checklist! Aaaaagggggghhhhhh!!!!!!!'

'Um...okay. Does this help?'

'Aaaaagggggghhhhhh!!!!!!!'

As cute and cuddly as this may seem, it went on for hours. I got close to bored until Angie posed what turned out to be a very valid question.

'Are you sure we have all the approval paperwork for Homeland Security?'

'Oh, ye of little faith. Here you go, check it out - approved, printed and ready to present to the Homeland hotties that will surely be hitting on me tomorrow morning when we...'

'You got my birthday wrong.'

'What? Let me see that. Hmm, yeah... okay, that's a notch or two above embarrassing. I got October right, though, so what's the big...'

'HOLY SHIT - YOU USED MY MAIDEN NAME FOR THIS APPLICATION???'

In my defense, the whole 'birthdate' thing was an error that I blame on the crappiness of their website. When you are in the birthday field and use the middle mouse button to scroll down to see the fields below that need to be completed, it does not scroll. Instead, it changes the date that you had just selected in the birthday field, which can, if you don't notice this, result in a very agitated life partner. Yes, that's my story and I will so testify in any court of law.

The court of Angie did not give a fraction of an ever-loving shit. Her primary aneurysm was triggered by the fact that I had inadvertently used her maiden name. Comments like 'You do realize we're married, right?' and 'Oh my God, you're a moron!' did little to allow me to explain, but I tend to ignore Angie when she starts hyperventilating, just as a standard operating procedure.

'The website stated that the name has to match the passport identically; otherwise, you will not be allowed to travel.'

'Aaaaagggggghhhhhh!!!!!!!'

'So, I looked at your passport and there it was - your maiden name in BOLD CAPITAL LETTERS.'

'Yeah, but that was under the field that asked for 'maiden name'. JOHNSON is also capitalized in bold, but it's listed in that funny field that asks for my CURRENT NAME. You know, the one that I would expect my husband to know.'

'Oh, come on; stop being such a worry wart. Do you really think Homeland Security will care if the name that we gave on the security application actually matches your passport?'

'Aaaaagggggghhhhhh!!!!!!!'

Needless to say it was a long night.

In the morning, the first task that logically popped into Angie's mind was to iron all of the garments that we were about to cram into tiny suitcases. Whatever keeps her happy.

My mind was preoccupied with how the hell I was going to convince Homeland Security to let morons into their country. The only master plan I could come up with was to have Angie act surprised and call me a moron when airport security asked why the name on the her passport did not match the name on the ESTA application. Shouldn't be too much of a stretch for her.

Before leaving, I grabbed our marriage certificate and told Angie to stop calling me names. Then we got the show on the road, which ended up more like a road show when we hit the airport.

I pushed our carry-on luggage up to the check-in counter and waited for the inevitable.

'I'm sorry, Mr. Johnson, but there seems to be a problem.'

'He's a moron!!'

'Not yet, Angie.'

The confused check-in lady went on to explain that Angie Johnson was not approved for travel.

'It's because he's a moron!!'

I explained that my wife has Tourette's syndrome and that the best approach would be to just ignore her. Afterwards, I had to come clean and acknowledge that yes; I had used her maiden name for the ESTA approval. She looked at me like I was a moron and called her supervisor over.

'Sir, I'm sorry, but we are not going to be able to let you fly unless you can provide an official document confirming your marriage. You don't happen to have a copy of your marriage certificate?'

'Of course I do. What moron would travel without one? Here you go.'

'Thank you, Mr. Johnson. You can proceed with check-in and, I'm sorry, but I've got to ask - how do you avoid ripping the sleeves of your shirt with such huge biceps?'

'Practice, my friend. Practice.'

After what might have been a few too many minutes of gloating, Angie was actually pissed at me that I had managed to deliver on my promise that 'everything will work out fine.' I honestly think part of her was hoping that our vacation would be cancelled, just so she could get all up in my face. Part of me was hoping that our vacation would be cancelled too, but for completely different reasons.

At one of the stores, we surprised the boys by telling them they could each pick a toy for the plane. They did not really surprise us with their first choice.

After refining the offer to picking a toy that could not make noise, squirt water or set things on fire, the boys sighed and reluctantly settled for coloring books and stickers. Great. Lovely. Let's move!

At security, Angie and I learned a valuable lesson that we would like to pass on to any kid-ridden travelers. Do not ever, ever let your kids go through the metal detector first. Ever.

Tom ran through giggling, quickly followed by David. I grabbed Peter as soon as I realized what was going down. Angie noticed as well and started racing after them.

'Beeeeeepppp!!'

'Ma'am, please step back and...'

'But my...'

'No, buts. Step back now!'

David turned back long enough to smirk and wave as he disappeared into the crowded airport with Tommy. For a brief second, I heard giggling over the beeping of the metal detector. Then nothing.

Angie and I scrambled to strip off belts, watches, shoes and anything that looked remotely beepable. We finally made it through, but Angie's purse was tagged for an additional security check, so I left Peter and ran off in search of bad boys.

I found them trying to convince the ice-cream guy to give them a free sample. Instead of frozen dessert, I gave them two scoops of freak-out with a few sprinkles of spaz.

I came back just in time to see the contents of Angie's purse being dumped on a metal counter by a guy wearing rubber gloves. Ten minutes later, we were ready to go. And wait.

What you might miss in this lovely shot is that Peter is holding a satanic device, more commonly referred to as The Rubik's Cube. The thing is evil. Pure evil. A few weeks ago, Peter apparently got interested in what toys Satan likes to play with, and me being the awesome dad that I am decided to 'learn' the cube. How hard can it be?

I must admit, not that hard, but it's all proportional to how many hours of your life you want to donate to Rubik and his cube from hell. For me, it was all day Saturday and a good portion of Sunday. In the end, though, I was able to solve the damn thing in less than five minutes. I know that I should have taken this new-found knowledge and shared it with my kids, but it was a long flight so I chose the 'let'em figure it out on their own' approach that killed almost half the waiting time.

When we finally boarded, it was like someone had chucked a grenade near our seat. Literally minutes after getting our three boys seated, we noticed several single people evacuating the area. The flight wasn't packed, so they just grabbed their blanket and pillow and faded away. Sure, jealousy was my first reaction, but my second was that I hate them. With a passion.

Tommy found other things to amuse himself, such as annoying the crap out of one of the few passengers who had actually stayed with us. He was in the row in front of us and had made the stupid mistake of laughing the first time that Tom shoved his hand through the seats and poked him.

After the 34th elbow poke, the guy grabbed his pillow and blanket and assured Tommy that he would 'be right back'.

Shortly after clearing air space around our family, the movie service started. Things have changed quite a bit from my first flight, when friendly stewardesses handed out headsets and asked us to 'enjoy the show'. Nowadays, a disgruntled flight attendant storms through and demands five bucks a pop for ear-plugs made of sandpaper that are apparently famous for producing the worst quality of sound since Roseanne Barr sang the national anthem.

We quickly discovered that the monitors were not working for one section of the plane, namely the two seats in front of the boys and the two seats behind them. Oh, yeah - and theirs as well. At this point, I showed the boys the call button, which they then used every two minutes to remind the steward that their monitors were still not working. On the 8th or 9th trip over, he just stood there glaring at me.

'What are you looking at me for? It's going to be a long flight. If you can't reboot the monitors, could you at least find two open seats with monitors that do work?'

Bingo!

The flight was long, but luckily the selection of kid shows was even longer. They vegged out for most of the flight, but only Tommy slept. When we landed, I got a little worried. It was midnight Germany time and we still had to fight our way through customs and make it to our connecting flight. By we, I of course mean Angie, Peter and Tom, since David and I had no problems zipping through the line for U.S. passport holders.

Forty-five minutes later, a rather frazzled Angie emerged from the foreigner's line. This left approximately fifteen minutes to recheck our bags and tackle security again. Luckily, we were able to recheck our bags directly after customs and we still had ten minutes to get to the gate.

Drawing on our newly acquired knowledge on the sensible order for metal detector passage, we were able to avoid losing any of our children while going through security this time. What we didn't count on was Tommy's stuffed elk, which he absolutely had to have on the flight. When you turn it upside down and then back again, it makes a sound that I presume is supposed to be an elk mating call. Tommy insists it is the elk farting, which also explains his strange attachment to the stuffed animal.

Whatever the noise is does not really matter. What did matter, at least to the friendly TSA folks, is that there is a metal tube inside the thing that makes the sound. Germany apparently does not care about stuffed animals with metal inner pieces, but in America, this earned us a special visit to a curtained-off section.

Angie kept looking at her watch and finally tossed the elk at the guy with rubber gloves.

'You know what? Just keep it!'

With this, two things happened. This first was that Angie whipped around and tried walking away. The second, and probably more worrying thing was that the guy waived to his colleague and suddenly we were surrounded with TSA agents.

Fifteen minutes later, Angie finally understood that if you're being questioned about a suspicious object, you should not throw the thing at a security guy and try fleeing the scene. The good news was that, with the help of special bomb detecting equipment that was brought out just for us, we were able to confirm that the stuffed elk was, in fact, a stuffed elk. They even let Tommy keep it. Hey, thanks guys!

The not so good news was, our names are now most certainly on a list somewhere that will make our next trip to the U.S. rather interesting. The bad news was, we missed our flight. The worst news was, the next three flights were full and our only chance was to wait five hours for the last flight of the day and hope to hell we got on that one.

Considering that it was going on 4:00 AM Germany time, the boys were holding up great.

[Note: the stuffed elk in the middle of this picture is not a bomb]

They lounged about while I made calls to rearrange everything. My next vein-popping discovery was that we would be landing too late to pick up the rental car we had reserved. I then called my parents and asked them to drive out to the airport and try to get the rental car keys. When I was done, I thought for sure that the boys would be conked out, but they were still flight-worthy.

When we finally boarded, David banked a hard left and raced into the cockpit. When I caught up to him, he was explaining to the surprised pilot that 'my Opa is a pilot, can I sit there, what does this button do, do you have a parachute'. At least the pilot had more patience than the TSA agents.

When I pulled David back out, he accidentally dragged his foot across a panel full of switches and buttons. I explained this to the pilot who had not seen this, but he just shrugged. Buckle up!

It was only a forty-five minute flight, which meant that the only time the stewardess came by was to check that we had seatbelts on. She paused while checking David.

'My, you look tired.'

'No, you look tired.'

I spent the next five minutes lecturing David on the concept of respecting elders. I felt like I was really getting through to him until I heard the snoring.

When we got off of the plane, we had to wait for the stroller. Peter and David decided to play a new game called 'homeless underteens'.

The game must have been pretty fun, for they played it again while I worked out the rental car.

Luckily my parents were able to have the keys moved to another rental agency that was open after midnight. We were originally supposed to land at 7:00 PM, but as I mentioned, Angie and I have the responsibility and obligation to push lateness past the limit.
--------------------------------------------
Ladder Talk:
1) What was the best part of your day?
Peter: zzzzzzzzzzzzzz
David: zzzzzzzzzzzzzz
Tom: zzzzzzzzzzzzzz

2) What was the worst part of your day?
Peter: zzzzzzzzzzzzzz
David: zzzzzzzzzzzzzz
Tom: zzzzzzzzzzzzzz

3) What would you like to do tomorrow?
Peter: zzzzzzzzzzzzzz
David: zzzzzzzzzzzzzz
Tom: zzzzzzzzzzzzzz

Ready for a break

2011-06-11T23:11:00.028+02:00

Before I get to how Angie broke two of her toes in a ballerina kung-fu match against our tub, I should backtrack to earlier this week.

It all started on Tuesday when I sat down to complete the ESTA requirements for our trip to the States next Monday. For those of you who have yet to have the pleasure of being raped by the U.S. Department of Homeland Security, ESTA stands for Electronic System for Travel Authorization. Anyone travelling to the U.S. without a valid U.S. passport needs to apply for this approval at least 48 hours in advance. I was 168 hours in advance, although it didn't mean jack.

But why do we even need this, your holy nosiness asks, since we are all U.S. citizens? See, the funny thing is, Americans have this silly policy that prohibits entry into the country if one of the kid's passports has expired or the other kid's dad is a moron who somehow managed to forget to apply for the U.S. passport, despite several nags over the last year to 'get off your ass and set up the appointment at the embassy'. In my defense, David has a valid U.S. passport and hey - 1 out of 3 is still better than nothing, right? Apparently not.

I wasn't worried because, other than me, we are all also German citizens with valid German passports. My thinking was that after the long flight, I could dump Peter and Tom with Angie in the foreigner's line at customs while Davey and I zipped through the American fast-line.

The point when I did begin to worry was when Peter and Tom's passports were both rejected by ESTA.

'Passport is not valid.'

Angie's application had gone through with no problem, so I didn't understand where the hiccup was. I spent the next hour re-entering the form on the very unlikely off chance that I had done anything wrong.

'Passport is not valid.'

It did not help matters that there was no explanation at all - just a cute little pop-up message that cheerfully mocked my frustration.

'Passport is not valid.'

After spending several hours on the phone trying to get a human being with a pulse, I gave up and decided instead to surf chat rooms dedicated to bitching about Homeland Security.

Within a few minutes, I discovered the problem. The boys have a Kinderreisepass, which translates to 'children's passport'. I read on to find out that this passport is valid for entering into any country in the world, except the United States. So, to summarize - a child with a 'child's passport' needs a visa to enter the U.S. of A. I can only assume that this is to curb the recent influx of terrorists under the age of ten. Hey thanks a lot, ASSTA. I feel safer already.

I tried to explain our options to Angie, who had started hyperventilating and muttering 'I told you so' over and over.

I'll call the U.S. embassy tomorrow morning and see how quickly we can expedite a visa.
You call the city and see how long it would take to get the German 'adult passports' for the children.

The next day, I called the U.S. embassy on my way into work and quickly realized that friendly customer service is apparently not in their mandate. After explaining our predicament, I got what I like to call 'the one word response'.

'We're flying on Monday - is there any way to expedite the visa application?'

'No.'

Okay, short and not so sweet, but at least I could start freaking out sooner. Just then, Angie called and started screaming before I could even share my good news.

'You need to get your ass back here NOW! I called the city and if we make it there in the next two hours we might have a chance of getting the passports back by Friday.'

I turned the car around and gunned it. Apparently, I wasn't the only one freaking out. Angie had been folding clothes in the bathroom and instead of setting aside this chore to get ready for our impending mad dash, she decided to just complete the task quicker. This involved a series of relay runs back and forth from the bathroom to our closet. At some point, I guess Tommy got interested in Mama's sudden fitness sprints and moved in for a closer look.

The closer look came as Mama barreled into the bathroom for the next load and had to ninja-jump over Tommy to avoid crushing him. For unknown reasons, this must have pissed off our tub, who suddenly jumped out of nowhere and attacked Angie's toes.

As Angie's pinky toe was busy getting broken in two places, I was parking in the garage. I raced upstairs, ready to start our 'race to America'. Tommy met me at the front door.

'Mama has a owa.'

'She always does - where is she?'

I found Angie limping out of the bathroom.

'Oh, Steve - I really bashed my foot; I think I might have...'

'Yeah, yeah. Whatever, woman - let's go!'

We rushed over to the Kindergarten and yanked David out. It wasn't until after we got outside that we realized that we actually didn't need David since he was the only kid that actually has a valid U.S. passport, but it didn't really matter at that point. Welcome to the ride, Davey - buckle up!

At that point, the clouds decided to have their fun. So there we were - soaking wet, no umbrella and Angie could barely walk. As she hobbled along, she kept babbling something about how she thought her toe might be broken, but to be honest, I couldn't hear anything over the rain that was pouring down on us. Had this happened to another family, I would have laughed my ass off. Okay, you know me by now - I did chuckle. Slightly.

Next stop was Peter's school, but along the way, Angie and I decided to split up. I took David and Tom and raced off to find a photo shop that took biometric pictures. Angie's mission was to get Peter and hope to hell that he was not on a field trip.

I stormed into the first photo shop I could find, leaving the kids outside.

'Do you do biometric passport pictures?'

'Yes, we do!'

I then whistled for the boys to come in and the guy turned to me awkwardly.

'Umm, do you need biometric passport pictures for children?'

'What do you think?'

'Uh, well, we only do biometric pictures for adults here.'

'Of course! And where do they do them for children?'

I don't know if it was the veins popping out of my neck or the fact that my hands were clenched into a fist that was ready to beat the poor guy senseless if he didn't do it for me with his next response. He nervously pointed me down the road to another photo shop that does not turn away innocent children.

Along the way, Angie called that she had picked up Peter. I congratulated her and passed on the coordinates of the kid-friendly photo shop where we rendezvoused ten minutes later.

'Okay, you run to the city hall and get in line - I'll take the kids and get the pictures taken.'

'My foot really hurts.'

'That's great, honey - get moving.'

I was pleasantly surprised that there was no line. The guy came out and was intuitive enough to realize that I might pounce on him if he delayed things in any way, manner or fashion.

Tommy was the first to 'volunteer'. He is a natural-born camera hound and immediately jumped on the stool and started getting his pose on. The photo shop worker paused nervously.

'Ah, is this for a Kinderreisepass?'

I had a brief moment where I completely understood the breaking point for Michael Douglas in 'Falling Down'. Instead of whipping out a baseball bat and getting my freak on, I decided to try out 'the one word response' method that I had recently learned from the friendly embassy staff.

'No.'

'Okay - I only ask because in the adult passport they are not allowed to make funny faces.'

It was at that point that I noticed that Tom was grinning like the village idiot. We were in a hurry, so I tried convincing him to stop smiling. This did not work. In his mind, he was obviously the star and a camera was trained on his mug. Must. Smile. Now.

They don't call me Papa for nothing. My brain kicked into overtime and I began to play to Tommy's ego.

'Okay, Tommy - now I want you to be an angry tiger - growl for me!'

'That's great, Tommy. Now, I want you to look surprised.'

'Oh, perfect. Now, can you give me a sleepy-sad look?'

'Alright, camera-guy, take the picture!'

My methods might be unorthodox, but at least I deliver results. Peter was a bit easier to coerce; he had been yanked out of school and forced to race around in the rain, so not smiling was not a problem.

We finished up and darted over to the city office that did not yet realize that they held our vacation in their hands. As I walked in, I saw Angie shaking her head.

'Oh, no. Well, what can we do?'

'Nothing - you'll need to rebook.'

Angie brought me up to speed by explaining that the passports would take four days to come back from Berlin. I busted out my 'oh shit' calculator and quickly deduced that this would be Saturday. The office, being a German one, is not open on the weekends. Monday is a German holiday, so the earliest we could pick up the passports would be Tuesday. This would be tricky, though, since we were supposed to fly out on Monday.

'Oh, no. Well, what can we do?'

'Nothing - you'll need to rebook.'

As Angie continued working her pity mantra on the lady, I started looking around for a bat. I heard Angie call the kids over and wandered over to listen to her latest tactic.

'Listen up guys - I'm so sorry, but it looks like we're not going to be able to go on vacation. I've asked the lady several times, but apparently there's nothing she can do.'

Peter was the first one to start crying, followed by David. Tom didn't have a clue what was going on, but started bawling out of sheer solidarity. I glared at Angie, trying to figure out why the hell she would break the news to them here. She had an odd smile on her face and when our eyes met, she winked. What the huh?

Before I could puzzle on how Angie had lost her mind, I noticed that the woman had picked up the phone and was talking to the office in Berlin. She hung up the phone and called another office. After a few minutes, she explained that the passports actually take three days to reach the main office; the extra day is for them to be sent to the local office. Considering that the main office is only ten minutes away, we explained that yes, we would actually prefer to drive and pick them up on Friday than to miss our flights so that we'd have the convenience of walking three minutes to the local office.

Relieved that my passport malfunction had been resolved, I finally had a look at Angie foot. Her toes were swollen, black and blue and they smelled funny. I dumped the kids back at school and drove stinky foot to the foot doctor.

Murphy had apparently not gotten enough giggles for one day. Somehow, he had sneakily removed Angie's wallet from her purse so that when we finally made it to the reception, we had no medical card. I thought about telling the gimp to hobble her forgetful ass home and get it, but the whole 'you almost ruined our vacation' cloud was still hanging over my head. Besides, I hate waiting rooms.

When I made it back, the doctor had already concluded that Angie's toes were, in fact, broken.

He also chastised her for running around on broken toes for several hours, but what the hell does he know? He's only a doctor. He did crack me up when prescribing the treatment.

'At your age, surgery is not recommended...'

'What do you mean at my age?'

Either her tone or the subsequent glare was enough to steer the wise doctor off of the crash course he had just inadvertently headed down.

'Just keep it bandaged up and stay off of your feet for the next few weeks.'

When we got home, my little spring chicken promptly plopped on the sofa, grabbed the remote, and began following the good doctor's orders.

Honestly, though, I didn't see much difference between 'recuperation' and any given weeknight.

So, now let's jump forward to Friday. The big day, the day when all worries and concerns about missing our flight would be alleviated because we would be picking up the ADULT passports for our CHILDREN. I would also be officially removed from Angie's shit list, but that's more a personal 'me' thing.

I had to work, so Angie showed up at the main office with all three boys promptly at 11:00 as ordered. Peter's passport was there, which was good because his U.S. one had expired. David's passport was there, which did not matter much since he has a valid U.S. passport; we had ordered the German one along with the others just for shits and giggles. Tommy's passport was not there, which was not good.

'Oh, no. Well, what can we do?'

Angie didn't even wait for a response. She rallied the boys into a huddle of tears and sobbing by explaining that our vacation was off because Tommy's passport hadn't arrived. This method had already proven to be effective the first time, but would it work again?

One of the guys working there is actually a saint dressed in khaki pants and striped shirt with the number 7 on it. He picked up the phone and called Berlin to confirm that the passport had been sent. It had. Great. Wonderful. Lovely. Then he called the post office and had the package re-routed to another office in a nearby city. Then he saved our vacation.

'Look, I normally do not work on the weekends, but come to this address tomorrow at 11:00 and knock on the window.'

The address was for another government office in the next city over. Angie showed up to what strangely felt like a drug deal and knocked three times on the window. Seconds later, the door clicked open and the dealer showed us the goods.

The goods were golden, but we had little to offer in return. I had made sure that Angie brought the guy a nice bottle of Gran Reserva wine as a thank you. Without him, we would have had no chance in hell of flying out next week. And trust me - after this week, we were definitely ready for a break.
--------------------------------------------
Ladder Talk:
1) What was the best part of your day?
Peter: That I got Snoopy.
David: When I make the photo for my passbook.
Tom: That I play with my big laster.

2) What was the worst part of your day?
Peter: That Tom jumped on me.
David: That I break that squishy toy from Lauri.
Tom: When I cry why I not give Sarah a kiss.

3) What would you like to do tomorrow?
Peter: Fly to America!
David: Go to America.
Tom: When to go to Namerica.

Home Alone, Day Four: Tractors and Fire

2011-05-01T22:23:00.012+02:00

Day four of my wife-induced father-son bonding started out with David whacking me in the head with a bag of marshmallows at 06:30 in the AM.

'Can I have one, Papa?'

'If you mean a swift kick in the ass, yes. What the hell are you doing up so early?'

It was my own damn fault. A few weeks ago, I found the only store in Germany that actually sells American marshmallows. My mistake was buying them. I realized this directly after leaving the store and promptly hid them in the closet next to the soap and shampoo. They'll never find them.

Last night, I made the brilliant decision to put the marshmallows out on the kitchen counter so that I wouldn't forget to bring them to today's big BBQ at Grams & Opa's. David's early morning face-bashing was apparently the unwanted backup reminder. Thanks, buddy.

Today is May Day, a public holiday in Germany where people get drunk on wine and climb mountains. That's at least my understanding; it might be that the locals have a different interpretation, but it does mean that all of the surrounding hills are packed with inebriated hikers. For some strange reason, this is also the day when Opa likes to dust off his tractor and head to the hills.

As we plowed our way through crowded hiking trails, we had an interesting mixture of glares. Some people were pissed off because they disapproved that we were not walking. Others were irritated because we made them move out of the way. The loud clanking of the engine helped matters almost as much as Opa's horn honking.

A few of the truly shellacked actually waved and cheered. On one particularly steep incline, Opa had to stop. A friendly drunk lady immediately stumbled to the back and pretended to push the tractor up the hill. Opa took no notice, though, and kicked in the clutch to switch gears. By doing so, the tractor rolled back down the hill and almost killed the hammered trekkerette. I laughed of course, but luckily the roar of the tractor muffled my snickering.

The sun was shining and even the loud put-puttering throughout the entire tractor ride could not mask the incessant giggling and laughing. The boys had a blast, especially when Opa pulled over to allow a happy trio of wine connoisseurs to hitch a ride.

We made it back to the ranch and Opa fired up the grill. David immediately started screaming 'MARSHMALLOWS!!', but we (me) agreed that David should wait until after dinner.

In Germany, they cut meat differently than in the States, so it is simply not possible to get some cuts, like rib-eye steaks. Unless, of course, you are Opa. Somehow, he coerced a Western-oriented butcher to fill my belly with a little touch of home. And it didn't involve Budweiser.

David chowed down faster than I have EVER seen him eat. After a satisfied burp and the slight dabbing of a napkin, David stood up.

'Can I have one, Papa?'

'Sure, but you have to let them cool after roasting - they get super hot.'

David, like his mother, tends to ignore pure wisdom, even when it's delivered by a highly intelligent and sexually attractive male with a well-developed physique and a penchant for naggy women.

As I watched David lift the flaming sugar barrel to his lips, I contemplated yet another warning, but then I suddenly remembered being beaten awake by a four-year old punk with a bag of fluff. Go for it.

--------------------------------------------
Ladder Talk:
1) What was the best part of your day?
Peter: When Davey go so crazy for the mar'mellow.
David: Papa, it was that marshmallow; you know this already.
Tom: Opa and the tractor, so loud, so funny.

2) What was the worst part of your day?
Peter: When Davey burn him in the mouth.
David: When the marshmallow, he too hot.
Tom: Davey cry, so hot.

3) What would you like to do tomorrow?
Peter: I want to go roller-blading with no helmet.
David: I want to do a Lego trap for you.
Tom: Apple juice and cheese, Papa.

Home Alone, Day Three: Happy Meals

2011-04-30T21:24:00.026+02:00

It's a well-known fact that Sami has what I would call 'alternative' methods when it comes to teaching my boys new things. It's also a well-known fact that 'alternative' is just a fancy French way of saying 'What? Are you freakin' insane? Why the hell are you teaching my kids to pile-dive David?'. Among the things that Sami doesn't understand, French is apparently one of them.

Sami called this morning and asked if it would be okay for him and Katherina to stop by with Lauri. I said no problem, hung up the phone, and started cursing like the sailor I used to be.

See, Angie has been gone for more than 24 hours and what she lacks in culinary flair she actually does make up for in housekeeping capabilities. Ones that, for various reasons stemming from early childhood, I am lacking. To put it simpler, the place looked like shit and Sami was coming over with Angie's hand-planted spy, better known as K, who was certain to report back to A with glee that S had completely trashed the place. Again.

I vacuumed, mopped, dusted AND put the toilet seat down, just to make sure that K's report to A was a favorable one. As I paused to wipe the sweat off of my brow, the doorbell rang. Sami walked in with Lauri and immediately took notice.

'You cleaned? Man, she's got you trained.'

'Where the hell is Katherina?'

'Oh, she, uh, decided to stay at home.'

'Home? What do you mean home? Why did she do that? She was supposed to come over.'

'Well, you know, we just had two birthday parties last week and she needed a little 'me' time.'

'So she kicked your ass out.'

'Let's fire up the grill!'

My stomach told me to ignore Sami's pathetic attempt at trying to change the subject. Instead, it commanded me to throw burgers on the grill and gulp a beer. Thank you, sir - may I have another?

Sami's unique art of coaching and mentoring didn't stop with lessons on how to crush a fellow human being. On orders from my stomach, I made a second trip to the fridge. When I returned, I discovered that Sami had taught the boys how to make happy meals.

--------------------------------------------
Ladder Talk:
[Tom crashed and snored before we could get to Ladder Talk]
1) What was the best part of your day?
Peter: That we grilled today.
David: That Peter lost in getting dressed.
Tom: zzzzzzzzzzzzzz...

2) What was the worst part of your day?
Peter: That I lost by checkmate.
David: That Peter tried winning by the checkmate, but you, Papa, let him not.
Tom: zzzzzzzzzzzzzz...

3) What would you like to do tomorrow?
Peter: Have roasted marshmallows by Opa.
David: Play checkmate and do the marshmallows in the fire.
Tom: zzzzzzzzzzzzzz...

Home Alone, Day Two: Toys-R-Loud

2011-04-29T22:34:00.008+02:00

Day two started out quietly. Well, as quietly as is inhumanly possible with three animals, abandoned by their mother and clearly instructed to drive their father freakin' insane. After a healthy dose of chocolate cereal and jelly beans, I was backed into a corner and growled at. When I saw teeth, my survival instincts kicked in.

'Right, shoes on - we're going to Toys-R-Us.'

My brain should really be donated to medical science for fathers everywhere to study and admire. The boys laced up in record time and almost ran over Sebastian, who had come up to see if Peter and David could play.

'No, we're going to the toys, they're all mine, outta the way!'

After explaining to David what would happen if he didn't stop shaking and calm down, he turned and raced down the steps, giggling like a mad man and screaming 'you never catch me, Papa!'.

As I contemplated whether Angie would notice if I happened to lose one of our children, Sebastian asked where Angie was. Without pausing, Tom explained.

'Mama went to eat chickens.'

Peter and I looked at each other and burst out laughing. Apparently, Mr. Big Ears has heard us talking about Mama's trip to Turkey and simply accepted without question that she had ditched her family to go off on a four-day poultry binge. I chuckled for another minute and made a mental note to break out the globe with Tommy.

Toys-R-Loud was great. Great in the sense that nobody got arrested, but it pretty much stopped there. [Note Tommy's shirt: NOTHING CAN STOP ME]

I did gain an admittedly reluctant respect for Angie, who somehow manages to control twenty of these funny creatures called 'kids' every day. It does explain the occasional screaming matches with our plants and why she sometimes spends an entire night telling jokes to the canned vegetables in our pantry.

After escaping with only a major dent to my credit card, I rounded up the animals and headed home for feeding time. After exchanging a couple of one-sided knock-knock jokes, I grabbed a can of corn to compliment - you guessed it - a roasted chicken.
--------------------------------------------
Ladder Talk:
1) What was the best part of your day?
Peter: That we go to Toys-R-Us.
David: That we go on the playground with Artin.
Tom: I was go playground.

2) What was the worst part of your day?
Peter: I didn't have a worst part.
David: That Peter grab me on the shirt and I fall down.
Tom: I cry 'cause I can not with play.

3) What would you like to do tomorrow?
Peter: I want to play BeyBlades.
David: I want my Gormiti eggs to hatch.
Tom: Then pick a story out.

Home Alone, Day One

2011-04-28T22:20:00.002+02:00

Angie nudged me awake at 4:00 this morning. As romantic as that might sound, it was only to make a cup of coffee so that Master would not crash and snore on her way to the airport. See, Dil is getting married on Saturday and she apparently thought the wedding needed more planners. I just hope that she did not envision catering, preparing hors d'oeuvres, or anything remotely related to cooking. Dil reads the blog, though, so at least she has been forewarned.

After kicking Angie's caffeinated ass out the door, I lamented her departure by drooling on my pillow for another four hours. When I awoke, I found that Peter and David had already risen, shined, and decided to build a 'super-mega-cool fort-castle-cave' using all of the covers and pillows they could find.

Angie had been so paranoid about being away from the boys for four days. I'm not sure if her trepidation arose from not being with them or whether it stemmed from the fact that I would be with them. Luckily, I don't give a shit. Still, I thought a pulse-check was warranted.

'Hey guys, Mama left this morning for Turkey. She'll be back in four days, but until then, it's just us men. Are you with me?'

At first, nobody said anything. I thought I saw Peter's lip quiver, but before I could console him, David declared his emotions.

'Hey, cool!! Mama's gone! We can use her blanket and pillow for the cave 'cause she need them not!'

[Note to Mama: I'm sure they miss you, just in their own special way.]
--------------------------------------------
Ladder Talk:
1) What was the best part of your day?
Peter: That I sleep by Arman.
David: That we can go tomorrow by Toy-R-Us.
Tom: We got on ice-cream eating.

2) What was the worst part of your day?
Peter: That David kicked me in the eye.
David: That I kicked Peter in the eye.
Tom: David kick in Peter's eye.

3) What would you like to do tomorrow?
Peter: Go to Toys-R-Us.
David: I want to kick Peter in the eye again.
Tom: We go Toy-R-Us playing.

Hammer Time

2011-03-27T22:45:00.022+02:00

It all started this morning with a frown and a scowl that reminded me too much of Angie's 'frumpy' look. Tom woke up and for some reason today became the day when he came to the screaming realization that 1) Peter, he have a ladder, 2) Davey, he have a ladder, and 3) Tom-tom, he no have a ladder. For a two-year old, he certainly has a firm grasp on the concept of equal treatment.

Papa had also come to the same realization several months ago and his wise ass bought a ladder for the rather loud third wheel. The problem is - Tommy's father is the undisputed king of procrastination when it comes to anything involving tools. That's right; I was waiting for the moment when Tom would break down into blubbering snot bubbles out of sibling ladder-envy. I'm a betting man, so I had really thought it to be a risk-free long-shot, but this morning only confirmed Angie's nagging nag that sometimes, she's not entirely incorrect. That moment came at 06:34 this morning when Angie was cracking me up by asking if I could cook her an egg.

As any construction guy will tell you, the first thing you need to do is assemble a good crew. I started with the line worker.

Okay, the kid's obviously a moron. I mean, come on - he can't even put his hat on the right way. Still, you gotta admire the boy's loud determination and ear-piercing spunk. You're hired.

Line workers, provided they can actually see, are the backbone of any good business. But line workers wouldn't get any work done without the leadership of a good supervisor.

Okay, the kid's obviously a moron. I mean, come on - he can't even put his goggles on without getting an eyeful of hair. Talk about the blind leading the blind. Still, you gotta admire the boy's grinning determination and shit-eating grin. You're hired.

Then we got to my level - management.

This kid is brilliant! I'm totally convinced that the entire company would crash and burn without such insight, wisdom and can-do attitude. You're hired.

With the right crew, you could build sky scrapers on Mars. It would be a rather stupid thing to do, but that's not really the point. The point is, the team really pulled together and I managed to finish the project in just under two coffees. Right on, right on!

Okay, the kid's still a moron. I mean, come on - he can't even properly deliver a 'thumbs up', despite the fact that the spicy-hot CEO is standing there giving him visual cues.

After successfully completing assembly, the board member responsible for honor and integrity stepped in to demonstrate how to apply very old stickers to newly built ladders. Stickers, I might add, that were part of a childhood collection that Angie stole years ago from her loving and sometimes overly trusting sister. Thanks, Barb - our kids love them!

As it turned out, the line worker was a quick learner.

Soon after discovering the secret world of applying stickers, Tommy also discovered that applying said stickers to his bedroom window tends to anger his mother, while at the same time making his father chuckle uncontrollably while said mother scrapes the window with a razor.

The day ended kind of like it started; only Angie was the one sporting a frown and scowl. As I put the kids to bed, Tom surprised me by acknowledging that 1) Peter, he no have a diaper, 2) Davey, he no have a diaper, and 3) Tom-tom, he do have a diaper.

'That's right, Tommy - does that mean you're now a big boy and ready to stop crapping your pants?'

'No, Papa - I poopy. You change me now!'

For a two-year old, the stinky line worker certainly has a firm grasp on the concept of commands. As part of his grooming for a future management position, I took the liberty of teaching him the art of delegation.

'Angie!'

--------------------------------------------
Ladder Talk:
1) What was the best part of your day?
Peter: That I play with my roller skates.
David: That I try my bike and you say I so close am.
Tom: When I was Tom the builder with you.

2) What was the worst part of your day?
Peter: That Papa screamed 'cause I did something bad.
David: That Peter not give me my stuff.
Tom: You say no more stickers on my ladder.

3) What would you like to do tomorrow?
Peter: Drive roller skates to Arman.
David: Play with Peter and Tommy.
Tom: Play with the animals.

Brain Dead

2011-03-25T20:02:00.001+01:00

There is no way to jump start this one without knowing that I will end up on the sofa, so I'll just come out and say it - Angie was a moron. Twice.

It all started on a Wednesday afternoon, when Moron-lady drove her Smart car back home from work. Because those things are micro-tiny, her humongoid school bag does not exactly fit in the trunk. Clever Angie used the passenger seat to store her bags of squishy balls and other torture toys that she beams at kids when they misbehave.

Not-so-clever Angie proceeded to drag her bag from the passenger seat and over a button that switches on a light when she got out of the car. The same light, that when left on overnight, will drain the battery dead. Smart car, my ass.

This in itself was stupid, but innocent stupid. Kinda like when you stick a fork in the toaster, like my sister Christine did last year. Not overly smart, but you would hope that these thought-challenged people learn from their cerebral lapses. Hope is overrated.

Angie has demonstrated long ago that she is not like other people, so I wasn't surprised when she repeated exactly the same steps, not even two days later. I'm sorry, let me rephrase that - NOT EVEN TWO DAYS LATER!!!

The cool thing is, Angie now has the number for ADAC (AAA for you American types) memorized. Not so cool, ADAC now has our street address flagged in their system as belonging to 'that hot woman with the Smart car that isn't so...' well, I'll just let you finish that sentence; I'm already lounging on the sofa side of trouble.

Yes, ADAC-guy chuckled. He also laughed, mocked and pointed fingers, which won my respect and admiration. I can only hope that Angie learned her lesson, but a car is only as smart as it's driver. I'll just leave it there.

To Catch a Thief

2011-03-19T22:43:00.010+01:00

I woke up this morning to a ransacked apartment and immediately shouted for Angie.

'Holy shit! We've been robbed!'

I raced down the hall to check on the boys and was relieved to find them innocently snoring away in bed. I thought about calling the cops, but decided to first launch a preliminary investigation of my own. Papa style.

The first clue my trained eye picked up on was my cell phone, which I had asked Angie to put on the charger the night before.

My keen sense of sleuthery immediately made another rather disturbing discovery. I don't claim to understand the inner workings of Angie's mind, let alone a criminal's, but this was just too far beyond what my gray matter could comprehend. The cold-hearted criminals must have unplugged the charger in a mocking attempt to ensure that my phone was completely dead at exactly the moment when I wanted to call the SWAT team in. Bastards!

I explained my deductions to Angie, who turned red in the face and left the room, a clear indication that I was on the right track. I continued on with my investigation and soon after found the next clue, which provided deep insight into the minds of the culprits.

I paused for a second to analyze this latest revelation. The well thought-out finger-graffiti on the base of our TV stand indicated that the perpetrator either has Angie under surveillance or has a sense of humor, possibly both. It's also quite clear that the culprit has an abdomen that you can wash clothes on and a hairful of chest. Just the facts, ma'am.

As I continued my search, I came across a witness cowering in the corner.

At first glance, the potential informant seemed slightly less than traumatized. After a few probing questions, though, it became quite clear that the pint-sized 'victim' had more culpability than he was willing to admit. I then asked him to come down to the kitchen for a few questions and it became clear that the boy had issues.

After stripping down naked and beating on a trashcan for reasons that can only be explained by genetics and the boy's mother, the accused broke down and admitted to trashing the living room.

Released on bail, the juvenile delinquent was closely monitored as he warmed up with Peter for his Saturday morning sports.

Notice that Tom has his jacket on. Since I still had my detective hat on, I gathered that Peter's squat partner assumed he was also attending the 'big boy fun play' that Tommy only understands on a primitive level. One primal scream later, Tommy also understood that he had put his coat on for no apparent reason other than to amuse his sadistic Papa.

After explaining the facts of life to Tom, I took Peter to sports. After sports, we went to the playground, where Peter growled to me that he was a crouching tiger-bird. Ummm...okay.

I left Bruce Lee's crazy nephew and went to check on my other mentally challenged offspring.

Tommy was totally fixated on his Bobby Car. From experience, I knew that he would ride around for hours and hours; it was a state of mind that I like to call 'leave the boy alone'. Following my clever advice, I left Big Wheel Kid to find out what David was destroying.

I found David perched, poised, and more than willing to completely annihilate a mud puddle until a certain sexy stranger grabbed his ear and explained yet again the concepts of pain and suffering that could or could not result from not listening to one's elders when it came to jumping on watery clusters of dirt.

Confident that I had sufficiently instilled fear and compliance in David, I moved on to Angie, who was grading papers in a fashion that rivaled the Ford assembly lines from the early 1900's.

Angie is a creature of habit and, being German, she habitually resists change. By 'resist', I of course mean that she flat-out refuses to entertain the possibility of changing anything that her brain has deemed orderly. It shouldn't have been so surprising to discover that David has inherited Angie's innate ability to resist authority, yet I was still shocked and awed.

'What?'

This was the question that David posed to me as he was trying to sneak back into the apartment. Instead of a self-induced aneurysm, I chose to ignore the fact that filthy-swine Davey had yet again neglected to head my advice. Instead, I hosed little piggy down, slapped on some pajamas and got my poker on.

Shortly into the first round, I expected one of three loud animals to start barking. As Lady Luck would have it, the animals did not wake up, even when Simone and Flo stopped by for the monthly poker lesson.

In poker, it's always the subtle tell-tale signs that give away the loser. Flo, for example, hides his mouth with his cards and stares at them when he has a good hand. Angie, on the other hand, squints and sticks her tongue out when she is trying to bluff.

I found Angie's technique to be a bit strange, but I'm used to odd people. Sometimes I even marry them, despite their obvious deficiencies in poker. At one point, I looked over and took notice of Angie's pile.

'Holy shit! We've been robbed!'

At least this time, the culprits were sitting across the table from me. As per usual, I had a big fat fatty pile, so from a family perspective, we were breaking even. When Angie tried to buy more chips for the third time, though, I had to intervene. Papa style.

--------------------------------------------
Ladder Talk:
1) What was the best part of your day?
Peter: That I played with Paul and Sebastian.
David: That I can play with Tom.
Tom: I like the pirate thing.

2) What was the worst part of your day?
Peter: I didn't have one.
David: Play not with Tom.
Tom: I play not mit David and Peter and Paul.

3) What would you like to do tomorrow?
Peter: To go to Grams and Opa's.
David: Play with Tom.
Tom: Play memory.

Eco-panic

2011-01-04T22:21:00.001+01:00

I normally put the boys to bed. It's a simple routine, actually. Pajamas, brush teeth, Ladder Talk, and a tickle attack, followed by a story. Ten minutes later, I leave the room and celebrate their snoring with a beer. Sometimes two.

Angie decided tonight that she needed more mommy time and announced that she would be tucking the animals into bed. I reluctantly agreed and explained the rules. Turn off the bright light, don't give them anything wet and never feed them. Yeah, they're a lot like Gremlins.

Confident that Angie was adequately armed, I went to the fridge to celebrate in advance. About ten minutes later, the melancholy sounds of spastic blubbering filled the apartment.

Apparently, the cute, furry Mogwais had chosen a book on the tropical rain forest. Everything was fine and dandy until the third page, which depicted a tapir. An innocent little tapir, just lounging around, munching on some leaves. Behind the tapir was a flap, that when lifted revealed a leaping jaguar about to devour the poor thing. It was at this point that the flood gates of Peter's conscience opened.

'Mama, there are so many problems I have to solve. Tapirs are being eaten by jaguars. Rain forests are being cut down. Even the whales are getting extincted!'

At this point, Mama tried to help.

'Actually, the rain forests are being cut down, so the Jaguars have no place to live either.'

Here's where David joined the rainbow ranch of animal lovers.

'THE JAGUARS ARE BEING KILLED, TOO??!!! BUT, THEY'RE MEAT EATERS - I THOUGHT ONLY THE PLANT EATERS GET EXTINCTED?!! WHAT DID THEY EVER DO?!! AAAAGGGHHHH!!!'

It was interesting that David didn't give two shits about the rain forest, the tapirs, or the whales. I don't even think he cared about the jaguars, but he felt compelled to take a position and, well - Peter had already chosen his corner.

Two hours later, Angie emerged and headed straight for the fridge. Something about the look she gave me when I asked her how it went told me that I'll be doing the bedtime stories for the next decade.

Mumms the word

2010-12-31T21:29:00.005+01:00

I can only wish that my morning had started with three glasses of bubbly. Instead, I got three bubbly boys who do not yet comprehend simple concepts like or 'it's still dark outside' and 'go away'.

After being forcibly scraped out of bed by a trio of wild miscreants, I was dragged into the kitchen and told that if I didn't make them 100 pancakes, I would not be loved anymore. I thought about asking them if they jumped on the heads of people they didn't love at 6:00 in the AM, but I guess given the choice, I'd rather make pancakes. Is that the door bell?

Sami has an eerie knack for knowing exactly when the griddle is just hot enough to sizzle bacon. He's either got the nose of a bear or he's planted a video camera in our kitchen. I originally got freaked out, but the whole surveillance thing might not be a bad idea for those rare occasions when Angie decides to don an apron and wreak havoc on food.

Sami of course denied everything and arrived under the pretense of building the race car track that Santa had given to David. The same one that Papa was too stupid to build, according to Mrs. Santa. Well, excuse me for not being able to read Chinese.

I took inner comfort that Sami also had trouble with the Mandarin dialect racing slang.

After trying for over an hour to get the Flaming Loop of Death to even stand up, Sami decided that a more traditional race track would be more fun. Yeah, it's called a rectangle, Sami.

David was amazed at Sami's geometrical mastery, but I think he was even more impressed that the cars kept flying off the table on every curve. Sami wasn't as thrilled, though, and began cursing foreign countries for everything from their race cars that race too fast to their race car tracks that don't keep the track of their cars.

Instead of jumping on the bandwagon of frustration, I decided to check on the ladies. See, in order for hairy-chested men to have enough time to build up a race car track, you need to first distract the female types. Otherwise, they just yap in your ear the whole time, making silly comments like 'the loopy-loop thing will never work' or 'the angle is too tight; the cars will just fly off when they hit the curve'.

To avoid unnecessary and unwanted preachings on the inner workings of race track building, I tasked the females with building up David's mega-mongoid five-hundred-piece castle that warrants another beating for Santa, if he's ever man enough to show his jolly fat face. Don't ask me how or why, but it worked.

When I saw how nice the ladies were playing together, I stole the moment to go grocery shopping. We had hungry mouths showing up later and I needed to put food on the table.

One of the mouths that showed up was Alessio, who apparently thought it was necessary to show his toughness by ramming his face full speed into the corner of our dish cabinet within two minutes of arriving. David and Tom noted the lack of tears, then checked out his fresh L-shaped wound on his cheek and nodded their approval. He's cool, he can stay.

Even when I did put food on the table, certain Italian wannabes balked at the idea of eating raw flesh.

It wasn't until I explained to the Principessa the concept of using fondue pots to cook the raw meat that she got her hunger on.

After chowing down, we normally have a show. They are often loud and almost always end with David doing his patented 'butt boogie' dance. Tonight was only slightly different - this one ended in a bang that left permanent burn marks on our dining room table.

In all fairness, Sarah did warn in advance that maybe we shouldn't light fireworks indoors at all, let alone on our dining room table. The problem was - she's got an X chromosome and Angie has long ago trained me to ignore perfectly sound advice from their kind, even when it's exploding in my face.

At least Angie showed some concern for our offspring when she forced David to sport safety goggles made of highly flammable cardboard and taught him the fine art of squishing a dragon's head.

There's a parental high when you teach your offspring something new, but I think Angie took it a couple puffs too far.

She swears that there was a confetti spiral in her hands just seconds before, but I've heard the same song and dance, new year after new year.

Apparently, David also grew tired of Mama's tiny bag of party tricks and decided to climb up the side of our entertainment stand.

I'm not sure why he thought this would be a good idea, but I've known David for over four years and have long ago given up on trying to comprehend his complete lack of thought processes. I turned to Angie, on the off-shot that she might have some intellectual insight into what makes David tick.

Okay, guess not. But you have fun, Mama.

I left hysterical woman to her belly clutching and checked my watch. It was almost game time, so I rounded up my noise makers.

I personally think we are setting a dangerous precedent. If I had my way, the kids would only 'discover' New Year's Eve when they turn 18. Of course, if we had it my way, Angie probably would have divorced me long ago for moral and ethical reasons that would certainly be submissible in any court of law. Prove it; I deny everything.

Tommy was the youngest of the loud noise makers, but he was also the most amazed. There is certainly that magical something that you can only discover once. Tonight was Tommy's turn and his vocal chords were more than eager to announce to the world his newfound revelation.

That's right, Thomas Quentin Johnson, age two and a pain, discovered tonight the unforgettable joy of watching 'flaming bird-planes' explode in the sky.

Angie also discovered the unforgivable joy of being locked out of our apartment at 12:30 AM with five overcharged kids and four tipsy adult types eager to get their poker on.

Cries of 'Didn't I ask you if you had keys?' did little to faze Miss 'I'm right'. Luckily, Mr. 'Freakin' Sexy' was suave enough to not trust little Miss Right and had packed a spare set of keys before embarking on our midnight exposé.

With one rescue under my belt, I delegated the mission of tuckering out semi-loud villains to my red-headed semi-Italian sidekick.

As Super-Sarah was off fighting mischief, I was busy counting poker chips. Not that it mattered, though. Angie and John quickly took over the pot, leaving others to watch their meagre piles dwindle.

Angie only wished that the evening had ended with a winning hand. Instead, John's two pairs of queens over jacks smacked Angie's two queens in the face and laughed at her second pair of measly twos.

I may have instigated it, but John's chuckling prompted the loser to start explaining to her opponent simple concepts like 'it's still dark outside' and 'go away'.
--------------------------------------------
Ladder Talk:
1) What was the best part of your day?
Peter: That we stay up as so late as you and Mama.
David: When we do the fire-thing on the table and BOOM!
Tom: It was so much funny, Papa - so much funny.

2) What was the worst part of your day?
Peter: When Alessio smack his face on that thing by the kitchen.
David: When we need to go to bed because I not so sleepy.
Tom: The tree on fire.

3) What would you like to do tomorrow?
Peter: Sleep.
David: To do another fire-bomb, maybe in the bath tub.
Tom: You tickle me belly.

Happy Punch

2010-12-30T22:06:00.011+01:00

It only looks like Barbara and Armin are taking the boys out for an early morning sled ride. What you have to remember, though, is that our last name is Johnson, which carries with it an unwanted but unavoidable obligation to be late to any and every event that Angie has ever planned. But who's to blame?

Sure I could point fingers at Angie, who needed two and half hours to wax her fingernails. Or maybe it was Angie, who must have read somewhere that blow drying your hair for three hours helps prevent wrinkles. It could even have been Angie, who suddenly decided that it was absolutely critical to rearrange the sock drawer and alphabetize our soups. It doesn't really matter - I'm not one to judge; the fact was, we showed up for our fun-filled day of sledding shortly before sunset.

Luckily, our boys don't care about silly concepts like 'daytime' or 'sunlight'.

I should point out that this was their first slide. It got so dark that even the flash didn't help with the subsequent four hundred runs. You might ask if Angie had joined us on the icy knoll. Instead of answering, I would simply thank you for disproving the 'there are no stupid questions' rule.

We made it back to Casa de Barb to find a warm and rather happy Angie. The 'warm' was clear to everyone, since she had self-sacrificingly volunteered to stay in the nice heated apartment to watch Tom sleep while the rest of us played midnight sledding. The 'happy' became clear when I discovered that Angie had discovered Barb's warm punch at some point during our happy little ice capade.

I almost grabbed a mug and joined the happy siblings, but then I saw this lovely gem.

WHAT in the name of all that is HOLY is THAT??!! My second thought was that someone should really start a group to stop the unethical treatment of fruit. I mean, really - what did that poor orange ever do to Barbara to warrant such cruelty?

After bearing witness to the unsolicited sequel to Clockwork Orange, I decided to go check on the boys.

At first jump, I was convinced that David had somehow gotten his hands on some of Mama's happy juice. I almost left the funny looking creatures to their own devices, but the thought of returning to the Little Shop of Fruit kept me focused on the mission of putting wild animals to sleep.

If you told me to jump, I'd tell you to go pound sand. If you told me that there is no way I can get three hyperactive animals under control in less than 20 minutes, I'd take that challenge. Then I would declare myself the funk soul brother and tell you to check me out now.

Please don't ask about Tom's obvious heritage with ostriches; I've learned long ago not to bring up Angie's college days.

When a less than large, flightless bird awoke from it's slumber the next morning, it's Mama decided that a freezing-cold repeat of the night before made so much more sense that warming up it's young with pancakes and syrup.

Not surprisingly, Angie's cold logic paid dirt when it came to Tommy's amusement factor. He took exactly ONE snow plow trip with Mother before his lungs quite loudly convinced his nostrils that they didn't enjoy being packed with snow. Had Angie's plan been to shy the not-so-shy boy away from white powdery substances - GOOOOOOAAAAAALLLL!

You might wonder where Armin was on day two. I didn't. Neither did Barbara or Angie, but that's not really the point. We (Angie) had stuck him on 'Peter & David' detail. The problem was that, in addition to finger deficit, Armin has a bad back. I'm not even sure if this is true, but that didn't stop Angie's logic from convincing her weirdness that pulling Peter and David around would be medicinal for him and his decrepit spine.

After an hour of 'treatment', someone looked ready for a medicinal puff after a double dose of the Zoo. I won't name names of course; it would be too embarrassing.

There's safety in numbers, or so they say.

Looks more like 'crazy in numbers' if you ask me. But who's to blame?

Sure, I could point fingers at Angie, who became certifiable seven and a half years ago with the words 'I do'. Or maybe it was Angie, who sneezes at the sun and has an extreme addiction to cucumbers. It could even be Angie, who is related to a woman who tortures fruit. It doesn't really matter - I'm not one to judge; the fact was, we ended our fun-filled day of sledding with a memory that warmed me up almost as much as Barbie's happy punch.
--------------------------------------------
Ladder Talk:
1) What was the best part of your day?
Peter: That I go down the slide on me own.
David: Papa, you know - the sled on the ice and whoosh, I so fast.
Tom: I was laughing like this - hee, hee.

2) What was the worst part of your day?
Peter: When David keep saying everything that I say.
David: When we go home after so short.
Tom: When I cry.

3) What would you like to do tomorrow?
Peter: Build a cave.
David: Play with and Mama a game where I the winner.
Tom: Grams and Opa and a book.

Bang! Bang! You're crazy!

2010-12-28T22:18:00.008+01:00

There's always that kid. You know the one. You're nice to them, you give them gifts, you play with them; you might even let them sleep over at your house from time to time. Then one day, out the freakin' blue, he whips out a pistol and puts a cap in you. I hate pre-teens.

Before the underage gang shooting, Angie and I were busy entertaining other strange guests.

While Kika was flashing her rather interesting 'frozen ballerina' pose to Angie, I was downstairs keeping an eye on Sami.

'On Sami?' you ask. 'You mean David, right?'

No, actually. I really do mean Sami. See, I have discovered over the years that Sami has been directly responsible for some incidents where the burden of blame had somehow inadvertently landed on David's shoulders. Like that time when David tried inserting a computer mouse cable into our cat's rear port because Sami didn't quite grasp that a three-year old couldn't quite grasp his twisted humor. He's also been known to hang David's bicycle on trees and other events that I won't detail here out of fear that it might encourage other insane Godfathers.

At least today's lesson was not your typical Sami outing. This may or may not have had something to do with a certain hairy-chested and rather muscular chaperone that was keeping a vigilant watch over Sami's every move.

At one point the Incredible Hawk witnessed Sami encouraging David to water down the section of sidewalk used mostly by elders to gain access to our building. As funny as it would have been to watch old-timers tumble around on ice, I did intervene.

After icing a few trash cans beyond recognition, we parted ways with the Godfather and headed to Artin's for a rather loud gift frenzy.

Tommy didn't quite get what was going on. He kept trying to give everyone else's gifts to Sharpur and got angry with Artin for trying to open the gift we gave him. David kept running around screaming his self-invented nickname for Sharpur.

'SHAMPOO! Hahahaha! Hey, Shampoo! Mr. Shampoo head. Hahahahahaha!'

Sharpur claimed afterwards that he simply thought David was an oversized slipper that we had given him. Doesn't really matter, but I'm fairly certain he's not too keen on the nickname. Whatever, Shampoo.

Every now and then Angie shocks me by doing something in public that she would never dream of doing in the privacy of our own home.

That's right - sewing! Apparently one of the boys had a snagged sweater and I came in the room to find Little Miss Homemaker busy at work.

'What in the sweet hell??!! Are you sewing?'

'Yes.'

'You know how to sew?!'

'Yes.'

There was a tone in her short and simple answers that my brain probably would have picked up on had it not been so flabbergasted. I have thrown away so many shirts over the years because of rips and tears (mostly in the bicep region). And coats!! I pitched several of my favorite jackets because of a tiny hole in one of the pockets.

The discovery of Angie's unknown talent actually led to a self-discovery of sorts. My brain is pretty talented when it comes to witty comments, but absolute crap when it comes to defending clever retorts that were made to irritated seamstresses. Who knew?

The time between Christmas and New Year's is normally reserved for visiting friends, exchanging gifts, and forgiving loved ones for accidentally calling into question certain household management skills. Angie decided that two out of three was sufficient and we stopped by Ute and Alex's bearing presents.

Their apartment, like ours, has high ceilings. Their apartment, like ours, had a Christmas tree. Okay, theirs actually touched the ceiling, whereas ours was about as tall as David, but who cares?

Oh, that's right - Tommy does. It may have been the overload of an exciting day without a power nap that caused the meltdown, but it may also have been the humongoid tree that Ute and Alex had crammed into their apartment that made ours look like a vertically challenged Lilliputian living in Smurf village. Thanks again, tree-braggarts!

After explaining to Tommy that he didn't miss out on any potential gifts that he might have gotten had our tree been a showcase to giant people, the ladies decided to have coffee and gossip.

'So, what did your husband get you?'

The dual 'cat-look' captured here would explain why Alex and I quietly disappeared to go check out his son's room. He had posters of beer hanging up, so he was cool in my book from the get-go.

When Alex and I returned from admiring what we would probably have both gladly exchanged for the coffee we were holding, I found Peter making David smile for a change.

Not smiling was Mama, who had just about reached her limits with Tommy's screechery.

It probably didn't help that the hot cameraman could barely hold the camera while chuckling and pointing fingers. Luckily, said camera guy is also wiser than grasshoppers and decided to go check on the boys.

At first glance, it looked cute - David, snuggled up on the sofa. It wasn't until I noticed Peter's flailing foot and heard muffled screaming that I realized why David was smiling so contently.

It didn't take long for Peter to express his dislike at being smothered by his younger brother. I am Peter, hear me roar!

I thought about helping out, but in the end I just decided to shoot the building violence. War-time photographers sometime suffer emotional anguish because they are torn between helping innocent victims and documenting the carnage for the world to see and judge. I'm not sure if I had emotional anguish, but laughter is a form of emotion and my belly was actually hurting after the whole ordeal.

Not laughing was Peter's victim, who suffered neck and lip wounds while attempting a counterattack.

There's always that kid. You know the one. You feel bad because they just got the shit kicked out of them, you give them hugs and comfort them; you might even give them an ice-pack to help with their swollen lip. Then one minute later, out the freakin' blue, they leap out of your lap and start power-choking their closest sibling. I hate pre-teens.
--------------------------------------------
Ladder Talk:
1) What was the best part of your day?
Peter: That we did the CD's.
David: I read with Mama the story.
Tom: I was in the BIG truck!

2) What was the worst part of your day?
Peter: That I couldn't look TV by the dinner because of you, Papa.
David: I don't got a worst part.
Tom: I bonkey me head.

3) What would you like to do tomorrow?
Peter: I want to play with you the new game.
David: I want tomorrow that Yuki, Lorenzo, and Laticia come over.
Tom: I want to go up, but not up there.

Twas the night after Christmas

2010-12-26T22:14:00.008+01:00

The night before Christmas wasn't exactly silent, so I didn't really expect breakfast to be served on a silver platter of peace and tranquility. The boys woke up at insane-thirty in the morning, followed by loud and most definitely explained roaring. I usually just snoringly ignore this, but since we were guests of Grams and Opa's, I (Angie) thought that I (me) should at least try to quiet down the animals. I grabbed a sock and some duct tape and went hunting for my offspring.

I found this one at the kitchen table, but its face was too severely smeared to even identify. I tried to convince myself that Grams had nothing at all to do with feeding him a bucket of chocolate on a day where he really didn't need that much energy to get his motor started, but then I saw the coffee mug. Busted.

I checked that the mug wasn't actually filled with coffee and was glad to see that Grams had not completely lost her mind. Milk - it does a baby good.

Somewhere in the distance, I heard war cries followed by battle screams and immediately thought of my other children. I couldn't bring myself to look, though. I had seen enough chocolaty carnage to last me until dessert.

Instead, I disappeared into the other room to build the first of what would be a long line of toys that apparently require a degree in architectural engineering and a shitload of patience. I have neither.

I inadvertently made several mistakes when picking the room that now housed their brand new entertainment center. First of all, it used to be where Tommy's toys were stored, so he kept poking his chocolate face in every ten seconds shrugging his shoulders and asking 'where dey go, Papa?'. Second, the room is a standing ovation to Bose, Samsung, and several other expensive guys who all have restraining orders against any Johnson under the age of seven. After Peter and David's fifth attempt to breach the flat screen zone, I gave up on David's million-piece castle in search of hot coffee.

I asked Angie if maybe it wouldn't be a good idea to make a quick trip home to let the animals run wild in the safe and inexpensive jungles of our apartment. She sported a frown that I know all too well, and was undoubtedly about to tell me how stupid I am when Tommy came walking out of the entertainment room holding a piece of white plastic that looked a little bit like the clamps used to bundle cables behind a TV. When Angie asked Tommy what he had in his hand, it was Opa that answered.

'It's the white plastic clamp I used to bundle the cables behind our new flat screen TV.'

With that, Angie was 100% onboard with my stupid plan to bring the wild animals back to the quiet ranch. Opa was probably closer to 110%, but the veins in his neck were nice enough not to vocally admit it.

Grams was on turkey duty, so I asked her what time she wanted us back.

'Everything will be ready at 5:30.'

I correctly assumed that this meant we should bring the wild ones back at 5:29. Heidi, Klaus, Sonja and her David incorrectly assumed that we would be eating at 6:30 since that was the time we ate the night before. Silly relatives. At 5:35, I asked if they had actually been told to come at 5:30. Other than a few giggling crickets, silence prevailed. Awkward.

'Let's eat!'

The good thing was that the boys were finished by the time everyone showed up; feeding time can be quite disgusting on occasion. By 'on occasion', I of course mean three times daily, but that's beside the point. It was also a good thing that Angie was done eating, but instead of making an observation on where the boys get their dining skills, I'll just say that it was because she could watch the boys and make sure they didn't pull plastic anythings from anywhere. Opa can thank me later.

After dinner, the rising noise levels in the living room encouraged me to continue my toy building in the entertainment factory. After a few minutes, I made a mental note to convince Opa that all of the best entertainment centers in the world were sound-proofed, but like most of my brilliant thoughts, they were interrupted by impatient creatures. For a change, though, it wasn't Angie. No, Peter and David were the culprits who had flung open the door and demanded to know when their super-secret-agent-rocket-ship-monster toy would be finished. Let me just say, I was the camel and their question was the last straw.

'LISTEN! It may be Christmas, but SANTA has left the building, so BACK OFF, okay?! I've got roughly EIGHT BAZILLION of your little projects going on here and YOU are delaying each of them by coming in every TWO minutes and BUGGING ME. If you ever want to play with your precious toys, heed my advice and GO AWAY!'

It was at that point that I noticed Opa, who was in the doorway of the un-sound-proofed room.

'Would you like a beer?'

I didn't even bother answering. We exchanged an understanding look and two minutes later, I had a cold bottle of liquid hops in my hand. That is what Christmas is all about. Unless you ask anyone else.

After dinner, the gift frenzy began again.

I have to say, Sonja went completely nuts this year. Don't get me wrong, she's normally on the tilt side of a pinball machine anyway, but this year, she really went above and beyond the call of family. All of her many, many gifts were enjoyed by everyone and it was all fun and games until Klaus stepped in a big pile of Play-Doh. Then it was hilarious!

National Geographic pictures often depict ape mothers grooming their babies and it still amazes me how desensitized they become to plucking out all the disgusting crap that they call 'grooming'. Angie didn't even know at this point that it was brown Play-Doh, but she was more than willing to help pick whatever it was out of Klaus' shoe with her fingernail. Yuck.

After de-poohing Klaus' shoe, we finally managed to put the animals down for the night. Or so we thought. I guess the adrenaline rush of getting even more gifts grew a couple of hairs on Peter's chest. He had finally yanked his wiggly tooth and raced downstairs to disgust everyone with his bloody gums and calcium trophy. Yuck.

When we tried putting the boys to bed a second time, it was obvious that they needed some calming down. They were sleeping in one guest bed and after 30 seconds of fighting over the pillow, I forced them to sleep at opposite ends of the bed.

I normally read them a book, but lately we've been doing 'three word stories' where I let each of the boys pick one word and I have to spontaneously come up with a story that includes the three words. Tonight, it was Peter, the tooth fairy, and a telephone. Go!

Once upon a time, there was this goofy looking kid named Peter. He was a strange boy by anyone's standards. His feet smelled horrible and a fun Friday night for him normally involved burping the alphabet at the dinner table followed by somersaults on the sofa.

As the odd creature grew in both size and weirdness, he noticed a slight wiggling of one of his teeth. True to character, he freaked out, curled up into a little ball on the floor and sucked his thumb until his hairy-chested dad found him and explained the tooth fairy tale.

Afterwards, the courageous thumb-sucker spent weeks pushing, pulling, turning, and yanking his wiggly tooth to no avail. Christmas came and as Peter was being tucked into bed, his incredibly attractive dad offered to use his tanned muscles to rip the tooth out if he was too much of a wuss to do it himself.

In a move that made himself proud, Peter yanked the final yank and then screamed a little scream. After impressing very tolerant family members with his missing chopper, Peter fell into a satisfied slumber.

After a few glasses of wine, the Tooth Fairy showed up with a clipboard. She looked at her papers and then at the bed. Peter had slipped under the covers, so the Tooth Fairy only saw David, snoring away and drooling on his pillow.

She tip-toed over and lifted David's pillow. Nothing. She checked her clipboard again. It was the right house and the right day. She checked under the pillow again. Nothing. She huffed and puffed and looked at her watch. She had a schedule to keep, so she wasn't going to just sit around all night waiting for this kid's tooth to fall out.

She opened David's mouth, checked her clipboard again to make sure she got the right one, then she yanked out David's bottom front tooth. David continued snoring as she dumped the loot and moved on to her next customer.

The next day, Peter woke up and was very disappointed to find nothing under his pillow. Peter's crying woke up David, who discovered that he was missing a tooth.

'Awesome!'

David then found a bunch of coins under his pillow and started dancing a jig that really irritated Peter.

'That's it! I'm calling the tooth fairy hotline!'

Peter stormed over to the phone and called up the number. After several minutes of listening to elevator music, someone with a pulse picked up.

'I lost a tooth and your fairy service delivered my prize to the wrong boy!'

'That's impossible! Give me your name.'

'Peter Johnson.'

'Well, I see here that we picked your tooth early this morning. What's the problem?'

'What's the problem??!! Are you people insane? You yanked out my little brother's tooth and gave him my stash!'

'Hold the line, please.'

After several silent minutes, Peter heard a click.

'Mr. Peter, we are so sorry for the mix-up. We just spoke to the tooth fairy responsible for your pickup and clarified everything. She's actually still on probation, but after this, I can guarantee you that she will be not be lifting another kid's pillow for a long, long time. I'll send someone over right away to make the exchange.'

Peter hung up the phone and not even two seconds later, a fairy appeared holding a bag of money and a balloon that said 'sorry'. Peter forked over his tooth and was too busy checking out his loot to notice that the fairy had vanished.

THE END.

My well intended bedtime story did little to calm the boys down. David almost started crying and telling me over and over again that he didn't want the 'toof fairy' to rip out any of his teeth and Peter asked if David could sleep in the basement to avoid any confusion. If there hadn't been cold beer downstairs, I probably would have stayed to comfort them.

'Sleep tight!'

About a month ago, Eisi told me that he needed some of our family photos. All of them, actually. Rather than burn 400 DVD's, I found an online exchange site. I could only upload a fraction at a time, so for several weeks, I would upload a batch and wait until he confirmed that he had downloaded them. Then I would delete them and add some more pictures. Tonight we unwrapped the mystery behind his request.

I had assumed that he was just another obsessed fan wanting pictures of me, but it turned out he was creating the The Johnson's Zoo year book, which was a big hit with everyone. As the ladies oggled over pictures of me, I mean the family, I snuck upstairs to play the second made-up role in as many nights.

Peter's stash consisted of all of the pocket change collected from my jeans, Mama's purse, and Opa's sofa. Angie threw in a pack of gum, claiming that this was the ritual that she grew up with, even though Judy and Horst both deny ever doing this.

Sunrise with the Johnson's is always darker and earlier than nature intended, so when Peter began squealing like a school boy at 6:00, I ran over to try and stifle the rising. Peter was pointing at his loot and visibly shaking with joy. Even David looked rather relieved after checking his mouth for missing teeth three or four times.

'I'm glad that your tooth fairy was a competent one and absolutely thrilled that David's teeth weren't knocked out, but you guys need to snooze for at least another hour.'

For a change, they actually listened and racked out for another hour and a half. I would later regret this additional energy charging when we decided to go make snow angels.

I explained to them over and over again that flinging balls of snow at semi-innocent bystanders was not how you make snow angels, but they are complete crap at listening to walking wisdom providers.

Everything was hunky-dory until I nailed Peter smack center in his ear. The only good thing about having your ear pressure-packed with snow is that you cannot hear your father's insane cackling as he points at you and high-fives your younger brother.

Needless to write, Peter wanted to go home. The only way I could convince him to stay was to stand a few feet away from him and allow him to practice his curve ball until he nailed me in the ear as well. After only the fourth pitch, my ear went numb and I could see Peter convulsing on the ground clutching his belly. Oh well - tit for tat.

When Peter finally regained consciousness, I pushed the little demons down in the snow and told them to act like angels.

Snow angel making didn't last long because according to Peter, the ground was 'cold'. I thanked Genius boy for his stunning observation and put him and his sidekick on the swing to check if the air blowing on their cheeks was 'cold' as well.

We checked a few more rides and Peter finally concluded that it was, in fact, 'cold' everywhere. I rounded up the Eskimos and put David in charge of snow plowing our way back to Grams and Opa's for hot chocolate.

Okay, the slide wasn't exactly on the way home, but considerate Davey probably just wanted to clear the path for any other insane kids crazy enough to go to an icy playground in sub-zero temperatures.

Twenty minutes later, the boys were enjoying a warm cup of liquid chocolate. A strange tingling sensation came across the living room as the energy of three wild and chocolanated boys started to build.

It twas actually the day after the night after Christmas, so we decide to spare Grams and Opa of the noise and chaos that would be released at any moment. Instead, I grabbed a sock and some duct tape and started packing up the car.
--------------------------------------------
Ladder Talk:
1) What was the best part of your day?
Peter: That I play with my secret agent ship.
David: That we play with you the game why you throw me on the bed.
Tom: I was in the big truck.

2) What was the worst part of your day?
Peter: That I can't sleep in my new hammock.
David: I didn't got a worst part.
Tom: I bonk me head and then Davey laugh.

3) What would you like to do tomorrow?
Peter: I want to play with you my new Playmobile ship.
David: I want that Yuki, Lorenzo, and Laeticia come over and look at my new toys.
Tom: I want to go up, but not up there.

Merry Christmas!

2010-12-25T14:16:00.001+01:00

A happy Christmas indeed

2010-12-24T22:04:00.009+01:00

It's not Christmas until someone throws on a set of antlers and does their best impersonation of a hyena. At least it wasn't a lamp shade.

Before the festivities kicked in, David and I were out hunting Christmas trees. They never had a chance.

The cool thing about buying a Christmas tree on the 24th is - they're dirt cheap. Not so cool is that the only ones left have been picked over for several weeks and left behind for obvious reasons. The fact that David didn't give a shit that our tree was only slightly taller than him, leaned to one side and was missing half of its branches was, well - cool.

In addition to being a sash for traditional Japanese kimonos, OBI is also one of the few stores here in Germany that that still sells Christmas trees on Christmas Eve. If you're not living in 'Schland, you probably won't appreciate why David screaming 'Wie, wo, was, weiß OBI!' at the top of his lungs to the cashier cracked me up, but maybe this clip will help explain.

The cashier also cracked up and started singing along with David. Afterwards, she gave him a pack of gum and went on and on about how hot his dad is. David's heard it a thousand times before, though, so I thought I'd save us a bit of time. I winked, flashed the girl my golden finger leash and when the weeping began, we left to pack up the car.

I had to return the shopping cart, but David started freaking out and blubbering on about wanting a piece of his gum. I got him strapped into his car seat and opened his precious love offering from aisle 4 and explained the rules.

'David, I have to go return the cart. Here's a piece of gum. Leave your seatbelt on and do not get out of your seat; I'll be right back.'

'Okay, Papa - you're the coolest!'

Twenty seconds later, I came back and found the brand new bubble gum package sitting on the driver seat where I left it, only instead of missing one piece, it was missing five. I asked David if he might possibly know where the missing pieces went.

It was Christmas, so I overlooked David's little black lie that a pack of angry elves unbuckled his seatbelt and stole his gum and decided instead to just drive home.

We packed up the animals and, as per usual, we were two hours late getting to Grams and Opa's. Honestly, though, they should have figured out by now that we need to be given an arrival time two hours before they actually expect us, so I'm hoping that 1:00 was just their attempt at being funny.

When we started to trim their tree, my hairy brain immediately began placing bets on which kid would be the first to break a bulb. It happens every year and my money was on David. Even though the odds were 7:1, Opa was actually the first to christen the floor with porcelain. Damn it! There goes Papa's new shoes.

Believe it or not, the boys did not actually break anything. Yet. Aside from the blatant foreshadowing, they did a great job of decorating the tree. Right?

Okay, the tree might have been a little bottom heavy, but after Peter, David and Tom took turns falling off of the step ladder, we (me) decided that the bulbs actually looked the best crammed together at the one meter level.

After creating the 'most awesome, bestest tree ever', Peter decided to outdo everyone by drawing the 'most awesome, bestest picture of a tree ever'.

It was kinda like the tree we had just decorated, only this one had a friendly rainbow hovering above it. Peace, Santa - and cool hat, dude.

Barb wasn't donning her party hat yet, but she was definitely getting her face primed.

I have to say, this year Angie and I were complete crap at maintaining the illusion of Christmas. Mostly Angie, but only 'cause it's my blog. Sofa me.

Before leaving for Grams and Opa's, Peter and David both [SHOCK ALERT] ignored Mama's sudden rule that they were forbidden to go into our bedroom. Peter and David came out annoyed. They certainly get the 'ignoring' part from me; I'm just not sure where they get the 'annoying' part, but Angie wasn't around to ask.

'Oh, Papaaaa! We wanted to jump on the bed, but there is all these gifts there.'

'Didn't Mama tell you not to go into our bedroom?'

'Don't remember.'

'Wrong answer. Trust me; I've dealt with her kind long enough to know that the amnesia card doesn't work.'

'What's ameezy?'

'Forget it. Forget everything. These are not the presents you're looking for.'

'These aren't the presents we're looking for.'

'You can go about your business.'

'We can continue destroying the house.'

After the Christmas tree hunt, I think you can guess who was OBI-Wan and yes, he only hears what he wants to destroy.

The next big obstacle was trying to explain how Santa Clause came down the lit chimney and dumped his load while they sat in the room next door watching toons.

'Yeah, but Papaaaa! How can he do that so fast with the fire on and then he shout ho-ho-ho that sound just like you. That not make sense.'

'Neither does marriage, buddy - but that doesn't stop me from believing in it. Now shut up and go open some gifts.'

It was Tommy's first 'real' Christmas. The first year never counts; the sleepy poop-sacks are easily impressed with ribbon and normally just want to play with the box. Even the second year brings into question whether they are really old enough. If I had it my way, Tommy would have been tucked away in bed, dreaming of sugar plums and desperately needed haircuts. Of course, had I done it my way, there'd be regrets. I've had a few.

Tommy was a slow starter compared to Peter and David. They can actually read their names on the tags posted by Santa. Tommy can't, but that didn't stop him from ripping open anything that Grams put into his greedy little hands.

Greed turned out to be the sin of the season. As soon as Tommy had worked himself into a full swing ripping frenzy, Peter made his move for the mother load. I didn't think it was possible for six-year olds to put their back out, but Peter decided to test my thinking by immediately going for the biggest, heaviest mother of the whole load.

David ignored Peter's grunting and heaving, followed by pleas for help and instead began his own greed-packed crusade to unpack.

Maya stood vigilant watch, ready to tear apart any of Angie's childhood memories if anyone had been foolish enough to pack them. I guess she took lessons from Lola. [Editorial note: there was no destruction caused by canines during the making of this year's Christmas.]

As the owner of three, I think it's great that there are so many groups out there fighting for the protection of animals. I just feel that there isn't enough being done to fight against the cruel and unusual treatment of toys. It's probably good, since David would have been locked away years ago, but still. Take this poor little Pin Art toy, for example.

This executive pin screen had been sitting in a dark box for over a year, eagerly waiting to be opened and played with. Little did it know that it's long journey from China would end up in a rather loud house in Germany, as the victim of a hate crime. By definition, a hate crime implies that a woman is to blame and this time it was no different. Barb played with David's new toy and he hated it.

The ensuing flying kick to Barb's head produced several results. For one, I don't think that Barb will be touching any of Davey's shit again. Ever. Second, poor little Pinny suffered a fracture and is still in a garbage-like coma. And last, but certainly not least entertaining, it made me crack up.

As long as I'm sticking with the whole 'find humor in other people's anguish' theme, I should point out that Armin showed up sporting his Frankenfinger.

I forget sometimes that I'm an asshole, but Angie is somehow always there to remind me that asking a guy who recently sliced off his index finger if it's a box of finger puppets is not appropriate. Okay, she used different words, but I was quick to point out that they were just as inappropriate.

Slightly less profanic was Peter, obviously following someone's lead.

Okay, he wasn't exactly hyperventilating like a hyena, but Barb was still cackling somewhere in the background, asking everyone if they had seen a lamp shade.
--------------------------------------------
Ladder Talk:
1) What was the best part of your day?
Peter: When I see the all the presents by the tree.
David: Baaam, bagaty doom ma shoom, right?
Tom: I sleep now, Papa.

2) What was the worst part of your day?
Peter: When Tommy open my present even when my name on it is and even when I say 'no, Tommy - that mine!' and then he laugh at me.
David: When my finger push thing fall to the floor - aaaggh bonk - then it was broken.
Tom: When I cry like this - waaaaaggh!

3) What would you like to do tomorrow?
Peter: Play super agent with my secret rocket ship.
David: When I play with my new castle that you build, okay?
Tom: Opa and Lola and Grams and you, Papa.

Put butter on it

2010-12-19T22:22:00.008+01:00

Anticipation is a hard emotion to capture. The boys waited with bated breath for Grams to squeeze out the first Christmas tree-shaped peanut-butter cookie of the season. They waited and waited and waited.

When Grams finally announced that the cookie press was broken, did they turn to me to fix the thing? No, of course not.

'Opa!'

Opa took one look at the stuck lid and said the same thing he says when one of the kids scrape a knee or the car battery dies.

'Put butter on it.'

Other than cracking me up, butter did little to help. The metal tracks on the lid were completely bent, but this didn't prevent Grams from grabbing the cookie press and giving it one last buttery try.

Anticipation is often followed by disappointment. Luckily, our kids are used to this and can quickly adapt. Kinda. David took one look at the lumpy clumps being flung onto the cookie sheet and decided that the only way he was getting cookie into his cookie-hole was to start shoveling in spoonfuls of dough.

In the end, it didn't matter. A cookie by any other name is still shoved in the oven. And this was only the first batch. For the encore, Grams busted out plastic wrap and gave her best banderillero impersonation. Toro, toro!

It puzzled Tommy but at least Angie remained indifferent. Whatever, Matador - just tell me where to cut.

As we waited for the cookies to burn, we noticed that Tommy had removed his slippers. This, by itself, is not so unusual. We all know the boy hates socks, slippers and anything that prevents his dogs from barking.

What was a little troubling was that, upon being told that he needed to put the slippers back on, her Majesty's Royal Thomas threw himself to the floor and launched the most incredibly ear-piercing temper tantrum that I have ever laughed at.

After screeching in my ear for 43 minutes, Opa walked over and tickled his foot. I shit you not, the boy switched from full-throttle wailing to giggling like a mad man in two seconds flat. By that point, trust me - I was the mad man, but I was far from giggling.

I'd like to say that this was a one-time event, but Tom has apparently gotten the memo that explains how terrible two-year olds are supposed to misbehave. His 'episodes' actually started three days ago and let me just say that he is obviously a loud descendant of 'Old Faithful'.

After Tom's outbreak, we decided to check on the cookies. I'm not saying anything, but David checked out the first batch and let's just say that his look of youthful skeptism is, well... interesting.

'Hmmmm...maybe we should put butter on them.'

--------------------------------------------
Ladder Talk:
1) What was the best part of your day?
Peter: That I played catch with you.
David: When I open my Advent calendar.
Tom: I want auto.

2) What was the worst part of your day?
Peter: That I forgot what to do when you told me.
David: That I can't open another Advent calendar.
Tom: I was baseball.

3) What would you like to do tomorrow?
Peter: Eat cookies!
David: To go and play with Mama hide and seek and catch.
Tom: There hide.

Pure ener-joy

2010-12-05T22:13:00.009+01:00

As the kids get older, it becomes increasingly more difficult to unleash the 'pure ener-joy' that comes with experiencing new things. Luckily, Tom's not that old.

Sure, Tom's been on a merry-go-round several times this year, but this time, Mama actually allowed him to ride the horse that has scared the shit out of me from the starting gate.

See, Tommy has inherited Mama's stubbornness and has long since learned David's knack for ignoring everything that I say. It's a recipe for disaster and a cake I'd rather bake when Tom is old enough to stay seated until the ride stops spinning around in circles. Angie apparently heard the words 'disaster' and 'cake' and felt compelled to jump in.

Before risking our third born's life, we were at home, quietly watching Peter impress the ladies.

Okay, judging by Sonja's stare, she was more impressed with Peter's ear. He did inherit my lobes, so I can totally understand the attraction.

After Beethoven's Fifth Chopsticks, we decided to hit the Christmas market. Heidi and Sonja wanted to stop by some of the shops, but someone was hungry. A picture is worth a thousand words, so I won't waste 999 of them explaining whose stomach was growling.

Considerate Tom noticed that Sonja didn't eat anything and decided to bust out his moves.

Okay, his moves consisted of only one and Sonja didn't bite on his offer to share his pacifier. Note to self: teach the boys how to chat up the female-types.

Despite years of persistent and occasionally non-passive resistance, I realize that there may actually be circumstances where husbands and wives should communicate with one another. Today, for example. Had I known that Heidi and Sonja were planning on eating dinner with us at 5:30, I probably wouldn't have eaten a foot-long pork sandwich at 5:00. It did explain the strange looks, but I just chalked that up to the sporadic grunting that I'm prone to when I feed.

At the Schnitzelhaus, Tom was quick to blow out all the candles.

At first, I thought that maybe this was a cute and brotherly protective maneuver seeing as how David set his hair on fire the last time we were at this restaurant. Angie was quick to point out that Tom blows out candles anywhere we go and that he cannot even remember what he had for breakfast, so yeah - strike the whole brotherly lovey-dovey crap. Yeah! Fire, fire, fire! Yeah!

We had a great meal with Heidi and Sonja. My belt dominated the conversation, but after two meals back-to-back, it's been known to have an inflated ego. When they brought the dessert menu, my belt chuckled and looked at Tom.

As the kids get older, it becomes increasingly more difficult to fall asleep at the dinner table before dessert arrives. Luckily, Tom's not that old.

--------------------------------------------

Ladder Talk:
1) What was the best part of your day?
Peter: When Arman and I ate the gummy snakes.
David: When Tommy, he sleep on the table.
Tom: zzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzz

2) What was the worst part of your day?
Peter: When Arman's Mama called and we was not home.
David: That Sonja, she go home so early.
Tom: zzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzz

3) What would you like to do tomorrow?
Peter: Wake up and play with the pirates.
David: I want that Heidi come with the Sonja.
Tom: zzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzz

Simon says 'Gobble, Gobble'!

2010-11-28T22:49:00.010+01:00

It's too bad that Simon can't make up his own commands. If he could, I'm pretty sure that his next would be 'Simon says, go get a haircut, kid.' I mean, come on - look at that boy's head. It looks like a swollen match. If we wait much longer, the barber won't even be able to fit the fashion bowl that we've used to style his noggin for the last two years.

I walked into the bathroom this morning and saw this lovely gem sitting on the counter.

I took this as a sign that Angie had changed her mind about certain things that have annoyed her for years. A few seconds later, Angie walked in and caught wind of my assumptions. Apparently, she only likes 'morning wind' when it comes bottled up in pretty packaging.

On the ride over to Grams and Opa's, Peter and David had an interesting conversation involving Simon, Opa and my manhood.

'Peter, Can I play with Simon?'

'Yes, but don't drop him. If you do, we'll have to ask Opa to fix it because Papa is not so good with tool things.'

Geez, thanks for the vote of confidence, guys. I change the light bulbs when they burn out. What else do you people want from me?

For some strange reason, Germans do not celebrate Thanksgiving. They are weird in so many ways, though, that I tend to ignore their peculiar oddities. It does mean that expats like Grams and I have to wait until the weekend to get our turkey on.

I guess waiting isn't Angie's strong point.

For the first thirty seconds, it was really nice for the boys to see how a normal family can just sit around and hold a nice conversation while patiently waiting for the turkey to be carved. The problem was, Angie and Patience had a falling out a few years ago and, well, let's just say they're not exactly on eating terms yet. Angie won.

Barb, on the other hand, thought it made more sense to start getting everyone liquored up. I normally don't jump on the wine-wagon, but it's not often that Barbara actually makes sense, so I felt compelled to shout 'YES' to her wine-giving. Thanks! At the mention of alcohol, Angie came up for air and realized that the food had not even been served yet. Oh, sorry everyone - mea gulpa!

According to David's brain, the manly thing to do after any feast is to attack one another. In a friendly, thankful kind of way, of course.

Every adult human that has come in contact with a rambunctious child knows this smile. It's typically translated as 'Oh great, everyone is watching this brat trying to strangle me, so now I have to pretend that this is fun, even though I would actually like to drop him to the floor like a sack of potatoes.'

The main difference between the 'smile' approach and the 'mash 'em like taters' method is that grinning just attracts other crazy youths. They smell your indecision from miles away.

As with any frenzied mob, it only takes one crazy punk to chuck a Monchichi before all hell breaks loose.

At that moment, I'm pretty sure that Opa appreciated how Bush felt when he was busy dodging a shoe at Maliki's palace. I never got a chance to laugh at him, though; he suddenly morphed into the role of a secret service agent, charged with protecting mischievous half-pint miscreants from even worse enemies wielding hammers.

From that point, the events unfolded rather quickly. Tom was whisked into protective services with agent Lola who was not so thrilled with her new assignment.

Grams tried to distract the accused until the hearing.

What she didn't realize, though, was that 'hearing', in any grammatical shape or form, is a concept that is completely foreign to animals. They spent approximately ten seconds watching Grams doodle an avocado and then proceeded to fight over and subsequently smash poor Simon.

I looked at the broken plastic bits and mentally added 'Simon II' to the shopping list. I also explained to Peter and David that their toy was dead and that I would have to flush it down the toilet. They ignored me, of course.

'Opa!'

It's probably good that Simon can't make up his own commands, I'm pretty sure that after his Thanksgiving fall, it would be 'Simon says, keep me away from those monsters and let me live here with Opa.'
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Ladder Talk:
1) What was the best part of your day?
Peter: That we ate turkey - yum, yum.
David: We go to Grams and Opa for the thankings.
Tom: When I up-down by Grams and Opa.

2) What was the worst part of your day?
Peter: That we can't stay more.
David: I don't had a worst thing.
Tom: I made a owa my foot.

3) What would you like to do tomorrow?
Peter: That my tooth hurts.
David: Play with Tommy.
Tom: I want to eat.

Mess, trouble and noise

2010-11-27T22:29:00.002+01:00

Lately, Tom has been somewhat interested in the toilet. He doesn't actually want to use it, but when I was changing him this morning, he explained perfectly how it would work if he ever decides to stop crapping his pants.

The problem is summed up rather nicely on his shirt: 'Like to make mess, trouble and noise'. Tom obviously inherited some of Mama's genes, so the messy part is regrettable, but somehow understandable. What I don't get, though, is who the hell is teaching the boy to enjoy getting into trouble and being loud?

Before I could dwell on that puzzler any longer, the door bell rang. Sami, Kika, and Lauri showed up and we hit the streets to the Christmas Market.

The Christmas Market is a tradition in Germany that starts about four weeks before Christmas. In Heidelberg the University square and the Market square are converted into stands and booths that offer anything from sausages and warm wine to hand-made necklaces made from precious plastic. Our boys tore down arts & crafts alley and headed straight for the motherload.

One ride is never enough, but I can tell by the package 'deals' that they offer that we are not the only family spending hours on a big wheel that goes round and round.

They have these insane deals, like 'buy 20 rides and get one ride for half-price'. They might as well name it 'we've got your little ones hooked, so just fork over the cash and we'll play along with you when you tell the little ankle-biters that there is a limit to how many rides they are allowed to go on.'

Okay, that name probably wouldn't fit on the sign, but it was still the thought running through my brain as the smug bastard handed over the ride tokens.

In this picture, I could see David as Donald Trump, just without a half-destroyed mop on top of his head. I imagine Donald staring at a wad of fifties much in the same way that David is lovingly eye-balling his ride tokens. Tom would be Waldo, age two; before he switched to red stripes and went into hiding. Lauri would be Gary Coleman, doing his classic 'whatcha talkin' 'bout, Willis' stare that Waldo is so totally ignoring.

We held out until Tommy's lips turned blue and even then he didn't want to get off. It was probably because his fingers were frozen to the metal wheel, but Tommy decided to throw a freak-fit, so we'll never know for sure. At least his tears froze quickly, sealing his eyes shut for what turned out to be a rather short nap.

He awoke again in the warmth of our apartment to find Katherina entertaining Angie with his puppet book.

It doesn't take much to amuse Angie unless you're me, but I was still surprised that Tom wasn't more possessive about his book. With two older brothers, Tom has gotten quite good at announcing what it MINE! and what is NOT YOU! Let me just say, the moment of self-restraint was brief. Tom was only ignoring the whole 'hey that's my book' thing because he was too busy staring into the empty cookie tray.

'MINE cookie, Mama! You NO EAT!'

It was at that point that he finally noticed Kika goofing around with his book. For Katherina's sake, I intervened.

'Just put the book down gently and slowly walk away. Whatever you do, don't make eye contact. That just makes him really....'

'Hey! MINE book! MINE, NOT YOU!'

Meanwhile, the alpha males were taking an intellectual break from chest-beating.

Okay, Peter skipped the brainiac part and opted instead to wiggle his wiggly tooth for an hour. At one point, Mama meandered over and asked Peter if he needed any help with his tooth.

'NO!'

Short, but sweet. And sincere. And a bit worried. Okay, let's be honest - Peter was petrified shitless and came running into my arms as if the Predator herself was chasing him down. I assured 'Dutch' that I would mask his body heat signature with mud and not allow bipedal aliens to rip his tooth out. When this didn't work, I turned on a movie and made some popcorn.

The cool thing about lazy kids is that they are reliable. Throw on a flick and you're guaranteed at least 20 minutes of silence. Unless you're Tom, who got quite vocal when I stood between him and his precious TV. True to his shirt, he then threw his bowl of popcorn at me, making a huge mess and getting himself into trouble.
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Ladder Talk:
1) What was the best part of your day?
Peter: That I could play with David a game from Star Wars.
David: That I play my game that I got a car with the pistol in the car.
Tom: David do a wagon.

2) What was the worst part of your day?
Peter: That Tommy was just trying to jump on my head the whole time.
David: That I can't play the Hotwheels so cool with Tommy.
Tom: It was dark like the hippo.

3) What would you like to do tomorrow?
Peter: To play with Arman.
David: Play with Tom and Peter - and maybe even you Papa - the car game.
Tom: Watch a show with a monkey.

Exhibit B

2010-11-21T22:44:00.008+01:00

'You are hereby charged with the supervision of two mischevious minors. How do you plead?'

'I plead insanity, your honor.'

The day in question started out like any other - dark and loud. The boys screamed us awake at a time that is or should be illegal in most countries. By 'us' I of course mean 'me' and it didn't help that 'me' was screaming back at the miscreants.

'Rock-thingy-up-go? What the hell are you talking about?'

In my defense, I had completely forgotten that I had been volunteered to take the boys wall climbing. They have driven me up the walls for years, so I seriously doubted that they needed a guide, but Angie's logic had an alibi. When I asked what it was, I was told to go climb up a wall. Fine. Bye.

You'll notice that one of the alleged victims was clearly not under duress; he was freakin' whistling the entire time, for Peter's sake!

Meanwhile, David was supposed to be towing the line, which he did for all of two minutes. After that, he got bored and decided to play tug-of-war with Peter, who was dangling from a man-made cliff close to the ceiling.

After several warnings to stop trying to kill his brother, David lost his turn and earned the not-so-coveted spot by the backpacks, also known as 'time-out' central.

When we returned home, Peter made the mistake of mentioning to Mama that his front tooth was 'a little wiggly'. Angie immediately grabbed him by the jaw and started swinging him around the room. I intervened and politely thanked Angie for what is certain to be one of Peter's early childhood 'memories' but suggested that maybe we should wait a week or so before we start punching his teeth out. Peter nodded rather energetically and then gave me the bird.

'Your honor, I'd like to get a restraining order.'

Angie somehow convinced the judge that he was just showing us his 'wiggly' tooth. Whatever. I'd still like the restraining order.

After getting the kids to bed, Angie decided that it was exactly the right time to start bitching that I have not yet taken the old TV down to the cellar. It's been exactly a week since I bought the new TV; I haven't even figured out how to program the damn thing yet, but this did not faze Charlie Brown's teacher.

'I've nagged you at least nag times to bring the nagging nag down to the nag! Do I have to nag everynag around nag?'

'Your honor, the defendant is clearly insane; she claims mental anguish because I have neglected to remove a television set that has been sitting in the hallway for seven days. Seven days, your honor. In my defense, I would like to submit into evidence Exhibit A'

'Exhibit A is a birthday pendant that the plaintiff has left hanging on the wall since David's birthday in May of this year. To put it into perspective, your honor, this banner has been there for 179 days longer than it needed to be. I'd like to now submit into evidence Exhibit B.'

'Exhibit B is actually our hamper. In June of this year, the plaintiff discovered a few innocent buggies that were chowing down on the wicker fibers and irrationally decided that the best course of action would simply be to move said hamper to our balcony. The hamper is still full; she neglected to remove any clothes and opted instead for a plan that involved buying a new wardrobe. For herself. I am still missing a pair of jeans and my favorite shirt, but that is beside the point. Exhibit B should have been removed in June. It is now covered in snow. I rest my case, your honor.'
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Ladder Talk:
1) What was the best part of your day?
Peter: That we saw my tooth and rock climbing.
David: That I climb up on the wall, okay?
Tom: I was outside with Mommy, too.

2) What was the worst part of your day?
Peter: That I couldn't be last by Ladder Talk.
David: That I can't not play more with Tommy ginger.
Tom: I was fall down there.

3) What would you like to do tomorrow?
Peter: Play with Papa and maybe David a game.
David: Play with Peter Hotwheels.
Tom: I want in to bed with Mommy and Papa he sleep in my bed.

Brothers in leather

2010-11-20T23:01:00.010+01:00

Speaking of sickening, I can't wait to see the search hits that come from naming this one "Brothers in leather". [For those freakos expecting something else, go wash your brain out with soap.]

On the weekend, I normally try and plan something fun for the boys. Not today, though. Tommy was sick and my creativity meter hit snooze until Mama smashed it with her cleaning hammer.

'Get out.'

'Oh, see - I actually had a different plan. I thought I would just hang out on the sofa with Tommy and maybe watch a...'

'Get out.'

I still don't understand the logic behind cleaning a house that houses three boys and me, but logic and I haven't been on speaking terms for ten years. Now, some of you math types with your fancy calcumalators might bring up that Angie and I have only been married for seven years. To that, I would remind you that Angie and I dated for three years. Now do the math.

My brain had only had one cup of coffee before Mr. Clean's number one fan decided that running the vacuum while tending to a sick two-year old was somehow a fair trade for dumping an aesthetically pleasing and hairy-chested man-hunk with two rather loud and energetic boys, so I decided to impress Peter and David with what only seems like a run-on sentence. When this didn't work, I resorted to letting them ride the escalator.

They weren't being lazy; there are just so many hours that you can spend on an escalator before you need to sit down and take a break. They are lazy, though.

Next on Papa's fun-filled plan of action was a little thing I like to call 'eating'.

The boys were intrigued. It was a relatively new concept for them, so I tried my best to explain what 'eating' entailed. I would have probably done better to go through what doesn't constitute 'eating'. Gulping down your Coke and burping the alphabet, for example, doesn't. But kudos for making it to V, Davey.

All burping aside, the boys seemed genuinely interested in learning more about this whole 'eating' thing that Papa was raving about. Halfway though my explanation, though, the boys donned their coats and went outside, apparently to practice for the next auditioning of 'Jackass'.

This baffled me, since it had nothing at all to do with eating. It actually had the opposite effect for me, so I pushed my plate away and decided to stick to moving staircases.

On the way home, we passed by a Lion's Club stand. The only thing that could have been cooler for David would be if the lion had been red. He overlooked this, though and demanded a hug.

Luckily, I am secure enough in my fatherhood that I was not jealous at all. [Note to self: buy an oversized lion outfit - a red one.]

When we got home, Peter started rubbing it in that he was going to spend the night at Artin's and how much fun he was going to have while Davey was stuck at home doing nothing with nobody. I gave Peter several warnings to knock it off, but he must get his listening skills from his mother.

In the end, Peter was being such a horrible little shit to Davey that I finally had to come to his rescue. I explained to Peter that we were converting the living room into a movie theater, making pop-corn and renting Toy Story 2, which Peter has been dying to see.

In the end, I actually did manage to plan something fun for the boys to do on the weekend. Just not Peter.
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Ladder Talk:
[Peter was too busy missing out on a kick-ass movie to do Ladder Talk.]
1) What was the best part of your day?
Peter:
David: That I can watch the movie and Peter not.
Tom: That I a boat, Papa.

2) What was the worst part of your day?
Peter:
David: That Tommy is sick.
Tom: When I want the whale and whoosh, bam, owa and I cry like this - boo hoo.

3) What would you like to do tomorrow?
Peter:
David: To go climbing on the wind.
Tom: I want twick-o-tweet.