While you were gone...

Davey and Löwie flew to America with Grams and Mama for his BIG TRIP before school starts. Peter had gone to Africa with Opa and Barbara, but Angie and I both agreed that David would have taken one look at an elephant and said 'yeah, they have them at the zoo back home - can we go to the hotel pool?'

David and Peter are different in many ways. For example, if you tell Peter something is spicy, he will not even allow it to touch his plate. David, on the other brain, has voluntarily tasted Wasabi, Tabasco, horseradish, and jalapeños. He's even made the observation that 'they all burn, but different.'

They share the same mental polarization when it comes to anything involving adrenaline or fear. Peter is more the one to look at the side of a cliff and awe at its beauty. David would be the one halfway up, wondering if he could make it to the top without falling.

Needless to write, we needed a 'special' trip for David. I think we nailed it when we decided on Disney World. Hello, Florida.

Grams was thrilled as well. By 'thrilled', I of course mean 'I hope they still serve free drinks on transatlantic flights'.

So, while Goofy & Co. were bagging pretzels and annoying flight attendants, what were the animals left behind doing? Well, thanks for asking.

Our first day was jam-packed with excitement as Papa repeatedly beat the crap out of our broken vacuum cleaner and clogged our sink with all of the disgusting shit that Angie had sucked up shortly before flying off to amusement.

As the dust settled, we were wondering what David was up to. First on their trip was Sea World, where Turtle Boy apparently lost his right arm in the shark petting tank.

Meanwhile, back at the Zoo, Papa was going through a rather lengthy grocery list of chores left by Master.

Yes, that's right - at the top of the list were door knobs for the closet I bought months ago. They look like these, which are attached to Angie's closet. See, I can reach the top of my closet and open the door that way. Like her tolerance level, Angie is quite short and needs to get a ladder every time she wants to put away laundry. My comment that this only happens twice a year is probably what pushed this baby to the top of my TODO list. Go to IKEA and buy the damn door knobs!

Don't get excited, Angie - I didn't actually put them on. Mounting them would have involved drilling and I've sworn off power tools ever since our kitchen shelf fell off the wall. I did buy the door knobs, though, which technically was the action item. Ka-check!

Since we only had one item to purchase, we decided to use IKEA's dead-simple self check-out line. Peter insisted on doing it and I quickly realized that the boy has unfortunately inherited Angie's technology gene.

This was pretty much the vacant gaze that Peter held for ten minutes until a friendly staff member came over and pointed at the big green flashing button on the screen that said 'checkout now'.

As we continued with our clerk-assisted self checkout, David was busy growing facial cream.

It's nice that David was having such a great time, but we were also having fun. Kinda.

This game was called 'Move David and Tom's room into the hallway'. It was a fun game with a simple and easy goal - to move their bunk bed from one side of the room to the other. The problem was that to do that, every single piece of furniture had to first be removed, the carpet had to be ripped up, and the floor had to be scrubbed. At least Peter and Tom helped for the first 24 seconds, so it wasn't only me. Thanks, guys.

Five hours and two buckets of sweat later, I was ready for a break. Apparently, David Johnsonhoff was also trying to cool things down.

I didn't drool over too many episodes of Baywatch, but I'm pretty sure that Mitch Buchannon never impressed scantily clad beach hotties by picking up seashells and snorting them. Still, better than a drunken cheeseburger frenzy.

In keeping with the fun tradition of being left alone to my own devices, I decided to grab a machete and attack our patio jungle. It started with a trip to the garden store to get a machete. The lady there informed me that they didn't sell machetes. Instead, she offered me some weed-remover-tool-thingy that looked like David could break it by looking at it. I almost screamed at the woman to stop pushing the toys and fork over a manly weapon, but then I realized that she was obviously flirting with me. Fine, I'll take it!

I should point out some bullets:

• Our balcony was covered from one end to the other with weeds, moss, broken pots and a dead BBQ grill that Angie has been nagging about since before it rusted over
• Our balcony is like Mars; not a single living plant existed in the few pots that were still intact
• Our balcony gets direct radiation from sunup to sundown
• It was not cloudy on the day I went insane

So, yeah. I started at about 10 o'clock in the morning and it took about four and a half hours to deforest the balcony. Plus two hours to de-warm the beer.

At least I wasn't the only one fighting in the jungle.

G.I. Dave apparently spent a lot of time fighting with troops at Hollywood Studios.

While Commando-Dave was getting his head shrunk, I was heading to the Home Improvement store, where I tackled a manly-looking guy near aisle five and pleaded for help on remounting a kitchen shelf that had ripped itself out of a sandstone wall. Oddly enough, he knew exactly what I needed and I was home in time to catch up on some laundry.

Don't get excited, Angie - I didn't fold the clothes; I only shrunk them and magically made white things pink. I also didn't hang the shelf, but I think I've already covered my aversion to things that go bang-crash-bonk in the kitchen. She didn't care - she was busy on the streets of San Francisco looking for flowers for her hair.

She didn't leave her heart in San Francisco, but she did leave her mind. Then she went to IHOP and mindlessly left the camera behind. That in itself wouldn't have been noteworthy had they noticed it before they got to Disney World. That's right - David had travelled halfway across the globe to visit Disney World and Angie had somehow managed to lose the camera on the big day. The next day, they went back to IHOP and luckily recovered the camera. I only point this out 1) to explain how it is that I could still have pictures of their trip and 2) to explain why there are none of the typical Mickey Mouse pictures that one (namely my wallet) might expect from a very expensive trip to a park. It was amusing, though.

At about that time, I was reviewing the fun shopping list of chores I had planned for the day when Tommy turned on me. He didn't really make much sense, but, like Angie, he hardly ever does. I interpreted his spastic babbling as follows.

'Listen up, Papa! David has been having fun EVERY day and what do we get? Weeds, laundry and DOOR KNOBS??!! If you don't do something kid-fun, I am going to freak out on you!'

Apparently, I was too late.

To calm down psycho boy, I took the abandoned animals to the swimming shelter. Peter did disgusting things with ice-cream to show how much he missed David.

Tommy can't swim, so I let him ride motorcycles instead. Right on, right on!

It was also the first time ever that Peter has shrugged away a merry-go-round ride. He nonchalantly announced to Opa and me that he was too old for baby rides. Of course he then giddily raced around like a kid in a candy store until he found the perfect ride that Tommy should get on. Yeah, Tommy should; that's it.

I asked Big Pete what manly-man thing would be fun for his ripe old age. He timidly whispered to me that bowling might be fun. I then did the manly-man thing and told him that I couldn't hear him. After several iterations, he was finally growling at me to take him [Switch to pre-adolescent voice trying to sound manly] BOWLING!

I dumped the Kind in Kindergarten and hit the lanes with Big Boy Lebowski. He kept celebrating that he did not have a single gutter ball and I kept reminding him that the lane had bumper bars that made it impossible to....oh whatever. What do you want to do now, old timer?

That's right, barkeep - a Coke, straight up with a twist. Aaahhh, they start so young. I mean OLD, of course. Because Peter is so OLD now. And BIG - he's HUGE. At least my premature adult hadn't outgrown playing trains with Tommy.

Playing trains together actually turned out to be a BIG part of their week without David. They sat literally for hours building train stations, cities and something call trainpolines that Peter invented and Tommy loved. I guess I hadn't realized how little Peter and Tom actually play with each other until we removed the David factor. Tom and David hang out all the time, but when Peter and David hang out, Tom is the odd one out. With David gone, Tom was still odd, but at least he was in.

On the last day, I made Tommy cry and Peter pout. Actually this is pretty much a daily routine, but it normally does not have anything to do with me mopping the floor; probably because I just don't do that shit unless Angie has been gone for a week.

This tear-worthy event meant that Trainopolis had to be destroyed. At least all the bawling and snot-moaning tuckered them out.

This is actually another new tradition that started as soon as Angie left. Normally, even though I consider it to be anything but, I have to stay with Tommy until he falls asleep. To be more specific, he needs my arm to cuddle. Until recently, this was okay, since he would be out like a light within five minutes. In recent months, though, he has quite often gotten his second wind after dinner and it has sometimes taken an hour of an impatient father waiting for him to get sleepy enough to conk out.

Over the last few weeks, I have tried explaining to buzz-boy that if I left the room, he could whisper with David for ten or fifteen minutes and even lightly goof around, but he didn't budge. I tried it anyway a couple times and he would just start screaming his head off like a Mama's boy and Angie would come to the rescue. But guess what? Mama's not here now, is she?

That's right - I used David's vacation and Mama's absence as a perfectly timed excuse for breaking that horse. It was easier and quieter than I thought. Peter of course helped by explaining to him how much crazy stuff they could do as long as they keep it quiet enough for Papa to not hear them from the living room. I heard them for hours; I just didn't give a shit. Did I mention that Mama wasn't there?

As Peter and Tom giggled away the midnight oil, David was on a homebound plane with a mission. Shortly before landing, the nine and a half hours of wiggling paid off and David's first tooth yanked open the emergency hatch and escaped.

Angie gave me a proper welcome home. After kisses (for me) and gifts (for Peter and Tom), she noticed at the floor.

'There are streak marks!'

'We missed you, too!'

After grabbing the mop and redoing the floor, she noticed David and Tom's new room.

'Uh, no. That doesn't work for me.'

'And what would work for you, honey?'

Instead of answering, she spent the next twenty minutes rearranging all of the furniture. After that she verbally noticed the unfolded laundry on the sofa, the closet doors without knobs and the naked kitchen wall.

'What did you do while we were gone?!'
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Ladder Talk: [This blog spanned over a week; David's journal, including his sketches, will follow]
1) What was the best part of your day?
Peter:
David:
Tom:

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

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

Pre-flight checks

Today started out with an Angie freak-out that was so predicted that I could have set my watch to it. Allow me to explain:

• She is flying with David to America tomorrow
• She had not yet packed

That's it. Trust me, it doesn't take much to trigger an Angie-plosion. Luckily, I am the modern day Nostradamus and saw this meltdown coming two days ago when I first innocently asked my ball of tension if she had packed yet. It had less to do with how she growled at me and more to do with the thousand-yard stare that accompanied her primal reply. It was at that point that I started thinking about what I could do with the boys on T minus 1 to get far, far away from suitcases and negative stress.

In the end, I took the animals to the zoo. Well, not all of them. I sacrificed David to pack with the Predator and quickly escaped with buddies 1 and 3. I felt bad, but only briefly. David was going on his 'pre-school trip' that started as a tradition with Peter's trip to Africa in the summer before he started school.

David starts school in the fall and up until two weeks ago, I had planned to take Destructo Dave to Disney World in Orlando to see what damage we could smack on Mickey and his goofy friends. It only took one tiny trip to the doctor's to find out why my calves were turning black to be diagnosed with varicose veins that need to be removed immediately. This inconvenient medical setback meant that I will be operated on in two weeks and cannot fly. [Exit Steve, enter Angie]

After our last trip to the States, at least our passports are ALL up to date, so Angie's only worry was picking out clothes and stuffing them into a padded rectangle. My only worry was making sure that Peter and Tommy weren't horsing around at the zoo.

Tommy assured me that he wasn't, but something about his mischievous grin made me nervous. I decided to ignore him for the moment and check on Peter. Monkey boy announced to me from the rafters that he wants to be a swinger when he grows up. Don't we all.

I decided not to stroll down the rocky path of non-monogamous explanations. Instead, I marched on with my goal of tuckering out three-year olds. It started with a real cliff-hanger.

As everyone knows, what goes up must come down. What might not be common knowledge is that if you forget to apply light pressure when sliding down a pole, you slam into the dirt below like a sack of potatoes.

Shortly after this shot, we were reminded by friendly zoo folk carrying shovels and smelling like poop that wailing like a kid who had just pile-drived himself tends to scare the animals. Thanks, Dolittle.

I borrowed the good doctor's shovel and scraped up a pile of Tommy from the sand. After some minor tears and some major hugs, I was able to release potatoes back into the wild. 

This picture is actually shortly after the second tear-worthy crash of the day. It happened approximately six steps before this shot, when Tommy lost his balance and tumbled headfirst into the weeds. They look soft and cushiony, but trust Tommy's lungs, they were not. At least he inherited Mama's stubborn gene, prompting him to shoo away helping hands; he had a log to cross and by damn if anyone got in his way.

Meanwhile, back in the jungle, Angie had not progressed any further with packing. I discovered this when we came back and Angie was in front of Crackbook looking guilty but amused. Amusement got the better of her. 

'Hey, you gotta check out this video - it's a cat chasing a flashlight and...'

'Yeah, cute. Did you pack?'

'Um, did you want to have coffee?'

'Did you pack?'

'Oh hey, while you guys were gone, Davey did the funniest ...'

'DID YOU PACK, WOMAN???!!!'

Angie is not prone to whimpering, but her 'not yet' came damn close. As I scolded her with my eyes, Tommy strolled by and asked why Mama would be packing. We explained for the 200th time that Mama would be flying away with David for a week. For the 200th time, Tommy refused to accept this and demanded that we pack his suitcase because 'I are too going'. 

Tommy is prone to whimpering and his 'fine, then I'll go by me-self' comment told me that he was still in denial. Married men know that you should not try and pet mad dogs; nothing you do will make them happy. Sometimes, it's better just to let the crazy pup build a 'super-fly box to take me to Uhmerika'.

Speaking of crazy animals, Tommy wasn't the only one petrified at the thought of a week alone with Papa. Luke apparently built his own flying contraption and looked ready for takeoff. He had even packed one of the kid's toy bug-bots for the flight.

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Ladder Talk:
1) What was the best part of your day?
Peter: When I was a big bird with little wings.
David: When I can pack my new game.
Tom: When I build my spaceship.

2) What was the worst part of your day?
Peter: When Tommy was screaming so loud by the zoo.
David: I didn't have a bad part.
Tom: When I go aaagghh-boom and owa.

3) What would you like to do tomorrow?
Peter: To go to the swimming pool.
David: To fly to America.
Tom: To fly to Uhmerika.

The times they are a blowin'

Despite many, many, many threats, I allowed David to turn six today. In keeping with tradition, he woke up at, imagine that, six o' freakin' clock. My futile attempt to convince David that it wasn't his birthday until noon was jabbed away by Angie with an elbow to my ribs and an equally pleasant request to make coffee. Yes, Master.

Master had been on a mad cleaning frenzy the night before, apparently because we were having guests. This to me is dumber than the phrase 'you always find it in the last place you look'. Well, no shit - I would hope you stop looking for whatever your dumbass lost once you find it. And as far as cleaning up before a horde of messy knee-highs come barreling through the place, I just don't get it. When I was a single sailor, I never said 'oh, the boys are coming over for poker night; I better swab the decks and polish the cutlery'. Hell no; I took the non-crazy approach and said 'Crap! I'm gonna have to clean tomorrow afternoon'. Yes, I wrote 'afternoon'.

Angie's logic and mine have restraining orders on each other that were issued years ago, so I retreated to my beloved 'camera guy' role. I took one (and only one) picture this morning of Angie, delicately balanced on the headboard of our bed on one foot, arms stretched out to the point of tipping over, gripping the end of a vacuum extension tube, trying desperately to murder an innocent family of spiders who had mistakenly thought that the upper corner wall of our bedroom with high ceilings would be a safe neighborhood to raise their baby arachnids.

The 'click' of the camera damn near made Angie topple, which would have certainly resulted in a symphony of clicks played to the backdrop of hysterical laughing. At the last second, Angie impressed me with a spider-monkey-ninja-move that I like to call 'Grab-the-radiator-pipe-with-one-hand-and-shove-the-other-fist-in-your-incredibly-sexy-husband's-face-and-threaten-to-kill-him-until-he-is-dead-if-he-snaps-one-more-picture-or-even-contemplates-using-that-one-for-his-stupid-blog'.

I tried to explain to her that the move was indeed impressive, but that it had a rather long and slightly threatening name and might be more viral if she picked a catchy acronym. She shortened it down considerably, although I could not break out the four-letter acronym that she came up with on the spot. It was catchy, though.

Survival instincts and Angie's sudden and uncontrollable shaking prompted me to work on the coffee 'request' that I had ignored earlier and chalked up to playful pillow talk. As I brewed a pot of black glory, I heard a gleeful shout that reminded me of Angie's victory wail.

 

I ran in just in time to catch Mama spanking David on his brand-new Lego table soccer arena that he has wished for since he was in Angie's womb. I reminded my son's mother that it was HIS gift and HIS birthday and subtly suggested that maybe HE should be the one wailing victoriously. 

As expected, Angie ignored me completely and continue to try and annihilate our second born. Luckily, he is a natural born learner and soon the room was filled with Angie's defeat wail. It's pretty much the same as the victory one; it's just louder, uglier, and a tad bit more guttural. Kinda like two alligators fighting over a bucket of Kentucky Fried Chicken. The primal scream apparently interested Peter, who came running to see what was going on. 

In case you didn't notice (I didn't until I heard the KNOCK), Peter had opened the door with his forehead. I should point out that Peter is the only one out of our family so far that has been tested for high IQ. I didn't quite make the connection between head-bashing the door open and pure genius, but it was David's day and Peter is prone to quirky klutziness from time to time. He gets this from Mama. Besides, Lauri had shown up and we had muffins to eat. Eight of them, according to whacko-man.

Unless you're kidless or a moron, you should pick up on the fact that Tommy was on a sugar high. He was cracking up hysterically because 'David is six, but the muffins are eight'. I immediately pulled Sami aside, who confirmed that the muffins were not leftover brownies meant for my birthday. I was relieved, but only slightly. 

Before my thoughts could dwell, Angie grabbed me and instructed me to pick up David and toss him in the air. Sure, no problem.

It only looks like Angie is stronger than me. I contribute my slightly weaker side to a pro-life reluctance to smashing our son's skull on the living room carpet as a result of a silly German tradition to raise the birthday boy into danger. Yeah, that's it. 

I lit the fire-cake and told David he had three per lung. When he didn't get that, I told him to just blow. 

As we were eating cake, Angie explained to her lady friends how David was a genius because his brain processes things differently and because...

'Holy shit! What are you DOING David??!!'

Brainiac-boy had slipped away from the cake frenzy and was standing in front of the TV swinging a chair over his head like a lasso.

My first thought was 'that last swing was about 2 millimeters from scratching my flat screen'.

My second thought was 'Genius my ass'.

My third thought was 'DDDAAAAAAAAVVVIIIDD!!!!'

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Ladder Talk:
1) What was the best part of your day?
Peter: When Davey was a cowboy with the chair.
David: When I beat Mama by the futbol game.
Tom: When I by the muffins eat why I so funny. 

2) What was the worst part of your day?
Peter: When you say I can't stay the night by my friend.
David: When I almost broke the TV and you scream on me.
Tom: When Lauri - he throw a truck on my foot.

3) What would you like to do tomorrow?
Peter: I want to play with all of Davey's toys and make them mine.
David: To play futbol with Yuki.
Tom: Papa, you know - MUFFINS - hahahahahahaha.....