Pediatrician appointment? Fun.

It was check-up time for the Pumpkin Man on Thursday. Turns out he's riddled with STD's. Handsome bastard.

We also needed to go get him a final hep b shot and a flu shot and his regular exam. We dread these things because the Peanut has always seen our Ped. in shall we say an adversarial light. Every time the poor women (a fantastic doc) came near her, the Peanut would give her most intimidating and creepy death stare. There is nothing that says cute baby like one who can pull off a seriously nasty fuck you look. It's much like you're a bug and her choices are stomp or dissect.

She would give this look to the doctor just for shits and giggles sometimes, never mind if she was getting a shot or having a full exam.

The P man is a lot different though. He is a smiling, charismatic son-of-a-bitch. The doctor came at him and checked his ears and he was all smiles. She looked at his eyes and his eyes grinned right back. She opened his diaper, and he laughed like he was saying "Sure doc, go ahead, check out my dick. Whatever. You ever seen one like that before? Me neither! It's all good. Don't forget the balls." And on the rest of the exam went in that manner.

Until she got to his throat and teeth. Then he started fighting. He fought worse, in fact, than my wife did on our first date when I attempted to "seduce" her with a horse tranquilizer. True love always wins in the end though. That, a dart gun, and a black cloth bag. But I digress.

He flipped out for the throat check and then he took the shots pretty much as you would expect, like a lil baby (biatch).

The really weird part though is that the peanut got her flu shot, and she was awesome. Smiley and polite to the doctor and when the shot came, she took it like a man. She was totally "Please sir, can I have another?" about it. Then she did 20 one armed push-ups, drank a fifth of Jack, and slapped me in my face for being soft. We were very proud.

At the very least, she only cried for like 2 seconds, ate her lollipop, and actually thanked the dr. for her Pooh sticker and red crayon band-aid.

So the tally is one tough chick to go with one charming pretty boy .


And one lucky and flummoxed Homemaker Man

Holy Christ, what is that? Oh, it's just my ass.

I am feeling fat. Fat fat fatty fat fat. But I carry it well. In a wheelbarrow attached to my ass. I'm sure I wouldn't look this fat if I just you know, wore some black clothes and stopped shoveling pie into my hole like I'm sick and the antidote is in it.

I try to exercise. I walk every day and for a while I did Wii Fit.

The Wii Fit is a snide, judgmental, prick.

First off, you have to make a little character (a Mii. The Japanese know cute.) and I know I'm chubby, so I made him with a little chubby belly. I've got integrity.

The first thing you do with the Wii fit is weigh yourself and get a bmi and a weight. You also immediatley get shit on.

I weighed myself and the God damn thing said, " You're obese!" and then it made a sound like an elephant taking a dump, and then it expanded my little Mii to three time it's size in a way so that the new fat was animated to jiggle. Awesome.

So I do the yoga and the aerobics, and the computer trainers say shit like, "Phew, good work out (condescending bastard. I got a below average score. Don't patronize me.) Looks like you need to work on your flexibility."

Translation: "Have you ever touched your toes? Have you ever even seen your toes? How about your dick? "

Passive aggressive electronic pee-hole.

Then I go on vacation, and so I can't use the thing for a few days and when I come home and turn it on I get this smug dancing television going:

"Hey Tank (my Mii's nick name) where have you been? It's been awhile since you last worked out. You know, training every day is the best way to a healthy body."

Translation: "Where have you been, tubs? You fall into a bag of Doritos? Why don't you eat your way out and then try doing some exercise there, cankles?. You know daily training is the only way you're going to avoid having your heart explode because you push it too hard reaching for that last Suzy-Q."

It's all in the infernal thing's tone. it really is. Any other Wii Fit user will back me up.

So I quit doing it. Fuck me, Wii Fit? No sir, fuck you!

I'm going to try again though. Seriously. Stop smirking, you negative sons-of bitches.

I need an ice cream.


Large and in charge,


The Homemaker Man

Homemaker on Ice.

I work now. No shit. Outside of the house. With people. Blecch. Every sunday. I drive the Zamboni at the local skating rink. Don't ask how I got the job, I'm not sure myself. Not exactly a drive and maintain large machinery competently kind of guy really. Mostly I'm a, "Sure i'll drive it . . . what is it?" kind of guy. The tough part is hockey parents. Nothing like two 40 year-olds who want to bash each other's brains in over a 2 minute offsides (I don't know what that means) penalty committed by one of their kids. The men are bad too.

It's no place for a Jew on Rosh Hashanah. Or any other day.

The nice part is that there is some down time. This week, I used my down time to whip out a few haiku. Originally inspired by (ripped off from) a post from this consistently funny blog. That and a phone call from home. I don't mean to be unoriginal, it's just when I see haiku, I want to do them too. Wrote many back when I was stuck in a cubicle not working. They're fun. Ok, with out further ado, common 5-7-5 format:

Homemaker Man not home
Daughter on phone whines "help me."
Whoa. Poor Poor mommy

Hockey moms and dads
kids run freely, skates gleaming
Hey, whose toe is that?

Hockey time is here
Cold wind blows through empty seats
wake up, white people.

I want to use the word
Zamboni in a haiku
I think this is cheating.


P.S. I'd like to say, mainly to my wife but also to any one else who is either a truly skilled (like my wife) poet or who really knows poetry, I know that these count as haiku only by the very slimmest of margins. A real haiku is like origami. Small and delicate and simple and beautiful, and when you unfold it there are many many layers. My haiku are more like fucked-up paper airplanes. They work for a short distance but then they either crash or poke someone in the eye.


HM out!

L'Shanah Tovah!

Happy New Year up in this piece Jews! Wishes to all for a good year. I am not actually a religious man, but I do feel it's important for the kids to expose them to the culture. Technically, they're not Jewish. My wife is goyim. I don't hold it against her.

Health and happiness to all

Happy 5770!


The Homemaker Mensch

Sleep Deprivation. Seriously.

I mean, not to offend, but I would suck your d**k for a nap. I really would. Heck, If you can guarantee me 7 hours of uninterrupted sleep I might take you on a trip around the world. Vulgar. Sue me. I'm very tired. This is as coherent as I get. The first draft of this post started:

Sleep Deprtbfxghcdjklgluilmkrjbythtvsqwqv222zzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzz.

My lovely, funny, darling kids have been trading off, you see.

The Pumpkin Man was not sleeping through the night. We were exhausted and at the end of our rope. We Ferberized him. Don't judge. We were starting to crack and it's not as bad as you think and it worked and it's better than deep throating a tailpipe. We did the same to the Peanut around the same age (8 months).

It worked this time too. He sleeps 10 1/2 straight hours. So what's the problem? you might be asking. The problem is they hate us. The babies hate us and they are trying to destroy us. When one sleeps, the other takes over. They are in cahoots.

I think it goes something like this:

Peanut:(whispering into Pman's car seat) Ok, I know I'm only two, but here's the plan. I'm going to sleep for now. The night is yours. Cry, baby bro. Loudly. Caterwaul, squawk, wail, scream, sniffle, and be sure to cough every once in a while. Coughing freaks them right out. Do this often throughout the night. When you get tired of doing it, I'll start waking up at 2am and running up to the gate in my door to screech angrily every half hour like a disgruntled chimp (evil giggle)."

PMan: Check. I like it. They'll be dead by december(evil gurgle).


I don't know why they want to kill us. I believe they think it's hilarious. They're always laughing at shit. Fuckers

We can't do it much longer. We're wearing down, our bodies ache, we're getting snappy with each other, and yesterday morning I walked half my street to get my wind blown trash cans. In my boxers. Because I just don't give a shit anymore. Mrs. Works Hard for Her Money-Homemaker Man wore her shirt inside out to work. All day.


So if anyone knows anyway we can get some sleep, I'm all ears. My eyeballs feel like there is glass in them and the other night I thought I was in the bathroom and I pissed in my boots.

Thanks

Exhausted in The Big Pink.

Green Day: Has it been a million years already?

It was 15ish years ago now I guess. Give or take a couple years. I spent a lot of my time going to see every hot alterna-music act I could. I saw some great things. Tribe Called Quest at a club called Axis that couldn't have held more than 250 people. I saw Eminem right before he blew up at a club called the Middle East that was only a little bigger than Axis. Hole at another similar club. I caught Qtip when he stage dived (dove? divd?) and got a cheap feel of Courtney Love's panties when she crowd surfed. And I did not use hand sanitizer afterwards. I got up close to the Beastie boys and was amazingly disappointed by an ego-maniacal set ending guitar solo by Billy Corgan. I lost my shirt moshing (not that asshole punching and kicking crap, just honest moshing) and got removed from a show for crowd surfing too close to the stage too many times. And snuck back in 10 minutes later.

And one hot and sunny day, I was there when Green Day made a crowd lose control. We went absolutely ape shit. It was at an outdoor venue and they still to this day have never had Rock and Roll music there again. The thing is no one got really badly hurt that I remember. Just too much youth and excitement in one place happen to cause (according to legend) 100,000 people to try to get a little closer to the stage all at once. You know, just to get a better view.

Green Day was just becoming huge with Dookie and the show had been booked before then, so the crowd was much bigger than the authorities expected. There I was mashed into the human porridge that was the crowd. Myself and a few stalwart souls I had met that day had just carved out an impressive 3 and 1/2 ft of clear ground so that the resident joint roller could work his magic. He rolled, we smoked, and Green Day came on. They were great.

In my memory it seems like the show went on for maybe 10 minutes, Billy Joe started yelling and swearing and tearing up flowers near the stage, and that's what did it. We surged. If there was ever any one thing you could point to to incite a crowd of young people, its a punk rock midget visibly tearing up grass and flowers. I mean, he was tearing flowers. How else were we supposed to react?

I remember walking and taking the train home that night, drenched in my own and other people's sweat (and God knows what else) and thinking, knowing that I had been part of something undeniably cool. Pop culturally historic, maybe.


Now, it's a decade and a half later. My wife and kids are upstairs asleep. I sit in my chair idly watching the VMA's knowing I should be getting ready for tomorrow morning. Fulfilling my stay at home duties and making my family happy. As far as substances are concerned, I have had maybe a case of beer total in the last 2 plus years.
But Green Day is on. So I stop to watch. And Billy Joe Armstrong looks like Liza Minelli. The drummer Tre' Cool looks like Jeff Daniels. I look like a chubby middle aged Jew. What the fuck happened?

Doesn't really matter though. That thing they did with all the people on the stage was really cool. They still rock. And so do I. I am a hardcore stay-at-home dad and my family loves it.

I love you family. You make me feel like a rock star. And not just because I stage dive on the babies.


Love,

Husband, Daddy, Homemaker Man



P.S. Classy, classy Beyonce', right?

I Can't Even Leave to Go

Never since I myself was a child can I remember there being as many instances in my life of really needing to pee and feeling like I was never going to get a chance to go. I think that statement right there sums up having two young kids to raise. I mean Christ. There are times when I really need to go. I mean aching kidneys, molten lead weighted bladder, piss in a bottle, knock on the door of a strange house have to go. But you know what? Fuck me. Yup. It's part of my job.

"Daddy, help me, Daddy, owwee on my hand, daddy, I've got poopoos in my diaper". I should be so lucky.

Or me pleading painfully: "Peanut, get off the table now please. Please get off the table right now. Daddy's going to pee pee in his pants if you don't GET DOWN RIGHT NOW! Pleeease darlin'.

(beat) "Daddy go pee pee in the potty."

Yeah, no shit kid? Thanks for the tip. That is really what I'd prefer now that you mention it. Hey, why don't you try taking your own advice sometime there Dr. Phil? Howsa bout it?

And the Pumpkin man does the same thing just pre-verbally. Kid has watched me piss from his seat on my arm many, many times. I hope he's learning something. The worst thing is, there you are doing what was probably the first dance step in the history of man, your kid needs something immediately, which is the timing of all kid needs, and suddenly you realize you've forgotten you had to go. Then the need is back on you so suddenly you figure maybe you should just go out in a blaze of exploding bladder blood and urine glory right there. That'd give the kids something to mull over later in life.

And can I ask the reader: please don't categorize this as scatological or bathroom humor. If you have to label it something I'd say not-going-to-the bathroom humor is a tad more accurate.
'
But you do it because it's sort of hard wired. Meet the kids' needs first because they're your kids. Love'em too much to do things any other way. Can't wait til they're older though. I may find a way to make a 20 year old piss their pants. Alcohol not included.

Babies in the air

Look out! They squish when they land. There are babies coming everywhere however. My brother in-law and his wife are expecting in February. He is a great and funny guy on whom I will now have my revenge. About 7 months ago he taught my 2 year old the Peanut to "swim" in our fish tank. And that's only one of a dozen moments where his sense of humor overrode his good judgement. I can't wait to get my hands on his baby. That kid's first word is going to be the F bomb. Seriously. Ideally he'll be screaming it while flushing his father's socks down the toilet. An uncle can dream.

Also on the clock for a baby are these fine gentlemen, who have found an egg donor. Congrats guys. And this is not a shameless ploy to win the contest they are running. Shame went out the window right about the time I had my first kid. It just weighs you down.

Oh Blog, I'm Sorry, I Can't Deal. School is Here

So, I haven't posted in a while. The formatting problem with my blog is one reason. All my stuff, links, info and so forth, is down at the bottom of the page. I can't muster the time or attention span to sit down and attend to it properly. That stuff sort of intimidates me. Nuts and bolts computer stuff. I am bullied by html. One time I was wedgied by code. A downloading error once took my lunch money. etc.

The other reason is that I am a stay at home dad, and my wife went back to work today after summer vacation. This is like tax season for accountants or Halloween for delinquents. Busy, busy, busy. Gotta get a lot of the big projects that went unattended to (read:ignored) over the summer finished. Front yard, back yard. Laundry. Not all the laundry of course. I kept bathing suits and shorts clean all summer. Mostly. Thank You.

And I have to leave time to stress about the fact that the Pumpkin Man for some reason decided to quit taking his bottle a day, deciding that yelling at us until his mother basically left her breast out forever was the better choice. I'm torn I admit. And The Peanut is now old enough to really notice that her mom is gone all day and ask for her or for her whereabouts. Usually she knows where we are at all times. In her head if she doesn't see one of us then that means that "mommy's sleepin'" or "daddy's poopin'. Yep, I'm regular and she's exhausted.