Bucket Head

Bucket head is a game.  A great game.  One of our favorites.  It involves me putting a yellow plastic bucket down over one of my kids’ heads until their face is completely covered and then using it for a drum.  All the while loudly chanting, “Buuuucket HEAAAD! BucketHeadBucketHead!”  I drum fairly lightly, and they laugh and laugh and then it’s my turn to wear the bucket.  It is elegant in its simplicity. 

The game has evolved.  Now the Peanut plays it with her little brother.  In her version, she runs at him and slams the bucket down over his wispy, blond-haired, unsuspecting head and then wails on it with everything she’s got.  Just pounds the shit out of him.  While screeching “Bucket Head!” like an insane bird of prey.  The Pumpkin Man usually vacillates between laughing and crying until I can rescue him.  He’s so happy she’s playing with him, but man, love hurts.  She smiles and screams his name and tells me “He likes it daddy, he likes it!” It’s a little frightening for everyone.  In a good way. 

At our twice weekly, YMCA playgroup, not everyone talks to me.  It’s mostly moms.  Some of them are nice, many are standoffish.  Some of the standoffish ones even go to the trouble of carrying extra, suspicious, mistrustful stares in their diaper bags that they drag out just for me. 

There are times when I’m self-pitying about it and I wonder what I did wrong.  Of course, when I’m honest with myself, I know what I did.

It started innocently enough.  I was over to the side, playing a game of Bucket Head with my kids.  Some of the other kids noticed.  They were intrigued.  Who wouldn’t be?  Being naturally friendly, I shared our family game with them. At first it was just a couple of the bolder 3 year olds.  They in turn, passed it on.  Paid it Forward.  In a flash, there were toddlers everywhere playing Bucket Head.  Playing it hard.  Like a campfire in a meth lab, it quickly got out of control.  Toddlers, dozens of them (hundreds?) eyes wild, unseen mouths flecked with foam, running blindly, screaming,  “Bucket Head! (some of them had placed the bucket on their own heads and were stumbling around the gym, the call of Bucket head echoing out from under their plastic headwear.  That is not how the game is played.  I mean, c’mon guys.  Pay attention.  Which is something I probably shouldn’t have been saying at that moment.).” 

We ran out of buckets early on.  They used plastic bins, bags, toy strollers, big wheels, Playskool garages; whatever plastic toy they could cram onto each other’s heads and then thump.  Tiny warrior-savages careening around, smiting the shit out of each other, crashing into each other.  Screaming and eventually, swearing.   “Bucket Head!  Fucking Buuucket Heaaad!  GAAAHH!” Civilizations collapsed and playgroup was plunged into chaos.  Darkness.  Not unlike the darkness you might experience if you were to have a bucket suddenly descend, unbidden, over your eyes. 

It took us a long time to recover.  Not everyone has forgiven me. 

I wonder if they would like Cymbal Feet any better? 

This post brought to you by Fatherhood Fridays at dad-blogs.com.

This is the best motherf*cking thing you've ever read. For realz

Is my three year old daughter a genius?  That question can only realistically be answered with a yes.  Where does she get it?  That question can only be realistically answered with a "from her mother."

My daughter wrote her first haiku today.  In the car on the way to my wife's work.  It is whimsical and lovely and it was my wife who realized exactly what we were hearing.  She then translated it and posted on her blog.  You will find it at this link.  Right here.  I am flush with vicarious accomplishment.  If anyone wants me, I'll be at the craft table with Kit Culkin, Dina Lohan, and Joseph Jackson.

Worship with a Schmear

We worshipped yesterday morning.  What passes for worship in our family.  We drove around with klezmer music blaring, eventually ending up at our favorite bagel bakery where we purchased a baker’s dozen, still hot from the oven.  Then we sat in the car and just pulled the hot bagels apart and dipped them in fresh made cream cheese and ate while the klezmer pelted us with it's goofy tones.  That's temple, more or less.  Sans beards.  And yarmulkes.  And praying.  And other Jews.

For those that don’t know, klezmer is music from the European Jewish tradition.  It’s full of horns and violins and accordians and mournful clarinets and peppy glishpiezel-phones.  It has chords that represent the sounds of laughing and crying.  It’s wacky, ironic music.  Sort of like what you might hear in a Dr. Seuss book, if the Cat in The Hat had gone through great suffering yet still come out with an intact sense of humor.  

We only listen to it once a week on a local college radio show.  No one needs more than a couple hours of mournful clarinet solos per week.  Tops.  Which is how many people feel about the Jews.  And that is the story of anti-semitism.  The end.  

The music starts at about the 1:00 mark.  I think the non-jews who aren't familiar with the term klezmer this will recognize it as something they've heard before.

Homemaker Man

P.S.  I know we're supposed to worship on Saturday.  So sue me.

P.P.S.  There were better videos, but the embed option was disabled.  Psshh.  Jews.

P.P.S.  A special thank you to Suburban Correspondent.  She writes one of my favoritest blogs,  The More, The Messier.  Apparently. Peter Sagal of Wait Wait . . . Don't Tell Me fame reads her blog.
Also, apparently he borrows some of his material from there as well.  Psshh.  Jews.

Thanks for the mention, S.C.

HM 

A report from the Front: It's littered with kitties

My daughter is singing "Hey Diddle Diddle" this morning.  Loudly.  Repeatedly.  At 7:54 am.  We've been up for over two hours.  My son keeps trying to climb our 5 foot high cat tree like he's in Tibet searching for the secret of life.   At the mountain top awaits a large (fat) cat who's answer to "why are we here?" is a fist full of death.   Claws like scimitars.  Probably tipped with poison.  My daughter bellows a report of the morning's goings on up to my just rising wife.  She yells back,  "Is daddy taping it?"  I'm not.

Last night we hung curtains.  During this seemingly mundane domestic exercise, I fell through a small kitty condo.  I was standing on it to hang the last of the curtains.  The top gave way and I plunged through it.  Very Laurel and Hardy.  I'm playing both parts.  Where was my step ladder?  3 feet to the right.  But the kitty condo was right there.

It was worth it though.  I took a thin cat bed and placed it over the hole.  Kitty booby trap.  I waited.  And waited.  And waited.  Then, the large (fat) cat mentioned above approached.  She leapt with a corpulent grace, like a Hippo with prima ballerina aspirations, onto the cat bed.  Her fat kitty ass crashed through the cat bed.  Sheer panic painted her kitty features.  She quickly scrabbled for purchase. She looked so frigging surprised.   I laughed and clapped.  I was sincerely delighted.  It's like I'm seven. Of course, I did the same thing to my self, where as it took a cleverly imagined trap to bring the cat down to my level.    It's like I'm seven.

This is a direct report from the Front lines of Homemaker Dadhood.  There are cats and toddlers everywhere.  Send Tuna.  They all like tuna.  Hope everyone is having as much fun as we are.  Have a great weekend everybody.

Homemaker Man

This post brought to you by Fatherhood Fridays at dad-blogs.com.

Wednesday Night Fights

I let the kids watch tv this morning.  Over an hour.  So I could sleep on the couch.  Proud moment.  I was too exhausted to care, however.  Stayed up way to late with my vacationing wife last night.  No, that's not it, unfortunately.  We got into an argument about something we saw on Fox News.  Which right there should've signaled to us to skip the conversation and get with the bedtime.

The cable access station in the next town over played a smutty sex-talk show at 8pm and the town was in an uproar.  They also displayed a picture of two lingerie-clad women french-kissing each other with a squirrel displaying large, possibly human--they blurred it for the newscast, genitalia in the lower right corner.

This picture obviously attempts to make us deeply question our pre-conceived notions of art vs titillation. Or it wants us to pour boiling canola oil (no trans fats) in our eyes until it goes away.  Or it's just idiotic.  And if you google squirrel showing large penis in an attempt to see a non-blurred copy, you get a number of links about how female squirrel monkeys have huge clitoris that they use as pseudo-penises so as to dominate the males.  Now that's "P-whipped."  Wakka.

The uproar was not about the pic specifically, but about the fact that they can't ban the show because, get this, cable access tv is beyond the control of the fcc.  So it's purely first amendment rules.

Upon hearing this, my wife and I chose sides and went at it.  I'm not going to get in to what side each of us chose or who was right or wrong here.  That information would be relevant to the discussion only if I were right.

What is relevant is the fact that I can be a nasty arguer.  Smarmy, cutting and dismissive.  It's a lot like arguing with an asshole.  When turned on others, it's something my wife finds pretty entertaining.  I'll admit, it can be, if you're on my side.  If not though, it just sucks.

I wish I hadn't done that to my wife last night.  She argues with passion, facts, reason, and restraint.  Also, she was right and I was wrong.

In summation, Squirrel monkeys have huge clits.   Like a baby's arm.


HM

It’s Monday, I need a post up to start the week; this is all I got.

My wife made me watch Hoarders last night.  Again.  For those that don’t know, it’s a show about people who, uh, hoard . . . things.  I guess it was kind of self-explanatory. 

I never choose to watch that show.  She makes me watch it.  I'll be sitting there, buried in the computer, "working" (twitter!) on a blog post, and she'll start with the noises:

    

“Oh my.  Wow.  What th. . . aw! How is he living like . . . honey, you’ve got to see this.  Honey.  Honey,  just real quick, I’ll rewind it.”

 I glance up and protest, “No honey, no.  Really, that’s ok you don’t have to rewi-YAAH!  Jesus Christ.”  And then I’m hooked.  Devious minx.

It makes me squirm to watch people suffer like that*.  On the bright side, there is nothing that’ll get you up off your ass to do some house cleaning quicker than a couple episodes of Hoarders right in a row. 

              

“Is that two soda cans and a receipt?  Shit, I’m a hoarder. “

One of the things that disturb me apart from the human aspect, is that some of these people hoard animals.  One woman had 76 cats in her home.  Not all of them in the best of shape.

We have 3 cats a dog and some fish . . . fuck.  I’m a hoarder.     

Aside from freaking me out, this got me to thinking, “what would be the worst pets to Hoard?”  I’m sure that Hoarders would get killer ratings from a “ Hoarders: Top 50 worst pets to hoard,” episode.  I figure a home all a-flutter with fruit bats has got to be good tv. 

So I started a list.  I’m trying to stay away from obvious things like rats or poisonous snakes or spiders.  As with any list post on this blog, please feel free to add your own. 

Worst Pets to Hoard (in no particular order.)

Lampreys

Dung beetles.  Because you know what else you have to hoard to keep them around . . .

Buzzards.  “Yeah, I gotta lot of buzzards.  They’re friendly.  They like to watch me sleep.”

Fire ants. 

Bed bugs.  “Got 6 beds full of those.”

Gila monsters.

Bears.  You only need to keep a couple of those around before they start labeling you a hoarder, I’d think.

Jelly fish. 

Piranha

Earwigs

Electric Eels

Tapeworms

Badgers

Hyenas

Maggots

The cast of Jersey Shore

Minotaurs

Stinkbugs

Toddlers

*This is not to say I am above watching other people suffer.  If you are on tv and you get convincingly kicked in the nuts, or I know you IRL and I see you say, get blasted in the face with a water balloon, chances are I’ll enjoy it. 

Good Luck with this one, folks.

Homemaker Man

Piece

It was a harsh night.  A night when dinner time reminds one less of the Huxtables and more of Cat On A Hot Tin Roof.  Or Hamlet.  Or Malcom in the Middle.  Grim toddler faces glare out from booster seats.  Gruesome, angry visages robbed of cuteness. 

Your wife’s face is set in an impenetrable mask of exhaustion and discontent.  If a voice does sound out, it is whining or screeching, snapping or yelling.  No one is really eating.  And if they’re taking bites, they don’t taste anything.  It’s just fuel.  You glance around the table, but meet no one’s eyes.  That’ll make things worse.  The only thing you all agree on is that it’s time for dinner to end.  You stand, shoulders slumped, defeated.  You shuffle around the table, collect the dishes. Collect the baleful stares.

Maybe you’ll go to bed early.  In the basement.  In the furnace.

Somewhere, a dog bays a strangled cry and goes silent.

Then, something turns over in your head.  Heaves itself with great effort from the back of your pillaged brain to the front.  Is there one?  Is there one left?  There has to be. 

You go to the fridge and open it.  Peer past the half empty condiment jars, cloudy Tupperware containers, and mysterious foil packets.  You spot it.  Hope.  You take it out..  Unwrap it. It’s bright, shocking, pink.  The princess wanted it that way.  Must be careful now.  Surgical.  It must be divided in to four equal pieces.  Pieces of redemption.  Chocolate redemption. 

You place the pieces in front of the jury of Ringwraiths that was once your family.  They regard you solemnly.  They dig in. The princess gets the one flower left.  No one minds.  It was her birthday.  The alchemy of cold, congealed, (pink!) sugar and rich dark chocolate; science and magic; transmutes the demon jury back into something resembling your family. There is gusto.  Smiling.  Conversation.  Togetherness.  Relief.

I don’t know what happiness looks like, but I know it tastes like cake.

This post brought to you by Fatherhood Fridays at dad-blogs.com.

Happy Bday Peanut

My daughter turned 3 years old yesterday.  For her 3rd bday, she got the same thing my ol' man got me.  A job.  Time to start earning her keep.  Those tiny, nimble fingers can really wind a bobbin.  7 cents a piece!

We took her to the carnival on sunday and the zoo yesterday.  Really fun.  The carnival was amazing, she laughed and yelled her way through all the kiddy rides and while we grabbed a snack she started eyeballing the rides with names like the Freak Out or the Death Knell or Puppy Killer or The Aneurysm, which was always my favorite.  Me I like rollercoaters, but the rides that make you dizzy, well, I’m a puker. And I found that out the hard way on something called the sizzler or maybe the rattlesnake.  Either way, I managed to puke over the side from 20 feet up.  Way to impress a date.  No puking for the Peanut though.

The zoo was very nice  We saw Silver back Gorillas and a Lion and 2 Tigers .  She was a bit of a pain in the ass, as the number one thing on her to do list was the zoo playground.  Which was not a spectacular playground.  I offered to let her slide down a giraffe's neck, but then a bunch of official looking dudes started milling around and mumbling things like  "harassment" and "animal cruelty" and "endangering a child" and "felony."  Some people.  All they want to do is ruin a little girl's birthday.   I'll just lie to her about it later.

As someone once said, "find joy in your children, and make their happiness your happiness. Because once you have kids, your own joy and happiness is over."

Happy birthday, my tiny, perfect, little girl.  I love you like crazy and you amaze me every single day.

Love

Daddy

Signs you've been watching way too much Sesame Street

We let the kids, mostly the peanut, watch approx 45-50 minutes of tv a night, after supper.  The choice is almost always Sesame Street.  Often the same episode 5-6 times in a row.  I love Sesame, but it's wearing thin.  I realized this when I found myself telling my wife that the the character Baby Bear is an "arrogant douche bag."

There is a newer (as in sometime in the last 15 years) Character named Murray.  My BIL was over one night last week.  He commented that the character looked just like a "Hairy Elmo."

To my jaded ear,  that totally sounded like a euphemism for a weird sex act (i.e. the mythic and reprehensible dirty sanchez).

The short list of Sesame Street characters that could be sexual euphemisms:

The Hairy Elmo

A Bert and Ernie

A Grouch.  As in "Hey, I gave'er a Grouch. Right in da trash can!"

Flipping the Big Bird

A Super Grover

Hiding the Snuffy

Going around the Elmo's World.

Saying hi to Mr. Noodle

A Guy Smiley.

The Shiny Gordon.


If only I could convince my kids to watch House, V, Project Runway or Top Chef Masters, none of this would've happened.

I blame them.

Please feel free to add to the above list.


This post brought to you by Fatherhood Friday at dad-blogs.com.


Homemaker Man

True Romance

This past Saturday was my third anniversary.  My wife's, too.  We were going to celebrate by going out to dinner and a movie.  Specifically, Alice in Wonderland (her choice) and Teppanyaki (Japanese Grill, my choice).  I've never been to a teppanyaki joint before, so I was excited.  What's more romantic than an onion volcano and a table full of strangers?  Kids were sick though.  So, we stayed home.  The night wasn't a complete loss, if you catch my drift.  Humminah humminah, boing boing boing, aahooogah! Jackpot!


Mmmm Bow Bow . . . chikka chikka.

Eyebrows. Waggling.

Our wedding:  Three years ago Saturday, we went before God and Rosario Salerno, the city clerk of Boston, MA, and tied the knot.  The date was April 3rd.  The Peanut's birthday is April 12th.  We practically had to buy an extra wedding ring.

We weren't going to get married, originally.  It didn't seem necessary.  But in the end, we have, my wife especially, pretty fucked up parental situations, so we did it.   Not wanting to chance that our baby might end up with her mom.  We're a pragmatic people.

We had to go before a judge first to get special permission to marry without a waiting period.  That part wasn't hard.

"Have you ever been divorced?"

No.

"And you.  Have you ever been divorced?"

No.

"Ok.  This court authorizes you to go and get married before your water breaks all over the Massachusetts state seal."

We went to the city clerk's office.  She squeezed us in right away.  She read her words, we cried and kissed, and we were married.

I don't worry much about telling the Peanut how she was conceived out of wedlock.  She surprised the shit out of us, is all there is to it.  We thought we were headed for the D.I.N.K. lifestyle.  Empty meaningless fun financed with disposable income.  Those poor schmucks.  And then:  Oy vey!  Baby.

I am incredibly thankful that she came along when she did.

Someday, my wife and I will renew our vows.  We'll have a more proper ceremony, with a smidge of pomp and circumstance.  Why not, you know?  But I don't regret our wedding for a moment.  There was no more love in any typical,  meticulously planned, poorly catered wedding ceremony than there was between us on that day.

We've been married for three years.  We've been romantically involved for about eight.  We've been best friends for just over 17.  I have felt like the luckiest person in the world for every one of them.

I am so grateful that we met.  I am so grateful that she chose me.   I am so grateful that she put out.  I am so grateful that I knocked her up.  I wouldn't have it any other way.


Happy Anniversary My Love.

Love always,

Me

My Fat Ass Daughter

Hey everyone.  My daughter is a fat ass!  A real porker.  "Oink, oink, piggy-piggy."  Fat fucking fat fat fatty fat fat.  Lard ass.  Blimpo.  I found a family of chipmunks living in one of her folds.
She smells like bacon grease and heart disease.  She's fat, I tell ya.

We had her weigh-in yesterday.  For those that don't know, we have the Peanut weighed every three  to four months because she is borderline failure-to-thrive.  Her weigh in at the end of december was rough.  She wasn't just gaining slowly anymore, she had lost weight.  Officially failure to thrive.  Yesterday?  She has gained 2 whole pounds, the fat bitch.  I don't know what she's been eating, but whatever it is we're all out of it.  She's a black hole with cellulite.  Living with my daughter is like living with Kirstie Alley if Kirstie Alley had been eaten by my daughter.  Wide.  Load.

This was the main stress point that contributed to my cranky mood this week.  I'd like to apologize to anyone it affected.  I believe I thoroughly shit all over Knucklehead at knuckleheadhumor.com because I partially disagreed with his American Idol analysis.  I commented on his blog, he emailed back, and I think I wrote back something like, "Oh yeah, well you're wrong because fuck you, Wrong-y."

Err, sorry about that.

As for my sexting with God, well, my wife knows about it, the relationship hasn't gone any farther than the cell phone, and I'm going to break it off soon.  Dude's mad cling-y.  Although the pic of him tea-bagging a pissed off Archangel Gabriel is a keeper.



This post brought to you by Fatherhood Fridays at dad-blogs.com

A little Cheese with that Whine?

My basement is flooded again.  We just got cleaned up from the last flood.  I have mountains of laundry to catch up with due to the busted washer we had to pay to fix.  I tried to fix it.  I almost got it.  I didn't.  I was too timid.   

Both kids are sick.  Snot rockets are shooting out of the Peanut's nose with enormous speed and stickiness.  Like spit from a camel.  She wet the bed twice last night, the poor thing.  And she has a weigh-in at the pediatrician's office today, which is always stressful.  And finally, I just changed the Pumpkin man's diaper and the outer layer of the excrement was green like he dyed it for St. Patrick's day.  I'm guessing he ate a crayon or something, but I'm bringing the diaper to the doctor's office.

If I were a religious man, I'd be texting God a mean, nasty message right now.  As opposed to the nasty messages I usually text him.  Yeah, we've been sexting for a while now.  I don't remember who started it (Him).  He sends naked pics.  I'd post them, but the sight of them would drive us all mad.  He's really let Himself go.  I'd be more willing to cut Him a break if He would do something to show He cares.  Just some kind of small miracle.  Like maybe parting the waters in my fucking basement.

Crabbily,

Homemaker Man


P.S.  This is why I haven't been commenting much.  No one needs this level of vitriol (or weirdness) spilled onto their blog.  Me included.

HM