Catmandu and other Cat Puns

There are a lot of cats here in my little city. Feral cats. I was going to say that there are cats everywhere, I mean EVERYWHERE, but that kind of hyperbole  . . . one could be lead to believe that I as I type this, I have a feral cat in my pants. Which I don't right now.

There are many feral cats here. In the city, I mean. Not my pants. More than the average amount of obviously feral cats for a small city. This winter there was a gang of them trolling near our block. I saw them appear through a crevasse in a giant snowbank, seven of them, in single file. As I watched from my car I opined, "What the fuck is this?" They followed the leader right through a path in the snowbank across the street. Filthy, bedraggled, feral, cats.

Remember the Disney movie "The Aristocats?" These cats would've showed up, beat, murdered, and intimidated the Aristocats out of their own territory, moved in, and set up shop selling drugs. Coke and heroin mostly, with a healthy side business in "the 'Nip."

They are dirty, disheveled, disdainful looking animals, But they're still cats so when I see them a little part pf me still goes "Awwwww. So cute!"

It can't be a positive sign of wellbeing for the city."Roving gangs of murderous drug dealing cats," doesn't exactly say "cosmopolitan" right?  You never talk to people who go on and on about how they, "visited Madrid and it was sooo amaaaazing. The Royal Palace was beautiful. And all those feral cats! Breathtaking."

That ends this presentation of, "The Wonders of Everett." Tune in next week for, "What's up with the lack of trashcans?"

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Just want to take a moment here to mention Movember. I participated last year, and I wanted to this year, but I just couldn't come up with a good idea for the plate. Haven't mentioned it before because the guilt. Oy, the guilt.

What I will do in this space is push the hell out of the page all the Dads over at Dadcentric, as well as Dad 2.0, Man Of The House, NYC Dads Group, and Dadlabs... ... have ready for your donations.

Movember. Grow a mustache, fight Cancer.

Wired

We're finished. Screwed. A friend from my wife's workplace brought over the first season of The Wire Saturday night. We're now 8 shows in. I've moved The Pman's potty into the living room so we don't have to leave the tv and at 2pm in the afternoon in my house you can hear conversations between myself and the kids like, "Well sweetie, they had to kill him because he was a fucking rat. You gotta kill a fucking rat." I think the kids are handling it well. The Pman keeps telling us his name is Omar and the Peanut has us all using beepers.

We've been watching The Wire, and we're fans of Walking Dead. And, after one and a quarter seasons of the latter and 8 episodes of the former, I can safely say I'd much rather face a Zombie apocalypse than live in the projects of Baltimore. You know the difference between a junky and a zombie? Junkies don't crave brains.

Speaking of The Walking Dead, if anyone out there watches it, please explain to me how the farm girl who rode into the forest on a horse and exploded a zombie's melon with a baseball bat could suddenly get all squeamish while watching one get bashed in the face with a crowbar? Does not make sense. Show shit the bed on that one.

Too much tv around here right now, I guess.

HM

Hard Lessons

Today in my house we learned a lesson. If you don't want to cleant that shit up, don't do that shit.

We have a set of plastic bins from Target. Don't mean to brag. We have a set of colorful plastic bins from Target in which a lot of the kids' smaller toys are stored. Blocks, dolls, fake food and plates, old pay as you go cell phones, poker chips, empty cigarette boxes, bottle caps, 3 penny nails, mercury. You know.

I heard the sound of thousands of tiny plastic pieces hitting a hardwood floor. "Are you dumping out the bins?" I asked rhetorically. "Complete Silence!" They answered. I asked again. "Yeah but, we're using them for some lunatic pre-schooler made-up game reason!"

"OK," I said,. "But if you empty out all the bins, that means you are going to be doing a lot of cleaning up later. Ok?"

"Ok," they replied with confidence.

I drove my point home annoying parent style. I went around the corner, got them looking at me, and repeated myself in a voice that was still at the same volume it had been when I was a room away. With an added threat, "You guys will have to clean it up all yourselves."

"Ok," They answered brusquely. They were a little annoyed now because some loud moron kept moving closer and closer to them, repeating himself as he went. I don't blame them.

"Alright," I answered with all the arrogance of someone who knows he's about to be right and can't wait to get there. Parents really do suck.

And so it happened. I gave them a 15 minute warning. Ten. Five. 2. One and a half minutes. 47 seconds. 31. 19. 11.  You can tell I'm getting mad when I slip into prime numbers

They were shocked when I started yelling. Shocked. But to their credit they dug in and tried not to get the job done.

I helped, of course. I put the bins back in the rack. put a few toys in each so they would have an idea of what went there. Had their hands replaced with rakes. To little avail.

When it's time to clean up around here, you have two choices. Clean-up and win first prize. 15 minutes of tv or a treat, maybe both on a good day. Second prize is, your fired. There are no steak knives.

So clean up or go to time-out and if you continue to fuck around, you go to bed.

The P-Man never had a chance. There was a carpet of foot hurting, over-priced, beloved pieces of plastic from one end of the room to the other. Probably thousands of pieces. He tried for a little while. He failed. Time-out, back up from the time-out, five minutes of cleaning, bedtime. He cried for about 5 minutes and then passed out. Couldn't. Handle. The Clean-up.

The Peanut continued. Alone against a sea of junk. I let her go for a bit by herself. Then I pitched in. We finished up and went off to collect her prizes. She was so proud of herself. "I did it all by myself. daddy!"

"Bullshit!" I did not reply. But I could've. I was well within my rights. It was cool how proud of herself she was for cleaning up her own mess. It was a gargantuan task. I just hope that feeling of pride doesn't backfire when she gets older.

"Yeah daddy, I was shitfaced and I hit this guy dead on. But instead of driving away, I stopped, collected the body and took it home. A skil saw and some lime later, and boom, no more body! I cleaned it up all by myself!"

Of course, I'd still be proud of her.

HM

Things That have happened

"Things that have happened since my last post:

We went apple-picking. I am from the "Aww, why do I have to go and pay extra money to pick apples when I can just get'em at the supermarket grumblegrumblegrousegrouse fun-sucks-I'm-a-cranky-old-fuck-with-no-sense-of-wonder" school of apple picking. Turns out it was really fun. The kids loved it. We ate apples, apple crisp with ice cream, and warm apple cider donuts that were soft and pillowy like good gnocchi. I'm leaving my wife for a bag of'em. She doesn't know.

This, this, this, and this guy all made Babble's top 50 dadbloggers list. I eknow all of them so you know, that pretty much makes me a name dropping douche.

I got an email telling me that I can now "check flawless skin off my wishlist." Which is ridiculous. I checked that off my list years ago. Maybe I'm born with it.*

Halloween happened tonight. The Peanut was a witch. Made me happy. Much better than "princess" or "fairy" or "fairy princess". She looked great. Mommy did her make-up. The Pumpkin Man had a choice between dinosaur and giraffe and he went with giraffe. He kept saying he was a "Scary giraffe," though.  "I'ma Scary Giraffe. I'm Gonna Eat yo Leeaaves!"

To prove it, we were in the kitchen and he told me I was a tree and then bit me on the ass. Fucking giraffes.

I went as a pirate. My wife also went as a witch. It was pretty much the only costume  she could find that didn't come with the word slutty or sexy attached to it. 

We went to a halloween outlet for the costume shopping. In a addition to the slutty outfits there were Priest costumes and Rabbi costumes, which I found vaguely inappropriate. They're clerics, not super heroes or monsters. Now slutty priest, that would've been appropriate.

We saw a good racist one. Slutty Indian. Costume consisted of a headband with a feather in it and an extremely short dress decorated stereotypically Native American style. Did give me a costume idea for next year though: Slutty Auschwitz Survivor.

The world's 7 billionth person was born. I think they won a free shopping spree. 

Finally, I am now an official staff writer over at Insert Eyeroll. I'm like the Jimmy Olson of the place, except with coffee breath and more body hair. Right here is my latest.

And that be that. Happy Halloween everyone. 

HM

*Maybe it's Maybelline

Oy, My Son's a Chochem

We own the book pictured above. It has pictures of typical stuff (mom, dad, house, book) and then the word in English and Yiddish. The Pumpkin Man had me read it to him today.

I read the whole thing. The English words and then the Yiddish ones. Cover to cover. We got to the end and I closed it and the Pman looked at me and said, "That's not my favorite book."

Son of a jackal.

Also, "glitshke" means "slide."

Religious Interpretation

Hi all! How have you been? Good, good. Me, I've been just so busy with those things, and uh, the other stuff. And also a ton of errands. Just a ton.

I did spend Yom Kippur at the Fryberg fair. For those of you unfamiliar with Yom Kippur, it's the Jewish day of atonement. I know. I know. You're thinking, "I thought everyday was the Jewish day of atonement." The difference is, on Yom Kippur. we don't eat.  We fast and repent and that we get our names written in the Book of Life for the year. Big deal to Jewish kids, making an appearance in a book.

Nor do we usually attend huge state fairs. But it was the only weekend we could go, the kids love it, my wife loves it, I love it, our family up in Maine loves it, and what the hell was Yaweh thinking scheduling Yom Kippur for the same week as the Fair anyway. Nice omniscience, God. Here's a tip: try a calendar next time.

But, because I'm Jewish, I made a deal with the big Y. I will honor Yom Kippur not by fasting, but by eating every kind of deadly, disgusting, greasy, absolutely delicious morsel of Fair food I could get my mouth on. Here's the list, in chronological order: Falafel (surprisingly good considering we ate it at a Fair. In Maine.),Vegetable Samosas (ditto), Cotton candy, Ice cream, a shingle sized slice of black olive and garlic sicilian pizza, deep fried pickles cut in big wedges with a creamy dipping sauce, deep fried corn-on-the cob, kettle corn, fried dough.

Do you see what I did for you, G_d? What I put in my body? Deep fried pickles. And, O G_d Almighty, they were half-sours! Now write my name in the Book of Life and next to it in the margin put down "cholesterol poisoning."

Fair was great. We saw all kinds prize winning cows and chickens and horses and sheep and rabbits. I'm pretty sure we're going into Angora Rabbit farming. Only takes two rabbits to yield enough wool for a sweater. And the rabbit wool is 7 times as warm as sheep's wool. I read a pamphlet, so I'm pretty much an expert. The name of our farm will be the Bunny Ranch. Is that taken?

Goodnight!

HM

UPDATE!

I forgot the G_damn chicken fingers and french fries.

The Warden

Saw my friends tonight. One it was his birthday. One, I hadn't seen in years.  Both, I don't see enough. We're going to try to remedy that. The Peanut wasn't happy about my going out tonight. She got rather upset. I bargained with her. Told her I'd bring her a surprise in the morning. She cried, " I want Daddy for a surprise!" 

Right? I know. Manipulative son of a jackal*.  I told her I'd be home before the morning, when it was still dark out. She replied with a pouty face and a determined grimace, "Just go and say hi and come right back."

"Okay," I said. You've gotta hop on a good deal when you get it.

HM

*We use son of a jackal around here because time was I said son of a bitch way too much and the kids picked it up. Ironically, the Peanut said son of a jackal at school last year and she got in trouble for it anyway. Because the Man is always trying to keep you down. That son of a jackal.