Multiplicity

Oh yes, I almost forgot: yesterday, Sophie and I were picking up some Chinese food for lunch, because I was feeling like a lazy fuck and she, being only three years old, is lacking in any mad cooking skillz at this point--perhaps after her first Easy Bake Oven we can reassess her abilities. I was having the Kung Pao chicken, while she is more of a chicken and broccoli sort of girl. She also loves chopsticks, although she is terrible with them so far. I'm going to order her some practice sticks for her birthday, so there's always the chance that she'll be grabbing flies out of the air before she's five. From there it's only a short hop until she kicks the ass of the bad girl in her school during a karate tournament, and her future awesomeness will be cemented.

Actually, none of that is what I meant to tell you.

On our way out of the restaurant and back to the car, we passed a man who looked exactly like me, in some weird David Cronenbergian Dead Ringers kind of way (okay, not that weird--because what could be more weird than identical twin gynecologists? Yep: identical twin cross-dressing Sarah Palin impersonators. Or actually just Sarah Palin herself. Again, I digress.)

As he walked past us, Sophie pointed at him and said, "He is also my daddy, Daddy!"

I don't know why I brought this up, other than it was pretty cute, and also it's good to know that I would be so easily replaceable if I fell into the ocean while crab fishing and drowned.

Sophie Creeps Me Out #1

We were at the library today, because Sophie loves books and I am trying to instill within her the knowledge that libraries are awesome AWESOME AWESOME. Generally our approach is to swing quickly through the "New Releases" section, where I grab one or two books whose covers look interesting (since she is impatient and won't let me stand in the aisle for more than fifteen seconds), and then we are off to the children's wing, where she plays with puppets and puzzles and looks out the glass wall at the garden outside and grabs random books off the shelf for me to read to her. Last week, her favorite was a kid's biography of Malcolm X. Today it was an English to Hebrew picture dictionary. Sophie's tastes are wide and varied.

So today we are laying on the alphabet carpet and she is opening flaps on a Bob the Builder book, minding our own business, when this weird little boy comes over and sits next to us. Now, believe me when I tell you that I don't use the word "weird" to describe many children, other than my own, of course. Children are by their very nature just a little bit off, and more power to them there. This kid, though: dude. It wasn't just the combination of his Hitler youth cheekbones and doll's eyes, Tom Cullen haircut (M-O-O-N spells "home schooled") and Village of the Damned thousand yard stare that raised the hairs up on the back of my neck. No, what really did it was his opening statement to the two of us:

"Casey's dead," he said, in a flat, monotone, Ediphone wax cylinder-sounding sort of way. "She's up in heaven, protected by angels."

Creepy number one.

Sophie doesn't even look up from her book at him. "She's buried under the window," she says.

Creepy number two.

She's going to end up being that kid nobody wants to sit next to in home room, right? Or the next David Blaine, which really is just as bad.

Haikus For Old Lovers #2

Did the class see us
coming out of the darkroom,
your shirt on backwards?

Haikus For Old Lovers #1

You loved Dick Van Dyke
a lot more than you loved me.
Nick at Nite sucks ass.

I Am a Whiny Plague Monkey

It started out pretty simple, this illness that has currently got me wanting to curl up under a blanket and not come out for a week. I assumed it was something that Sophie gave me, since generally when she gets ill, I get it too. And she was, in point of fact, ill on Saturday. Not terribly, just a little snotty and with a tiny bit of a fever, which is how my symptoms manifested, and so I wasn’t worried about it. Sunday however, about halfway through the day, I was very hot, very snotty, and very unhappy. Yesterday, that was absolutely fucking brutal. I knew I was doomed when I woke up in the morning and felt as though I had a flaming pineapple stuck in the middle of my throat. On top of that was the alternating freezing chills and sweat-drenched fever spells. The wracking cough was a good touch too, in a very “Victorian dying of tuberculosis” sort of way.

Lost: Spoiler Alert!

So it turns out the island was really just inside the snow globe of an autistic kid.

Well, at least that explains the polar bears.

Sometimes My Brain Doesn't Work

Sophie and I popped out to grab a take-and-bake pizza this afternoon not far from the house, maybe a fifteen minute drive. She likes it there, although she's not really a giant fan of pizza just yet. What she really likes is the pink lemonade they carry there, Tropicana in a plastic bottle (which means, I think, that's there isn't any actual lemon in the lemonade, but what sort of father would I be if I didn't start her on the road to poor eating choices this early in life?), which to me tastes like a bit of a combination of antifreeze, lost childhood and rodeo clown urine mixed in a lovely high fructose corn syrup base. Not my thing, but to each his or her own.

The wind was blowing like a motherfuck while we were heading back to the car, gusting to over 45 mph (I know, because I checked when we got home--go, go, Gadget Internet!), which meant that it was all I could do to prevent our pizza from turning into a flying saucer and taking off in an uncontrolled spin up, up and away. Getting it, the lemonade, the salad, the cookie dough ("Which only costs you an extra $.01 with the family-sized pizza and salad that you are already buying," upsold the woman behind the counter), Sophie and the stuffed red plush T-rex that she insisted be brought with us all into the car without disaster took talent, luck and a prayer to Cthulhu, but we pulled it off pretty smoothly. Or so I thought, until we were doing 70mph on the freeway and heading home.

"Daddy," Sophie said from her car seat in the back. "You forgot to buckle me in."

I thought a moment. Shit, she was right. "Well, can you buckle the top one for me, honey?" She's got a pair of buckles, one that goes over her chest and shoulders, one that goes over her waist. She's learned to put the top one on and off by herself, but she can't manage the lower one yet on her own. She needs to start working out, squeezing racquetballs an hour a day or something. She'll never get to that "Connie Chung cracking walnuts with her bare hands" thing if she doesn't get started on it now.

"Sometimes little kids can do the top one," she said.* "Sometimes grownups have to do the bottom one."

We made it home in one piece, but it made me remember how my mother and grandfather drove me across the country as a baby, back before child seats, before seat belt laws, hell, almost even before cars were required to have seat belts. I rode from east to west coasts in a wicker basket, wrapped in a blanket, all Moses-ed up, and nothing bad happened to me because of it.

Okay, we did hit a patch of ice in Kentucky or Tennessee or some Hazzard County place like that, and my grandfather did manage to roll us upside-down in a ditch, and it was only sheer luck that none of us was killed or severely injured in the accident, but c'mon! Whoever hasn't been in a near-fatal car accident, raise your hand.

That's what I thought.

But I do hope that the next time I forget to strap her in, Sophie tells me before we actually hit the freeway. I do sorta kinda like her and shit, so I'd like to keep her in one piece.

*Sophie's new thing is what I call the "sometimes little kids" observation, which goes a little something like this: "Sometimes little kids get books at the library." "Sometimes little kids eat candy for dinner." "Sometimes little kids flush toilet." "Sometimes little kids fall out of bed."

Sometimes Daddy thinks it's really cute.

Yes, I Am a Geek. Suck it, Trebek!

From the Get the Hell Out of Here Department: it was thirty years ago today that The Empire Strikes Back was released. I was ten years old at the time, and I remember being absolutely pissed beyond belief at the cliffhanger ending, and also trying to figure out at what point exactly I had stopped wanting to be Luke Skywalker and instead wanted to be Han Solo. I was pretty sure it wasn't when he was getting busy with Princess Leia, but instead when he was flying the Millennium Falcon through the asteroid field. Now that was some badass shit when you were a kid. Of course, I still wanted a lightsaber, but only if I could have Han's spaceship too.

And yeah, okay: he got to make out with the princess too. Sue me.

Bonus: I think it's sort of funny the Firefox's spell check recognizes "Leia" and "Darth Vader" but doesn't recognize "lightsaber" or "Chewbacca." What's this world coming to?

Edit: Today is also the thirtieth anniversary of Pac-Man. Ain't that a kick in the head?

Hot Dog Fever

So we're lounging around the house today, Sophie and I, and by "lounging" I mean that I am laying on the sofa and reading and she is running in a loop, completely bare-ass nekkid through the kitchen, the living room and the hallway, shrieking at the top of her lungs "I pee on floor! I pee on couch! I pee in pants!" (none of which she has actually done), while the dog chases after her, absolutely manic from feeding on her insane energy.

Welcome to our post-bath household.

Bonus bare-ass nekkid info: I stopped taking baths with her when she started referring to my junk as a "hot dog." I figured that was probably a good time to just let the past go, man. On the hot dog front, however, today while we were at home I was wearing this flannel jammy pants thing that had a small hole torn about two inches down from my inseam. Not a big deal until I squatted down to pick up her socks off the floor and ripped the hole to about the size of a kiwi fruit. I cursed the goddamn jammies under my breath and promptly forgot about the entire thing until about an hour later, when we were both laying on opposite ends of the couch.

Sophie looked over at me and said, "Daddy?"

"Yes, honey?"

"I can see your hot dog butt."

"What?"

Oh. Testicles. She can see my testicles.

Aren't you glad to be reading this blog?

24 Hours With Red Dead Redemption and Sophie

Things Sophie has seen in our new video game, Red Dead Redemption (which is a western Grand Theft Auto, for those of you that have lives): horsies, rabbits, puppies, a herd of cows eating flowers in a field, a thunderstorm at night, and a train.

Things Daddy has seen after Sophie has gone to bed: gunshots to the face, prostitutes being knifed in alleys, rabbits getting their heads blown off and skinned, a murder/suicide, men on fire, and a woman getting run over by a train.

Fun for the whole family!

Shitty Haiku for the Man In the Park With the Metal Detector

Beep beep under foot,
kneeling with spoon in his hand,
alas! Bottle cap.

See that photo? See the bandage wrapped tightly around Sophie’s little hand, the only thing protecting her delicate being from a horrible, flesh-eating bacteria?

She’s got a splinter. In her thumb. About a quarter of an inch long.

My daughter is a combination of the world’s youngest hypochondriac and a pre-school Ferris Bueller. If she has the slightest cough, she wants “grape medicine,” which is Children’s Liquid Tylenol. If she has to pick up her toys, she complains of the sudden onset of exquisite back pain, or else she collapses on the floor and attempts to crawl toward you, dragging her legs behind her like a paraplegic motorcycle crash victim. Her performances are Oscar-worthy and give me hope for my ultimate financial security, when I can manage her child star career and gleefully milk her overflowing bank account of all it contains. Hey, don’t give me that look: I brought her in to this world, so I figure she owes me a living, one to which I’ve never had the opportunity to grow accustomed to living.

My only real concern isn’t that one day she will be suffering from an honest, God-given disease and I won’t believe that she is ill, but rather that as she gets older she’ll realize that the only way to garner sympathy or to excuse herself from household chores is to up the ante and aim to imitate truly epic viruses or (belatedly-appearing) congenital defects. I can’t even begin to image how she’ll fake the symptoms of a club foot, or the dissolving organs of a good old fashioned ebola infection. She’s a smart kid though. I’m sure she’ll figure something out.

Say Hello To My Little Friend

I like to think that I'm a pretty good father. Sophie gets a bath every day, she's got clean clothes and her hair brushed. I don't let her have too much candy and she always gets at least one book read to her at night before bedtime. Right now though, we're playing a little game. It's called How Many Pickles Can Sophie Eat Before She Barfs Like a Drunken Sorority Girl at a Frat Party During Dead Week?

My kid has a love of pickles that rivals Tony Montana's lust for cocaine in its sheer obsessive power. She would subsist on nothing but pickles if only she could open the jars herself, but alas, her little girl hands are too delicate and weak to unscrew the lids, and so she has adapted herself to the situation thus: "Daddy, I want pickle. Daddy, can I have pickle? Pickle! Now pickle for me! Pickle pickle pickle pickle PICKLE!"

Which brings me to our game. I've told her before that she can't eat nothing but pickles or she will get a tummy ache and be sick. She insists that I am wrong, that pickles won't make her belly hurt, and that I am in point of fact a poopyhead. So now we get to find out who is correct, the poopyhead or the three year old, as I give her the opened jar of Milwaukee's Baby Dills and let her go to town.

It's just like Thunderdome, only with pickled fruit instead of a midget on another dude's back (and yes, pickle=cucumber=fruit, not vegetable. Look it up!).

****Edit: nine baby dills. That was when she complained that her belly hurt, laid down on the floor and passed into a pickle coma. I am teh winnar!

Zombie Child, Smack Smack On Your Face!

Once upon a time, Sophie woke in the middle of the night, looked directly at me and said calmly, "Zombies gonna eat me." She then immediately fell back asleep.

Another time, she was playing on the living room floor when she suddenly said, apropos of nothing, "Zombies are coming."

Today she crawled on top of me while I was laying on the couch, put her face directly in mine and said, "Gonna eat your brains, Daddy."

She's three. We don't watch zombie movies while she's around, play zombie video games or even use the word zombie in her presence.

My daughter creeps me the fuck out sometimes.

What's In the Fucking Ice Chest?

Now, you have to understand that even though my daughter threatens to kill me and bury me in a deep, deep hole in the backyard, she does love me. She doesn't generally say it in so many words, preferring to show her love by headbutting me in the groin or by jumping on me when I'm laying on the couch and kneeing me in the groin or, when she's feeling especially affectionate, just letting loose with an Ivan Drago cockpunch right in my groin. Her methods of demonstrating her love are many and varied, so when she told me a few weeks back that "Daddy, I don't want to lose you," and didn't punctuate this statement with a shoe thrown to the groin, I figured it was time to start taking my health a little more seriously.

Nuclear Detergent

Not having enough liquid detergent in any of the bottles to separately wash the load of jeans in the washer, I have just combined the cleaning powers of one quarter Tide 2X Ultra with one quarter All 2X Ultra and one half Purex Ultra Concentrate.

I am either going to end up with jeans as holy, angelic and perfect as Miley Cyrus's hymen or I'm going to drop a subatomic deuce through the earth's core that will make the Cern Large Hadron Collider look like a marshmallow cannon.

Tell your children that you love them, just in case.

Why I Miss Gilmore Girls

Because the excellent characters and brilliant, snappy dialogue made me think of a time on television when solid writing made for compelling viewing. Also because it made me think of Lauren Graham in Bad Santa yelling “Fuck me, Santa! Fuck me, Santa! Fuck me, Santa!” while getting banged in the front seat of a car.

But also, you know, that thing about the writing.

I Know Why the Caged Zombie Sings

Sophie and I found a bird's nest in the eaves above our front porch.

"See that?" I said. "That's a bird's nest. Birds built that so they would have someplace to put their eggs. One day the eggs will hatch and little baby birds will come out."

"Like eggs in the kitchen," Sophie said.

"Well, just like that, only birds come out of these, and birds don't come out of the ones in the refrigerator. You were in an egg once, in your mommy's tummy."

She gasped and put her hands up to either side of her face. "Don't eat me! I am a kid! Zombies don't eat me!"

It's always about the zombies with the little squirt.

Taken Together, I Sleep With One Eye Open

Kids love hula hoops. I think we can all agree on that. I know mine does. She's got a pink one that lights up at various points around the circle while she spins it, although the spinning is rather limited at this point, what with her only being three years old and not very coordinated yet.

The other day, I'm napping on the couch and wake to find her with the hoop, standing next to me. She's naked from the waist down, having taken off her pants and panties, and she's spinning the hoop over her head and between her legs, repeatedly saying, "I kill you, I kill you, I kill you."

I haven't yet decided if this is oddly endearing, in a sort of pornographic Wednesday Addams sort of way, or just more than a little bit disturbing.

Now, keep that story in mind while I tell you this one: a couple of days ago, I'm out in the backyard with the daughter unit, who begins idly kicking at the edges of one of the holes that the demon spawn of a dog we have has been digging.

"Please don't kick that, honey," I say. "You'll get your new shoes dirty."

She looks at me and then puts her head down and says under her breath, "I gonna dig it so deep you never get out."

I think I'll be safe until she can reach the knives in the kitchen. Then all bets are off.

Career Direction

You know, if every serial killer could dress up like a clown and entertain at children's parties, then I'd have myself a second source of income.

You're My Inspiration

That last Dora the Explorer post was inspired by my daughter, Miss Sophie. She had been watching a particularly dramatic episode of Dora, in which Swiper the kleptomaniacal fox had stolen several items from our heroine and her monkey companion, Boots. Let's listen in to the conversation between my three year old and the television, shall we?

Dora: "Oh no! Swiper swiped Boot's boots! Can you see what else Swiper swiped?"

Sophie, icy derision in her voice: "Your backpack, you idiot. Jesus."

Daddy's so proud.

Dora the Explorer in Realityworld (tm)

"Oh no!" Dora cried. "How are we going to get across Piranha River and away from the hungry crocodiles chasing us?"

Boots the monkey scampered up into a nearby tree and began to idly masturbate, chattering loudly.

"We can use those vines to swing across!" Dora turned to address the camera. "But we're going to need your help. Raise your arms up high andAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAUUUGHGHHIEIEIIEI!"

The crocodiles had arrived.