April 2006 Archives

I was driving the kids to school this morning, and Billy Joel's "Innocent Man" spun up on the iPod rotation. And just before the part came up where he hollers out "I AAAAAAAAM an innocent MAAAAAN" I said, "Ok guys! I'm gonna go for it!" and then about 3/4 of a second into "AAAAAAM", my throat choked off and I collapsed into a coughing fit. Doggone morning cactus throat. Boy did they think THAT was hilarious. Dad's a hack! About a minute later when that part came around again, Giselle called dibs on it. And got BUSTED! She choked all over it too. HAHAH! She's all, "Oh my gosh, that's harder than I thought it would be! ...When I was imagining it in my head, it was SO much easier..."

And there's Harrison laughing because his Dad and sister are fools. He likes to play like he's the cautious one you see--all smiling big as he walked to the door of the school. But he's also the one who intentionally made the goofy face in his 42 dollars worth of school pictures that I just saw yesterday. I might be a little bent because of that, if it weren't for the fact that they take two sets of pictures over the school year these days. Fall and Spring. Two different companies come in to do it. What a nice little racket. Like your average set of parents is going to get that second set of pictures in April and be like "meh" send 'em back. I'm even having trouble deciding to send back the goofball shots of my son. It's just pigment on paper I try to tell myself, but I anthropomorphize everything, so it's tough. He's very pleased with them though. So maybe I'll just let him wallpaper his side of the room with them.

Man I love Calvin & Hobbes. What a fantastic comic. The kids love it too. I'm proud of this--the varmunts've got good taste. I get indignant when I see the knock-off Calvins on pickup trucks, urinating on this or that, or praying beneath the ominous shadow of a cross. Submit Calvin! Submit to the instrument of the Messiah's death! No wait...go tinkle on a Ford logo. Bleh.

This is headed nowhere other than I was just smiling to myself at Harrison's laughter in the other room. Amanda was reading a few of the strips to him while Giselle sawed logs in the other bed. I'm dead serious, that sweet little whisp of a girl can snore like a 300 pound, comatose binge drinker. Man I've got to get these poor kids into their own separate bedrooms. But you see, it's a huge rusty, interlinked chain of chores. Getting Harrison in the other room means clearing that other room out. The spare bedroom. The room where all the STUFF that has no place else to go is STACKED. Like a thousandth scale Manhattan, complete with skyscrapers, narrow boulevards and slums waiting to be tear-gassed, it waits there behind the CLOSED door. So, ok, clean that out to make room for Harrison. But to clear it out, you see, you need another place to put those goodies. And where do we, in the spacious realms of North America, put all our goodies? In the garage, right? The garage that I enclosed, but never put doors on. Because goodness knows I'd like to get that thing secured so I can park my car OUTSIDE at night. (I'm playing with all-capped emphasis words tonight, in case you were wondering.) And so, installing doors involves diving into another construction project I have no previous experience with. Also the electricity. The main garage door requires electricity. So, that needs hooked up. On & on.

So, maybe bunk beds.