The Breakfast of Champions

I work from home. I was writing a proposal for a prospective client when my wife came in to deliver this breaking news, from the breakfast table of our children:

"Aunt Jemima made my pancakes," Max, seven, told Vic, four.

Now at his point you are probably suspecting as I was that there was going to be some racial slur born from childish innocent. But no. It's better than that.

"Who is Aunt Vagina?" Vic asked.

"Not Aunt Vagina, Aunt Jemima," Max corrected him.

"Where does Aunt Vagina get her pancakes?"

If anyone has the answer, please leave it in the comments for all to appreciate...

The Morning Productivity Award

This morning I'm giving out a productivity award. I'm giving it to Jack Shit, who inspired all of the inactivity I accomplished thus far today.

Jack and I go way back. I've always been a world class procrastinator. "Never put off 'till tomorrow what you can put off 'till the day after tomorrow," that's my motto. Also "There's no better time than some other time."

I actually woke up early to come downstairs and write. I usually drink a cup of coffee and check a few blogs while I wake up. Today that took longer than normal.

So 7am rolled around and an unusual fit of productivity kicked in, mainly because the video of the deadliest spider in the world was over, and I took the trash out. The sound of the garage door woke the kids, who came downstairs to make sure that my bout of usefulness was only temporary.

Of course I welcomed the reprieve, which gave me an opportunity to explore Google Earth with my son for a few minutes. He got hungry and went into the kitchen. Or I got frustrated and pushed him out of the room and locked the door. I can't remember which is fantasy and which is reality at this point, primarily because my coffee cup is empty.

Point of note, mid-way through typing the preceding paragraph I was interrupted by my wife, asking if we should keep a set of oil-based pastel crayons. Tough decisions like this are an added distraction. It's a good thing I was not on a productive streak, working on my novel and pondering a complex issue dealing with the narrative prose, or the delicate balance between deep literary characterization and the "just get on with the plot" pacing of a thriller, for I surely would have derailed.

Best way to avoid derailing: stay off the tracks.

And that's why, this morning, I dedicate all that I did not accomplish to Jack Shit.

.

Help us, we're trapped!

Enough with the cold already. I get it. It's winter. But we're done now, OK?

It's 11.7 degrees outside. We'll have a high of 20 today. Other than one odd 40 degree day last week, it's been like this for a month. In January we got over 20" of snow, which is 12" above average.

Oh, and that nice 40 degree day, do you know what happened? To melted the top layer of the snow. Not all if it, mind you, just the top layer. Then guess what happened next?

That's right! It got down to single digits again that evening and all the slush froze solid! Max fell and hurt his knee coming back from the bus stop. Angie fell twice...once in the parking lot at work, and once in the driveway at home. And she always does really good in tree pose at yoga, so I know it's not her balance. It's the frigging ice.

The dog is getting stir crazy. It's hard to walk him when it's this cold to begin with, but add in the ankle-breaking contour of frozen slush on the sidewalks and streets and you have a real recipe for disaster. We're trapped.

All work and no play makes Jack a dull boy. All work and no play makes Jack a dull boy. All work and no play makes Jack a dull boy. All work and no play makes Jack a dull boy. All work and no play makes Jack a dull boy. All work and no play makes Jack a dull boy. All work and no play makes Jack a dull boy. All work and no play makes Jack a dull boy. All work and no play makes Jack a dull boy. All work and no play makes Jack a dull boy. All work and no play makes Jack a dull boy. All work and no play makes Jack a dull boy. All work and no play makes Jack a dull boy. All work and no play makes Jack a dull boy.

All work and no play makes Jack a dull boy.
All work and no play makes Jack a dull boy. All work and no play makes Jack a dull boy.
All work and no play makes Jack a dull boy. All work and no play makes Jack a dull boy. All work
and no play makes Jack a dull boy. All work and no play makes Jack a dull boy.
All work and no play makes Jack a dull boy. All work and no play makes Jack a dull boy. All
work and no play makes Jack a dull boy. All work and no play makes
Jack a dull boy. All work and no play makes Jack a dull boy. All work and
no play makes Jack a dull boy. All work and no play makes
Jack a dull boy. All work and no play
makes Jack a dull boy.
All work and no play makes Jack a
dull boy. All work and no play makes Jack a
dull boy. All work and no play makes Jack a dull boy. All work and no play makes Jack a
dull boy. All work and no play makes Jack a
dull boy. All work and no play makes Jack a
dull boy. All work and no play makes Jack a
dull boy. All work and no play makes Jack a dull boy. All work and no play makes Jack a
dull boy. All work and no play makes Jack a
dull boy. All work and no play makes Jack a dull boy.
All work and no play makes Jack a dull boy.
All work and no play makes Jack a dull boy.

The Existential Spelling Bee

Have you ever heard the old routine “Who’s on First” by Abbott and Costello? I’ve got one better. The following is an actual transcription of a conversation I had with my son Max when he was two and a half.

Let me put this in context with some background information first. At the time of our little conversation, Max was able to spell three words: Max, Mommy, and Daddy. I would write the words out on his Magna-Doodle and he would tell me what each one said.

What parent would not be proud of such an achievement in a toddler? After all, these are the days of spell-checker, texting, and instant messages on the computer. Spelling is a lost art. Punctuation, grammar, and basic rhetoric seem to be dying fast as well.

Max was well on the road to literary greatness; of this I was certain.

My perspective changed, however, when I discovered that just because you can say – and even spell – a word, that doesn’t prove that you know what it means. For Max, our conversation quickly shifted from basic spelling to a thorough treatise on his own transcendental sense of being. I was simply not expecting such a heavy conversation with a two year old.

Me: What does M-A-X spell?

Max: Spells me!

Me: No, it spells Max. M-E spells me.

Max: M-E spells you?

Me: No, Y-O-U spells you.

Max: Y-O-U spells Max?

Me: No, M-A-X spells Max. Y-O-U spells you.

Max: Y-O-U spells me?

Me: No, M-E spells me.

Max: M-E spells Daddy?

Me: No, D-A-D-D-Y spells Daddy. M-E spells me.

Max: M-E spells me?

Me: That's right!!!! M-E spells me!

Max: M-E spells Max!

Me: No, no…M-A-X spells "Max"…

And so it continued. Eventually he did sort out the differences between I, me, and you. Now he is nearly seven years old, and he has conquered more advanced linguistic challenges, like separating articles from nouns.

For example, he would say “How big will I be when I am an adult?”

What’s the issue with that, you wonder? Nothing, but it was soon followed by, “Are all an-adults as tall as you are?”

I never had the heart to correct him on this one. It was just too cute. He figured it out soon enough, anyways. Now his little brother is picking up where he left off.

About this global warming...

Quick, someone grab an aerosol can and unload it...it's freezing up here!

We've had the pleasure of sub-zero temperatures for several days in a row. It got up to 18 degrees today and it felt like a heat wave. It's supposed to drop down to the single digits again tonight and tomorrow, but it should stay above zero. Unless you count the wind chill, and then you are just a harbinger of sorrow.

We took the kids sledding on Sunday. There's a great hill right around the corner, between a high school and a middle school. The bottom of the hill ends right into the parking lot. There's no curb, so it's normally a smooth transition.

If you thought, "Why Rick, why would you say 'normally'? Does that imply that something was different this weekend?" you would have been correct. As it turns out, the significant snow that accumulated was perfect fodder for a snow plow, which pushed it all in a long plie stretching across the bottom of our sledding hill.

But it wasn't a blockade. It was a jump! Adults and children were able to get about three feet of air and about 5 yards of distance off that sucker. That was awesome if you landed on your sled.

Remember that at the end of the hill, and therefore on the other side of the jump, was a parking lot. Hard, flat asphalt.

It does not take a psychic to figure out that I was not 100% successful in landing on the sled. I did several times...enough to encourage me to go again. Kind of like that one good shot in a round of golf.

But unlike golf, this hurt like the dickens when a stray limb missed the sled upon landing, choosing instead to connect directly with the asphalt. I have a huge bruise on my hip, my left knee is all jacked up, and my right shoulder hurts really bad (although the shoulder thing is from an attempt to go down standing on the sled like a snowboard. For what it's worth, I did make it to the bottom).