Peanutbutter is sticky bitch!

THE CAP'S BELOW ARE JUST SIGNIFYING ME TALKING NOT YELLING

My seven year-old was singing something as I walked past him in the hallway ...
"blah blah (pause) bitch! (humming a tune, pause) bitch!"
WHAT ARE YOU SINGING?
"(humming a tune, pause) bitch!"
WHO SINGS THAT
the beastie boys, you know that song, the music stops and they say bitch
OKAY THAT'S A BAD WORD, MUCH LIKE DAMN AND DAMNED YOU CAN SAY IT AND IT IS NOT A BAD WORD, BUT MOST OF THE TIME YOU SAY IT, IT IS A BAD WORD. THE OKAY USAGE /MEANING OF BITCH IS A FEMALE DOG, SO UNLESS YOU ARE GROWN UP AND BREEDING DOGS, WHICH MEANS PUTTING BOY AND GIRL DOGS TOGETHER TO MAKE BABY DOGS, I DO NOT EXPECT TO HEAR YOU SAYING THAT WORD EVER AGAIN
looking scared and tearing up:
I didn't know, it's in the song ...
I KNOW BUDDY DON'T WORRY ABOUT IT, IT IS MY FAULT, I DID NOT REALIZE THAT THERE WAS A CURSE WORD THAT WAS SO CLEAR ON THAT SONG WHEN I PUT IT ON YOUR MP3 PLAYER, DO NOT WORRY ABOUT IT, YOU ARE NOT IN TROUBLE, I AM NOT MAD, JUST DO NOT SAY IT AGAIN, OKAY.

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On a lighter note, it is super cute when my four year-old acts like a four year-old and not a four year-old trying to copy his seven year-old brother, in moment of little kidness he stated today, "Dad, peanut butter is sticky,"
YEAH
"Yeah sticky in your mouth."

He knew it was sticky on your hands, but surprised that it unlike most sticky foods it stayed sticky inside his mouth.
I know this is not that funny, but hearing him state the obvious, experiencing the moment when a universal if trivial truth manifested itself to him was super cute at the time.

Dying VCR Tapes and the Psychological Weight of Our Possessions

My seven-year-old just pulled out some old home made SpongeBob videos and they are dying. I'm really bummed, not just because we'll be loosing about 30 episodes of that great cartoon but it's making me wonder about how I am storing my old VHS tapes. I thought I had chosen a safe spot for them in the basement, but I wonder if our dehumidifier is drying them out. I have tons of old videos like the Live Aid concert and other music videos from Mtv's heyday, plus lots of movies and other things from the last 25 years that I want to hold on to, without spending half my life converting them all into a digital format.

I am more worried about my audio cassettes, all of the mixes I have made, punk and rap radio shows I taped in High School, plus the 4 track recordings of my own music, it is like I need a giant frickin' walk in freezer to preserve all of my archives. Everyday it seems as if life adds another small worry to my consciousness, thanks life, it all just reaffirms that we are better off not being tied to any of our possessions.

Another Emotional Morning / I don't want a mustache / grown-ups have babies

My 7 year-old told me he had dirt on his face and pointed to the corner of his mouth. I told him that's not dirt, that's your mustache. Well that was a big mistake, I had not realized until after speaking to my wife a few minutes ago that my son was upset this morning, he had asked her not to go to work and was crying when she left. This puts some of his actions and comments into perspective, like why he told me he never wants me to work, to which I responded that I will have to work someday.

Anyway, he starts freaking out about the hair on his lip, I don't want to have a mustache, I don't want to grow up, etc.
I was like come on guy, your growing up into a little Italian man and made some jokes about making pizzas with me, but sophomoric humor just made things worse. I then had to go into the god put hair there to protect you from the sun so you don't get sun burnt (we'll get to talking about evolution later, I'm just trying to get my kid to school on time so don't start accusing me of being a proponent of intelligent design or any crap like that).
That did not make him feel any better, I told him not to worry that he will not truly have a mustache until he's at least 16 or 17, "But I don't want one then either I don't ever want one."
Well then you'll just have to shave like everybody else.

I had him feel my two day razor stubble, I was like look, this is real facial hair, it's black and scratchy, now feel yours, "I can't feel it," exactly and you can barely see it either, what you have is called peach fuzz, you have it on your arms and legs and face, and it is barely visible, it is there to protect your skin, you have very pale skin and so you need it, and you are half Italian so you will have plenty of it.

He liked the idea of peach fuzz and started to chill out, then his brother starts calling the sun block I am putting on my big guy's face a mustache like Adam Ant, I said no it is war paint like Adam Ant, but he kept trying to talk about mustaches, so I had to forbid that word from being spoken for the rest of the morning.

Oh so of course we were a few minutes late getting of to camp, and as I have mentioned before I lack the ability to split my self into two separate but fully functioning versions of myself, so getting two kids to two camps that start at the same time is rather difficult, though not in walking distance as they were from our last house, at least the camps are in the same neighborhood.
Anyway there has been a bunch of work on our local roads, great things are getting done, good, stimulus package money is getting spread out into the local economy, good, every fucking day there is a detour in a different place than the day before, bad. Can not they work at night? Probably costs more with graveyard shift or overtime pay, okay I get it. But at least there could be proper signage, I get to the top of my block, the road looks like hell, but there is not a sign or cones, I get ready to turn, and a police officer yells no, not in a dicky way or anything, then I see cones on the side of the road in some bushes, it is 8:58 a.m., I know they start working much earlier than that, just put up some kind of indicator that lets me know that the road is closed so I do not have to waste my time, it would be easiest to drive out into the closed road to turn around but the cop is staring at me, there are cars parked on the side of the road so I have to pull off a tight K-turn while late with the boys asking me what's going on and the cop watching, as in I can't just do it quick and not worry about playing bumper cars, so I am trying to keep my profanity under my breath and then my 7 year-old says sorry that it is his fault, to which I replied, you do not work for the town, it is not your job to put up traffic signs, it is not your fault, and we are late most of the time anyway, so please do not worry about it.

Though I think at some point on the ride to camp I made a snide comment about not getting upset about things that are natural, I really need to check myself and stay on point when I comes to my children's self perception and esteem, if I was cognisant that he was feeling bad I should not have brought the issue up in an insensitive joking or blaming manner. My bad. Though I did give him a Stuart Smalley pep talk before he stepped into his first class today. Hopefully it counteracted any missteps I made this morning.

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Having very little to do with the above information, when ever you talk about children growing up, or a grown up couple who do not have kids my four year-old starts talking about when you grow up and live with another grown up you can have kids, he told my wife's cousin who lives on our block and is married but without children and beyond average child bearing years, that she is going to be having a baby inside her soon because she and her husband are grown-ups and they live together.

What’s the Best Way to Clean Bath Toys?

I hate that black mold that quickly grows inside all of our kids bath toys, hate it I tell you!
http://www.realsimple.com/work-life/life-strategies/ask-real-simple/best-way-clean-bath-toys-00000000017564/?xid=askrsnews

America's Best Hospitals: The 2009-10 Honor Roll

http://health.yahoo.com/featured/25/america-s-best-hospitals-the-2009-10-honor-roll

In love? It's not enough to keep a marriage, study finds

Really ?!? What not a surprise to anyone who has ever been married.
http://news.yahoo.com/s/nm/20090714/lf_nm_life/us_couples

Cats Do Control Humans, Study Finds

http://news.yahoo.com/s/livescience/20090713/sc_livescience/catsdocontrolhumansstudyfinds

Ouch, the day after

So I was woken up around 6 am by my four year-old jumping around my bed looking for cuddles and entertainment from my wife and I. Besides having to pee, man I hate that, waking up early having to pee, because you know you have to get out of bed and you are not going to get back to sleep.
More importantly after spending yesterday doped up and a little giddy that the source of my anguish had been rooted out of my face I forgot what it's like to wake up in pain. Even these past couple of months with my sinus and tooth issues they would usually get worse as the day went on, peaking in the mid-afternoon, this morning however it was like the pain had been storing itself up for the six hours I was asleep just waiting to kick my ass as soon I awoke.
To me pain always feels worse after you've been using painkillers, of course constant pain is in reality worse than intermittent pain, with constant pain one kind of resigns themselves to the situation, the pain that comes after the painkillers wear off seems almost impetuous, like god didn't I deal with you already, then you have to figure out what painkiller to take, I haven't eaten yet, and I have to drive the kids, get the house ready for company, damn no hydrocodone until bedtime.
Also the term painkiller had to be created by a marketing department, they are really pain blockers, right? What happens to the pain while it's being blocked, where along the line is it blocked, is everything happening the same but I just don't feel it? I'm getting into old school Seinfeld territory here so I'll stop and try to remember to ask some of the Pharma Industry people that are in my family what the whole deal is with how painkillers work.

The Source of the Problem

So this is what has been going on, about a month of face pain, was not sure if it was my teeth or sinuses, it wound up being a tooth that is adjacent to a sinus cavity, hence pain emanating from the upper left quadrant of my mouth would shoot through the sinus networks and through the root canal spiderwebbing pain all throughout my face.

I already had an appointment for a cleaning with my periodontist today, so a few weeks I tried to hold out until my appointment, but the pain got so bad that only hydrocodone could alleviate the pain. I also was not sure if the pain was a sinus infection, my family has bad allergies and my mother has had growths removed from her sinuses so that seemed like a possible cause, so I went to an allergist, he had me rinsing my sinuses and using a mediated spray, which helped a little, my guess is that the cleared sinuses caused less pressure in the area.

My wife had a week off of work and we did a lot of running around, going to the beach, which I spent laying down on a beach towel writhing in pain with a baseball cap over my face for two to three hours because I did not have any pain killers with me. We've been eating out a lot lately and that just made things worse, I could barely chew anything. Besides trying to zone out at the beach I had a few other black outs from the pain, I lost a little over a half an hour one day while watching the kids, it got to the point that the boys being loud would set off a serious head/tooth ache, you can image with a four and seven year-old that is a precarious state to be in. So the kids get loud, I'm on my knees I just put my head in my hands and plop face down in pain on the couch at 4pm, I pick my head up and it's 4:35. At first I was like wow I blacked out from pain, that's kind of cool in a weird way I've never done that before, then, oh shit where are my kids? They were fine but that was nerve racking.

I couldn't hold out any longer and saw my regular dentist, who said it looked like I might need a root canal, even though the tooth looked healthy, which would be only the third time in the 20 years of his career that he would have seen such an occurrence, golly gee, my uniqueness knows no bounds and just expresses it self in so many fascinating ways.

Saw my periodontist today and he pulled that huge tooth out, it's amazing how big they are underneath your gums. Still swallowing what tastes like a salty blood broth but hopefully this issue has passed it's crisis stage.

I handed my tooth to my four year-old thinking he would dig it's grossness, but he got freaked out by the blood, my seven year-old thought it was gross but liked it.

"Why doesn't God tell you?"

It's always a great way to start the day 15 minutes late for dropping your seven year-old off at school with him yelling, "There is no God!"

Basically we were running late as usual, I had told my first grader to get his socks on, he can usually find a pair of socks on his own without any problems so I thought this was a safe task for him to embark on while I was accomplishing some other morning task. When I walk into his room he is still sockless in his bed sliding under the covers and tells his brother, "Hide!" It is pretty normal for my boys to hide when my wife or I come into an area that we have not been in a while, like when my wife gets home from work, or we have been on separate floors for a few minutes.
Anyway when I see that he has not put on socks or done anything to get himself any more ready to leave for school I start to yell that we do not have time to play we are suppose to leave in six minutes. He says I am not playing, I answer you told your brother to hide and you were starting to hide under the covers that is playing.
He starts to yell
7- I didn't tell my brother to hide!
40-Well it sounded like it, what did you say then something that rhymes with it?
7- I said "hi"
40-No you didn't now you're just lying
7- I'm not lying
40-Let's ask your brother, what did you big brother say?
4- He told me to hide, then ... (some other things that did not actually happen)
7 - He's lying, he lies
40- yeah he does lie a lot, but apparently so do you we both heard you tell him to hide
7- God knows the truth!
40- Yeah he does so you better not lie (If you are familiar with me at all you know my beliefs lay somewhere between Buddhism, Taoism, Jung's Collective Unconscious and Agnosticism but we are raising our boys to be Episcopalian which seems to be the most balanced way for them to come up understanding our culture and social mores and yet be open minded to other world views. Where they take things from there is their own decision.)

Then my son gets hysterical

7 - God knows the truth I didn't say that, why won't he tell you, why doesn't he come down and tell you?
40- That's not how it works
7-Why don't you help me, I don't know if you are even there
40 - That's not what this is about
7- I don't think you're even there, I don't think there is a God, why won't he help me, why won't he tell you, there is no God ...

FUCK, we are more late, my son still isn't dressed, he's hysterical and crying and using pretty sound logic to debunk the accepted Christian concept of God, I heard him say "hide" and so did his brother so I can't just give in. At points like this a parent needs to find a safe out for their kids.
1. Yeah there is no God now put your socks and let's go, quick and to the point but that doesn't work in this context and I don't fully believe that,
2. Okay I'm sorry I miss heard you, no that's not true and teaches him if he freaks out he can get away with anything. What's the middle path here?
3. This is a brief version of how I tried to smooth this out over the course of 15 minutes while getting him dressed for school.
I hugged him, his little brother tries to hug him and he says he's mad at his brother, I told him to not be because he heard the same thing that I did. I told him that the main point of this whole situation is that he was not getting ready for school and did not follow through on a direct order to put his socks on, the whole HIDE issue is secondary, and God does not do everything for us, he gave us free will which means we make our own choices and that means we make mistakes and have miscommunications, if he made us only do what's right and fixed everything for us we'd be like his action figures, all of our actions and interactions would be managed for us and we would not determine our own lives, so even though it is often tough would you want to be like one of your action figures or have free will like you do now? Would you want to be like your action figures?
7- No
40- Well there you go, see this has nothing to do with if there is a God or not, we either miss heard you or you are lying or maybe you do not even know what you said, nothing to do with God. Also sometimes in life people are not going to believe you or it seems like everyone disagrees with you, that does not mean that you are wrong, it is not something to be upset about don't let what other people think control what you think.

I should have also told him if everyone thinks he is wrong he should take another look at the issue because we all are wrong or mistaken sometimes but again do not let what other people think determine what you believe.

This seemed to put his head straight, but we were still super late.

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My first grader recently told me that he sometimes misses me so much at school that he goes to the bathroom and cries.
I said you did not do this in kindergarten did you?
No.
Then why this year, what's different.
The day seems so long without nap time.
I can see that

I'm glad he misses me but I do not want him to be sad at school, it makes me wonder if the school environment is nurturing enough, in many cases it seems like they forget that these kids are six and seven years old and that they are just grooming them for the state testing in third grade.
I also wonder about kids who do not have an open dialog with their parents, does that help them to learn to deal with things own their own, make them more mature, or just makes them fucked up trying to understand a world that is complex and often harsh.
I believe I could have talked to my parents about anything when I was little but I for some reason chose not to, not sure if it was that I took the bus home and often did not see them for a few hours after school, so my mind had moved on to other things or if I did not want to bother them.

I have more to say but I am out of steam and do not have the ability to keep things coherent so I will do us both a favor and end here.

Glowing TV Screens Keeping Americans Up at Night

THIS IS WHAT I HAVE TO LOOK FORWARD TO

Drug-laced brownies send prom-goers to hospital


Five students who attended the ... High School Junior Prom last week became ill after consuming marijuana-laced brownies on the way to the dance, and four of them needed to be hospitalized, police said.
The students ate the tainted brownies in their rented limousine en route to the dance, held last Wednesday, May 20, according to a letter Assistant Principal ... sent home to the students’ parents on the day after the incident.
Two of the students, who were 16-year-old females, showed "obvious signs of distress," said Montclair Police Lt. James. Both of them vomited and "one girl was completely incoherent and unable to communicate," while the other teen complained of a headache and stomachache, ... said.
Three other students, two boys and a girl who were around the same age, also were sickened by the brownies. The latter female called someone for a ride, while the other four students were all taken to the ... Hospital Emergency Room.

Little Comedian

My four year-old made me laugh a couple of time last week.

He asked what I was doing I said emailing your Great Aunt Coco and he replied, "She's called hot coco so you can drink her."

His older brother is really into Godzilla now and was commenting on how lucky the people in Tokyo are because they have access to more Godzilla toys than we do in the USA, and he said they must really love Godzilla, the four year-old replied:

THEN WHY ARE THEY ALWAYS RUNNING AWAY FROM HIM?!?

And then bust out laughing. I know parents are unduly impressed with their kids, but I thought that was very quick witted.

Various music notes

A few things I have just not gotten around to posting about music.

After hearing the first riff of the Who's "I Can't Explain" my four year-old asks,
"Is this the Clash?"
No son, but the Clash totally did Who style riffs like that, they definitely were influenced by them.

I was playing a mix of my favorite tracks from 2008 and my 6 year-old correctly asked asked, "Dad is this Tricky?"
Yes son, good ear.

It's funny I do not know how many people in the world under 20 could recognize as song as being made by Tricky. Probably not that many over 20 as well, but that is besides the point.

1st grader, "Dad am I goth?"
Dad, "A little bit, son a little bit."
His favorite TV show, Phineas and Ferb has a goth character on it, who is actually shown in a positive and non-stereotypical manner. He also likes some Bauhaus songs and always asks what kind of music a song is when he recognizes that it as a new style to him.

Hamster Update

The hamster is doing much better, the wound which once covered a space larger than a nickel, is now about 1/10 that size, so all the trouble and money have been worth it, even if she does not live out a full two years, having her die after one having her for a month would have been traumatic to our 1st grader, so we are very glad that her meds are working and her life has been extended.
Side note from the twice daily steroids she's on our hamster looks like she's ready for lucrative contract with the Yankees, she's all bulked up and muscular now.