Daddy Is Tired

Yeah, so maybe this is a month old.  Sue me.

Fun at Sesame Place!

Okay, so maybe it isn’t as classy as “Wordless Wednesday,” but it’s a theme, right?

Ellie and Matthew have really come into their own as world-class farters.  I have NO idea where they get that from.  Ahem.

Anyhow, earlier in the week Matthew let out a HUGE fart while he was washing his hands.  I opened my eyes really big, pretended to be shocked, and said, “What was THAT?”  Usually he excuses himself (farting is cool around here, as long as you excuse yourself).  But instead he couldn’t have looked prouder.

“I farted…and it sounded like a song.  A STINKY song!”

Since then, the house has been full of stinky songs.  Okay, it was before that too.  We just have a name for them now.

Yesterday the kids were arguing in the basement.  Yeah, it’s shocking that they’d argue.  Who would think a 5- and 3-year old couldn’t get along for 5 minutes?  At one point I heard someone fart, so I turned around to enforce the “Excuse me” rule.  Nobody fessed up, so I glared at them and cleared my throat.

Ellie, who was sitting in a chair with her feet up, said, “I farted at Matthew because he was being mean to me.”

I couldn’t have been prouder.

It’s official – I’ve signed up for the Tiarathon (Disney Princess Half-Marathon) in March 2010.  Holy crap, a half-marathon – that’s 13.1 miles!  When I started running 4 months ago, I would never have imagined that I’d even be interested in 13 miles of running (okay, running and walking intervals).  But 209 miles of running later, here I am.  So far my longest run has been 8.5 miles, which is a LONG way from 13 miles, but I can still see myself finishing it in about 2:20.  Hopefully faster, but as long as I don’t need to ride in the Golf Cart of Shame, I’ll be happy.

I’ve also been really busy lately (hence no posts), but for the life of me I can’t figure out what I’m spending my time doing.  Running around after the kids.  Running errands.  Running on empty, because I get no sleep.  With all this exercising, you’d think I’d take care of myself and get some sleep too, but I’m too dumb to do that.  Instead I’m trying to get the next version of my software released (finally), and I’m really close.  I’m also looking forward to getting the next version of my software AND my client’s software ported over to the new language as well.

Once both kids are in school I’m hoping I’ll be able to get a lot more done.  Well, except my list of junk to do around the house keeps growing too.  *sigh*  First up, clean out the garage and boiler room, and have a garage sale or something.  And it just goes on from there.

My life seems to be nothing but running lately.

“The Mohican’s may have been the last in the race to survive, but they were number one when it came to cross-training.” Damn Ben Stiller, why did you end up going with the lowbrow humor instead of sticking with your TV show?  Oh yeah, because that’s what pays the bills.

Are you happy Julie?

That’s right – I have a file of random Matthew stuff.  I like what’s in it, but nothing by itself is blogworthy.  Heck, put together it’s not blogworthy either, but I want to get that file off my desktop, so here it is…random Matthew junk that I’ll read in 20 years and think is amusing.

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For some reason, our basement has lots of bugs in it this year.  And by lots of bugs, I mean it’s had 2 or 3.  I hate bugs.

Anyhow, the kids found a spider the other day and I manned up and squished it with about 800 kleenexes.  While I was taking it to flush down the toilet (you can’t just put them in the garbage, you never know when those sneaky bugs will come back to life as zombie bugs), Matthew yelled, “Daddy’s a good spider hunter!”

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There’s a kid in Ellie’s class, I’ll call him M, who is black.  The other day Matthew asked if M was a brother (meaning does M have siblings).  Why the heck did that make me feel so awkward?

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The city FINALLY repaved our street this past week…and I’m talking full blown recompacting the subgrade and everything.  Matthew loved watching the work, and was fascinated by all the equipment.  For some reason he thought the Bobcat was the neatest, and said “I love that Bobcat because it’s good, good, good!”  (I have no idea why.)  He also asked some really great questions.

My favorite was, “Do those men have penises?”

Ellie’s current favorite words are a doozie.

“I’m VERY upset with you.”

I hear them daily…and it doesn’t really matter what I do, she serves up those words if it isn’t what she wants.  And it’s usually accompanied by a foot stomp.  When I make her sit correctly at the table?

“I’m VERY upset with you.”  *stomp*

When I tell her to stop jumping on the bed?

“I’m VERY upset with you.”  *stomp*

When I make her eat less noisily than a farm animal?

“I’m VERY upset with you.”  *stomp*

While it’s kind of funny listening to her get upset like that, I’m getting tired of hearing it.  Oh, sure, she tries to keep it interesting for me by changing up the words a bit.  “You’re making me VERY upset.”  “That makes me upset.”  “You’re really making me upset!”  But I could do without it.

Lately she’s been upping the ante, probably because I don’t seem to care if she gets upset that I won’t let her draw on the walls.  Now, not only does she get upset, somehow she’s learned how to fill her eyes with tears just to the point of almost spilling out.  And then, just as she says the words?  She blinks, and down roll two perfect tears.

It’s brilliant.

Have I mentioned that she isn’t even 5?  I’m not looking forward to her teen tantrums.  And what’s worse?

Matthew has already started to copy her.

As of August 6, 2009, there have been 4,317 soldiers killed in Iraq and 763 killed in Afghanistan.  That’s a total of 5,080 men and women, taken prematurely from their families.

5,080

Were you expecting me to be talking about John Hughes?  Sorry.

Don’t get me wrong, the man was a genius.  He wrote and/or directed some of my favorite movies, some of which I’ve seen hundreds of times:

• National Lampoon’s Vacation
• The Breakfast Club
• Weird Science
• Ferris Bueller’s Day Off
• Planes, Trains, & Automobiles*

His movies touched people’s lives – I get that.  Do I feel bad for his friends and family?  Of course I do.  But the man was a stranger to most of us.  Just like those 5,080 men and women are strangers to most of us.

And yet today’s “news” will be full of John Hughes, while we barely hear a mention these days when soldiers are killed overseas.  Not to take away from the tragedy of John Hughes’ death, but that seems horribly unfair to me.

But it’s possible I’m PMSing.

“For every life that’s taken, so much love is wasted.” – Alter Bridge

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*Holy crap is Planes, Trains & Automobiles funny and touching.  I laughed harder at this movie in the theater than any other movie, EVER.  I still laugh when I see it…  And the scene where John Candy is driving the wrong way between the two semis and they cut to him wearing that crappy little devil suit?  Genius.

I think I check my email too much.  At lunch the other day Matthew was looking down and fiddling with his pocket – when I asked him what he was doing he said, “Checking the email on my shorts.”

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The other day we saw a fire engine, ambulance, and police cars.  Ellie said, “An emergency is like when there’s a fire in the house, or when you poop in your pants.”

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I can’t hear the word “ample” without expecting the word “bosom” to follow.  Yep, it’s all about the boobs.  Whenever I call somewhere and their recording mentions that they have “ample parking,” I think they could have picked a better word.

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I wish I’d started running before the dogs died.  I don’t think I’ve done a single run where I haven’t thought about how much Mena and Gideon would have enjoyed going with me.  And I feel a little guilty about that.

I vowed to myself that I would only write posts that were good and, well, it turns out that there haven’t been any posts in a while.  Hmm.  Maybe I’d better relax my standards a bit, or there are going to be cobwebs around this dump!

So yesterday was the 40th anniversary of the Apollo 11 landing, and Matthew and I went into DC to the Air and Space museum.  I wasn’t planning on it, but that morning I looked online and saw that there was an author doing a book signing.  James Hansen wrote the authorized biography of Neil Armstrong (First Man), and since I’d really liked it, we packed up my copy and went.

As usual, Matthew loved the train ride over – snacks always help.  I need to start automatically shoving snacks into my kids’ hands as soon as they get on the train.  And what a great lesson to teach my kids, too.  Hey, we’re going into the city to do something neat, and we’re taking a neat train ride, so here, have some food.  Ugh.  I have to work on that.  At least it was a healthy snack.

Anyway, we got to the museum at around 10:45, and I was SHOCKED to see that there was no line to get in to the museum.  When we got to the book signing, there was Dr. Hansen, just talking casually to the one other person that was there.  He was super cool and talked to the guy in front of me for a while, inviting him to play golf if he made it to where Dr. Hansen teaches.  And fortunately, the guy in front of me thought to have his book dated because, duh, 40th anniversary, hello!  Then it was my turn.

I turned into a stammering idiot as soon as I started talking.

And I mean even more of a stammering idiot than I am here!  I couldn’t think of anything coherent to say.  He was really gracious and talked for a few minutes, signed my book, we chatted some more, and then fortunately (for him) someone else showed up so I took off.  Matthew ended up wanting to see the Hirshorn Museum instead, and he only sounded 3 alarms while we were there – okay, one might have been me – so it was a pretty good trip!

It wasn’t until we got home and I looked at the Air and Space museum’s schedule online that I realized that Al Bean (my favorite astronaut…yes, I have a “favorite astronaut”) has a new art gallery showing AT THE AIR AND SPACE MUSEUM!  And later I turned on the radio and he was IN THE BUILDING doing a radio show, so it’s possible I could have met him.  DAMN!

Oh well.  At least Matthew and I had fun.  And I met a really cool author.