But He Makes Me Laugh

He Blogs/She Blogs: Do I Have To Go?

It's Thursday, time for another installment of HBSB.



And yes, I finally realized that the picture I was posting up here was just a header and didn't link anybody back to the HBSB site. So what?

Don't bother with a comment here, I'm not expecting any. Besides, it would probably just be some smart ass comment about my computer skills. Go GO!

Random Tuesday: Allergy Edition

My wife woke up Sunday morning telling me about a dream she had of being chased by an evil Betty White who was attempting demonic possession on her. Job stress?

Random Tuesday, it's a hurricane of crazy.



Because I love my son, I jumped in front of his allergy bus today. Its been running me over and over and over all day long. I'm snotty road kill. A snot martyr. Pounded by pollen.

Screw it, I'm posting a bunch of pictures.

I found this in a local newspaper last week while Supreme Leader and I were having breakfast. The picture was taken with my cell so its not the best quality but I don't think it takes anything away from the caption.



Breakfast of champions. Or Jedi. (via 1+infinity)



Portable picnic from Design Sponge.



A few weeks ago when swine flu jokes were still funny I took a Sharpie to a page in our home calendar and took a picture of it. Then I forgot about it.


Funny? Have I mentioned how well my 5 year old has picked up reading? Supreme Leader was very impressed to hear her first born work through that while she was making cookies. I think the phonetics helped.

I found a new website a couple weeks ago called Corkboard which is really helpful if you have short term memory issues like I do. "Corkboard helps you remember what you want. Whatever it is. Wherever you are." Basically, you get an email address you stick into your phone's memory and if you're out and see something and you don't want to forget about it, you send it to this page. Pictures, text, whatever. They even have something set up where you can send in the UPN or ISBN number of a product or book and the site will pull up info on it and send it to your page.

Finally, a quick message to Kat at 3 Bedroom Bungalow:



Ok, one last thing.



Ok, this was a train wreck. Head over to Keely's to see how it should be done. I'll stay here and get traded around Alergy Prison like a pretty boy on his first day in the yard.

Flowers Are Nice, But...

I sold this idea to Ryan over at the Panic Room for some magic beans, but he hasn't paid up yet so I'm still going to use it.

HBSB: Mammoth Steak Again?

It's Thursday again, time for a little gender perspective. Head over to HBSB and see what's up.

Random Tuesday: בְּאַקרָאִי Tiwes dæg *

It's Tuesday in all it's juicy Tuesdaylisousness. Go to Keely's and join in the mayhem.



Wife: I love fresh blood.
Me: What?
Wife: *suspicious look* Fresh bread.
Me: *nervous laughter* Oh ya. Mmmm. Heh heh.

We were in the liquor store Saturday night and I found a bottle of Macallan scotch that had been bottled in 1948. It was $13,000. Thirteen thousand dollars.

Peanut butter and jelly pillows.



Liam: I'm using my nose to vacuum my nose! *SNIFF*

My sister is awesome.

If you ever have to wash your bath mat because say, your four year old hurled on it after combining dinner with rhythmic gymnastics and hey, wasn't that a great idea? Maybe we'll listen to mommy and daddy next time but probably not since *love you* you have less sense than a dog. Where was I? Right. Anyway, maybe don't wash it with the rest of your clothes. Not that I did, I'm just saying that maybe you know somebody who would and it might be a good idea just to advise them so they avoid some... issues and look I know what you're thinking and whatever, ok, like you never stuck anything in the wash that you regretted afterwards? Excuse me, Martha Stewart. And 'afterwards' is spelled correctly stupid spellcheck. What the hell, did that program get farmed out to a country who's first language isn't English?



I was talking to one of Connor's classmates mother the other day and she told me about a friend of hers who just found out that not only are her two year old twins extremely allergic to peanut butter but her four year old has type one diabetes. At the children's hospital after being diagnosed she had her daughter in the bathroom for a potty break before heading home. Sitting on the toilet the little girl says, "It is what it is mommy, we just have to get used to it." The mother breaks down and bear hugs her brave little girl who tolerates it for a few minutes before asking, "Mommy, could you pull up my pants." Kids.

Tony Stark as Sherlock Holmes.



Hey, psst, do you have your blog set to allow emails back on your comments? If you just said/thought, huh, that means you don't. What it does is allows the blogger you left a comment to to respond to you with an email. So when you leave me a comment and maybe ask me a question I can respond back to you right away since I can't always make it back to your blog the same day. Or the day after and you don't think, what a dick, who does he think he is, Dooce? Well I don't, and I don't think Dooce is a dick either, but there's only so many blogs I can read a day and I really really do love you. Really. Where's that smile? Where is it? THERE IT IS! See, that's how much I love you. A million times a gajillion.

*psst* Anyone who actually knows what I'm talking about up there... could you maybe explain it in a comment, cause I've actually forgotten how you do it, or even what it's called. You may not have noticed from the subtle way I danced around the issue, I'm wily like that.


* Random in Hebrew and Tuesday in Old English.

Help Me, Obi-wan, You're My Only Hope

"Kill the pig! Slit 'his' throat! Bash 'him' in!"

Ah, Lord of the Flies. It was mildly entertaining in high school, but when I wake up every day to my four year old chanting it beside my bed it loses its charm. Our little angel, our polite, smiling, laughing little bundle of pure happiness has developed the hair trigger temper of David Banner.


All kidding aside, it's become a problem. When he gets upset about something, he goes completely off the deep end and lashes out with whatever is at hand. While I admire his adaptability, it's starting to effect home and school.

Liam has a friend in pre-school named Jack, and if he doesn't get to play with Jack, either because Jack is off sick or he doesn't get to be Jack's partner while they are walking to the gym he loses it. Like throws his lunch, yells and screams, kicking/punching/threatening his teachers loses it. We've got 'that boy.' We're so proud. Unlike his older brother, Liam loves going to school and we don't want anything getting in the way of that, but we can't seem to get it through his little block head that he can't act like that while he's there. Terrorizing his family is one thing, but we'd like to keep the illusion up to our neighbours that we know what we're doing.

When Connor was at this age we could work with him. It got to the point where I could just give him a look and he'd put himself in time out. Liam is his polar opposite. The yin to his yang, Jekyll to his Hyde, the Data to his Lorn and we don't know how to deal with him. Time outs and being sent to his room do not work. After screaming burning epithets at us for a few minutes, he'll just make up a game to entertain himself with. One exasperating day I asked him what he thought mommy and daddy should do to make him understand. He suggested taking away all of his toys. Reasoning, punishment, goals, bribery, yelling, screaming and swats to the ass have zero effect. He doesn't care.

Now, that said, when he isn't being the poster boy for anarchy (which is only a small amount of the time)he's still a little angel who wants to snuggle, who will remember to say please and thank you and genuinely appreciates what you do for him. Friday afternoon we took him to the doctor's because we think he has allergies. The doctor confirmed that he does and that his ears are plugged up. While talking about it we realized that his change in attitude corresponded roughly to when he started his snot-capade. The doctor recommended giving him antihistamine daily for the next two months to see how it helps and hopefully being able to breathe and hear properly will turn things around for him. Unfortunately since he's already started down this prickly path he'll still need some reprogramming.

Any suggestions? Seriously. We need some help here.

HBSB: Return of the Mac

Click it. Go. GO!

Random Tuesday: T.U.E.S.D.A.Y.

It's Random Tuesday again. Let's not waste any time.

T is for Twitter. And Telus, my cell provider who has finally ended it's evil ways and allowed incoming tweets to my cell phone again so now when I'm out and I tweet something and you answer it and I don't respond you don't have to be all "Ooh, who thinks he's all that?" and snap your fingers back and forth in the air. Well I don't think that, but guess who won't be on my device update list now?

U for ubiquitous, cause don't you wish you could drop words like that into everyday conversation? Oh, you can? Well 'U' suck.

E is for... E is for... E? Ephemeral? Elephantitis? Eric Estrada? No. E rhymes with G and G is for garden and my garden is going to kick your garden's ass this year!



S is for Star Trek which RAWKED! Zachary Quinto may well have been cloned just to play Spock. And the guy who played Dr. McCoy? Worth the movie alone. And Uhura? She's... er, nice. S is also for 'seven,' as in the game seven that the Vancouver Canucks won't be playing in because they lost to Chicago last night. I will console myself with the fact that 20 of the Blackhawk's 27 players are Canadian so even if they win the Stanley Cup, it will still spend most of its time here. And a special thanks to Literal Dan for not rubbing my nose in it.

D rhymes with C which stands for cookie and that's good enough for me.

A for Adidas, my dope new shoes. My Nikes developed some serious structural integrity issues. I got them cheap though. I've got a friend who has a friend who found them after they fell out of a container that fell off a truck that left a factory in China that's nowhere near the Chinese factory that actually makes Nikes and has no affiliation with Nike whatsoever.

Y is for Y chromosome. Which I have.

O is not a letter in Tuesday, but there's an O in Oprah and is it just me or does anyone else find her magazine covers terrifying? Have you seen this months? "The world is like my little bubble. Make me happy little bubble or I'll destroy you."

And finally, B, the most important letter that isn't in any day of the week. B is for bacon. And bacon, according to Supreme Leader's new Bon Appétit summer party guide is,

"45% monounsaturated, the good for you fat that can help lower bad cholesterol levels. Better still, bacon's monounsaturated fat turns out to be oleic acid, the same fat found in olive oil. So that means that some could argue that bacon is about half as good for you as olive oil and about 100 times more delicious."

That, my friends, is gospel.

Go to Keely's and join the zombie plague.

Don't Worry, I'll Clean It Up

Mommy had to work today.

He Blogs/She Blogs: The Next Generation

That's right! It's back! HBSB disappeared for awhile there, but now it's back, sober and better than ever. A month of detox and rehabilitation has done it wonders. Sure there are scars, but that's only skin. We've washed it off, dressed it up and given it a new home.* Go over and check it out. My lovely co-host Petra has written up a little intro to warm things up and set the mood. I'm digging out the Barry White and switching the flannel to satin.

I don't know where I was going there. Sorry. Just go over and see.



*And by 'we' I mean Petra has done all the work and I pretend like I had something to do with it. Like how I tied that in with the whole He/She thing? It's just like real life!

** (don't bother looking up there for two stars, they aren't there) Feel free to pimp our new site. You won't get anything out of it but you'll make me feel all warm and tingly. And maybe you'll find $5 in a pocket that you'd forgotten about because that's just the way things work.

Piglet & Pooh

My sister sent this to me yesterday. Click on it to enjoy the full sized friendliness of the Hundred Acre Wood.



*Ya, I'm fresh outta mojo.

Random Tuesday: Kinda Sorta (Come On, Tuesday's A Garbage Bag)

Dear last occupant of my house who painted what apparently was a frat house, when I figure out how this DNA resequencer works I'm going to clone you through your hair you left on the walls and painted over and then I'm going medieval on your ass. Throwing paint on a wall is not an acceptable means of getting the job done.



Did you know that if you leave half a case of ginger ale under the stairs for... a few seasons, the cans will somehow empty themselves so that when you're digging around in the Christmas ornaments for some fishing line to hang up a fuc- a model airplane you just built for your son and you finally decide to get rid of them you find empty cans that are still sealed? For reals. The cans were empty. I couldn't even hear air coming out when I squeezed them. I knew I smelled something funny down there.

Once again I missed meeting up with Tracy from Kaply Inc while visiting Seattle. She probably thinks I'm not real, a fictional character or something. Well I am fictional, but once I've collected a few more souls I'll be able to assume corporeal form and walk amongst the living again. Er, forget that last sentence. Heh. I did get to speak to her on the phone though. She didn't sound anything like I thought she would, but then she started swearing at me and the warm fuzzies came back.

Have you ever ran a piece of paper towel around the rim of a soup can or some frozen OJ? (no, I always make my soup from scratch, it's just an example (screw you!)) If you've never done it, give it a try. I guarantee you'll always do it afterwards. *dry heave*

If I lived on Pluto I'd weigh 13 pounds. If I lived on the Sun I'd weigh 5280 pounds. Hips ahoy!

Saturday we were at the Flight Museum in Seattle. They had a B-17 they were taking people up in for an extortionate amount of money. Even so, Connor has such a love of WWII aircraft we did consider it, but decided against it figuring the noise would scare the crap out of him. Towards the end of our visit I took him outside to see it take off again but it was already gone. As we stood there a jet fighter came screaming, and let me emphasize SCREAMING down the runway. At first I assumed it was an F-18 (ladies, you can tune out here) but by the time it past us I'm pretty sure the colour scheme was wrong and it was actually a Russian Mig because I thought I saw a red star on it. I say 'thought' because it was moving too fast for my eyes to relay the info to my brain. Then its nose lifted and it rocketed into the sky. I'm pretty sure Connor thought it was the harbinger of end times. Well, if he knew what that meant, anyway. I sacrificed my own hearing to save my son's by covering his ears. Sure my brain liquified, but I'm pretty sure that was the coolest part of my trip.

Bill Maher monologue on the Swine Flu. "You know how many people have died this year already from the regular normal flu flu? Lets call it the flu flu. 13,000. 13,000 people died from that. The swine flu? One. What does the flu flu have to do to get some attention, fuck a goat?"

Last 10 songs iTunes threw up while writing this:

1. Dancing In The Moonlight - Toploader
2. Come Monday - Jimmy Buffett
3. Spilt Milk - The Cure
4. Little Wing - Jimmy Hendrix
5. Swimming Pools - Thao Nguyen
6. Courage - The Tragically Hip
7. Six Months In A Leaky Boat - Split Enz
8. Everything - Michael Bublé
9. Ain't No Way - Aretha Franklin
10. Something So Strong - Crowded House

Keely's. Go, join the Dark Side.

It's Time To Go Home

Yesterday we came home from Seattle. Everybody over the age of five was ready to sleep in their own beds. Five and under? Not so much.



The last thing he said was "I don't want to go to school." You'll notice that his anguish didn't keep him from eating the brownie we'd given him to stop crying.