Dayna and Mo are out West, Brod is at his Grandparents and while one might think that a Dad might relish a few days of solitude…sadly I’m finding I’m not.

Were it warmer, maybe a motorcycle ride; if I wasn’t killing time by working 11 hours days, maybe increased laundry production; at best I can only say I’m enjoying flipping between CSI and CSI: Miami re-runs which are running concurrently but thankfully their commercials are not.

…he’s carrying an infant, two lunch boxes, a giant pack of diapers and a diaper bag.  With him is another child no more than two years old; his hands full with a couple toys.

The Dad gets to the door and realizes that he’s left the card (that will unlock the door) in his wallet.  So, being all MacGyver what does he do?

1.       Ring the door bell for an employee to open the door

2.       Ask his son to reach into his pocket, get the wallet and open the door

3.       Think ahead and give his wallet to his son before he loads up like a camel

4.       Wait for one of the other many parents arriving to use their cards to open the door

5.       Turn around, back up to the card reader on the wall next to the door, stand on his tip-toes so his ass is closer to the reader and then rub said ass up and down trying to get the reader to pick up the signal through his jeans.

If you guessed Five, then you know how cool it is to be a Dad!

Race Cars!

Ninjas!

and SUSAN SARANDON!

HOT DAMN!! 

Maura was sharing with us that Cupid is real, and that Dayna and I fell in love because, on Valentine’s Day, he shot heart shaped arrows in our butts.

Brody, who has serious and disturbing fundamentalist leanings, couldn’t bear that she believed in something so transparently false and imaginary!  He sought to correct her ill-informed belief; but alas she could not be swayed!  Ms. Tracy had told her that at Pre-school, so it was a fact!

As dinner wore on Brody, who continued to be annoyed by her belief in someone she’s never seen, doing something ‘magical’ in nature and leaving no evidence of existence (I’m not aware of any arrow scars on my ass) mentioned that one of the girls in his class didn’t believe in Santa.  Rather, she believed that all gifts were put there by her parents.

Brody thought she was nuts…obviously Santa is real.  (He then continued to dis the diapered defender of d’amour!).

After dinner, Brody went to his room to ‘Lego’ (is there anything that can’t be turned into a verb anymore?) and Maura patted after him.  

As she left international waters and neared the sovereignty of New Broditha, Brody ‘asked’ her to leave.  I put asked in quotes as it was more like yelling.  He need some time along in the man-cave and really didn’t want her around.  Mo’ felt a little ‘Jan Brady’ about the whole thing and got a bit melodramatic.

We did, and will continue to talk to Brody about this.  It’s amazing how he (and any of us really) are so nice to others (even idiots we hate) but find it so easy to be cruel to the ones we love (or are expected to love). J  Brody can be the nicest ‘big kid’ to any little kid around, but Mo get’s near him and his feathers ruffle.  So we’ve got some work there…I’ll let you know how we fair against years of evolutionary psychology and societal norms.

Mo and I played some ‘Go Fish’ and then did some crafts at the kitchen table.  Not soon thereafter who should appear asking to join our little craft party and behaving like Eddie Haskel!

Maura is our crafty child.  She LOVES making things with scissors, paper and glue.  Not that most kids don’t enjoy such activities, but she really does.  She has a room full of toys, but at any given point, she sits down at her little desks and creates.

Today, Brody and I had left to do errands and hit our guitar lessons (I have now mastered the opening riff to ‘Back in Black’ and am now working on the James Bond Theme while Brody continues to lust after the Thunderbird Electric Bass guitar) while Dayna and Mo had a play date. 

Dayna was in the shower and Mo was left to her own devices (as she was ready on time).   I can only surmise the events that lead to her interest, but on our door hangs a Do Not Disturb sign.

I made it years ago with some left over materials from one of Brody’s earliest parties.  I was just fiddling and this was what I could create with the remaining letters.

On one side it says ‘Git ‘N Busy’, the other side says ‘Scram!’.  It has hung on our door for years.  (BTW it doesn’t work during the day as well as a SpongeBob episode (for your future parents out there…I’d also suggest the movie as it’s 88 minutes long, otherwise you’ve barely got 22 minutes for ‘busiment to be gotten’)).

Anyway when Dayna got out of the shower, what you see scanned below (click to enlarge) was hanging on Maura’s door.

(the blog server is down - check back later for a scan of the two signs!)

Brody’s buddy came over again last night (see previous post re: lent) as his parents worked the local St. Somethingorother fish fry.

During dinner, the boys were talking about Presidents.  They had been studying George Washington, Lincoln and others in relation to the recent President’s Day.  Brody  then hollered across the table and asked for whom we would vote in the coming election (though I don’t know that he actually used the word ‘whom’).

Most likely I’ll vote for the democratic nominee, though John McCain is moderate enough to make it an actual ‘race’ for me.  Nonetheless, knowing what I knew about his friend and their family…I responded Hillary Clinton. 

His friends face dropped!  He looked at us with a cartoon face…jaw clanking to the ground, tongue rolling out, eyes bugging from behind his glasses.

“You’re going to vote for a DEMOCRAT?!”

I simply indicated I was (I would have preferred John Edwards vs. Rudy G. to be honest).   His next comment…

“You know why I hate democrats? It’s because…

And then he realized that if a) I hate democrats and b) they are voting for democrats then they might think c) I hate them.  So he immediately stopped and said…

“I mean, I hate democrats but I don’t hate you guys.”

A well-intentioned, if not awkward save on his part.

I retorted “That’s okay.  We hate republicans but we still like your family.”

Cartoon face number two!

He then finished his thought with the strong reasoning that if you “take away the ‘dema’ and replace the ‘t’ with a ‘p’; it spells a bad word.”

I retorted that his party panders to the religious right to get their votes while having no real interest in things moral, that trickle down economics is crap, the war was to get the lucrative oil contracts away from France and Russia for the president’s pals, is a puppet for rich white men and that when republicans are caught having affairs, it’s with someone who charges for that service; at least democrats are attractive and dynamic enough to ‘git it goin’ on’ for free!

OKAY!  I didn’t really say that.  I applauded his reasoning and thought about the conversation he’d probably be having with his parents later.