I know that you gals have to deal with menstruation, menopause and child birth. 

Yes, yes, we all know they’re somewhat ‘uncomfortable.’

You see, Dayna was feeling tired.  Instead of going directly to bed as I, the MAN of the house instructed her, she curled up on the couch to ‘rest her eyes’.  I again demanded, quoting several verses in Leviticus that supported my supreme authority, that she ‘hit the sacketh’.  She replied that she wanted to be able to help me with the kids as I would not be able to handle them.

??

Have we met?  Uh, I just ‘handled’ things fine last night when she was at graduate school getting all book learned (which is quite contrary to the remaining verses in Leviticus)!

So Maura colored while Brody and I practiced guitar.  Then Maura and I went to talk in our bedroom.  She asked if I could paint…her….nails.

See, now that is difficult.   They don’t have hormone therapy, Midol or epidurals for that!  She found the nail polish remover and some cotton balls.  After cleaning her nails I put on a nice coat of light pink (covering the majority of each nail as well as the majority of the top third of her fingers).  After that I found another polish that appeared to be made entirely out of sparkles; so that went on next.  Maura then grabbed some gloss finish, so I shellacked that on to a Turtle Wax shine.

She looks cute, though she can’t bend her fingers at the top knuckle!

Just have to brag…I’m pretty sure that I’m one of the last folks left in the United States (zombie –like consumers that they are) that can actually squeeze into a two car garage….

 

TWO CARS!

That’s two ‘whole’ cars with a sprinkling of bicycles, toys, two motorcycles and a tool box (which holds tools but for one such as I, it’s more of a hutch or display cabinet).

 

As you know, Brody enjoys his Star Wars.  Not certain how he got that, other than the impressive and never-ending onslaught of merchandising aimed at children, as I am not particularly a huge Star Wars fan.

As the painters of old were inspired to paint stories from the scriptures, our son apparently uses a holy text which has six chapters (noting that the holy cannon was sent down starting with the new testament, the old testament following some 15 years later…and is yet still more believable than Mitt Romney’s beliefs).

Brody brings the pic you see below home.  It is Old Stars Wars, Episode (which I suspect is like an Epistle) Two in its entirety.  The 150 pages of canon law (or as they call it, ‘screenplay’) is captured in one image.

Having not seen Episode 2, I cannot say if this is a fundamentalist’s depiction of the text as written or if it is somewhat apocryphal. 

This is difficult to convey in a posting, but the cute part was Brody’s response and the deadpan way in which it was delivered.

You’ll note at the bottom, a woman in white with ‘X’s’ for eyes.

Dayna asks, ‘Who is this?’

Brody calmly states, ‘Dead Mom.  That’s Anakin’s dead mom.’   And back off to playing he goes. 

Last week we found a card in Maura’s cubby at Pre-school.  The front of the card (not shown) has handwritten, ‘To My Friend’.  Inside, as you see below, was a nice depiction of a fairy tale along with an apology.

Very odd and Maura seemed reluctant to really discuss the matter.

This weekend, she asked Brody to help her write a note to Hannah.  Turns out they ‘broke up’ (stopped being friends lest ye think our democratic ways got our kid ‘the gay’) as shown by the cracked heart she had Brody draw.  Fortunately, they were able to reconcile though the power of Crayola™.

Today, I met Hannah and she insisted that Mo sit with her during their morning coffee. 

 

I snapped the below pic while at the Renaissance Festival.  I noted the dancers at the table and thought immediately that their brightly colored skirts would really ‘pop’ in a picture, so I quickly snapped one.

Dayna immediately pointed out that to others it may seem a little ‘pervy’, especially as they weren’t posing per se.  (I try to class up all my posts with a little bit o’ latin).

Hadn’t really thought about that – the pic is nice, the skirts do ‘pop’ AND the young lady facing the camera…you know the one attacking the her food like a pit bull going after a senior citizen (seriously people…they are a white trash breed for men who haven’t grown up, who watch too much Ultimate Fighting League and giggle every time they say ‘Bush’ beer) ensures that no money will be made selling the photo on-line.

http://www.livingstondaily.com/apps/pbcs.dll/article?AID=/20070914/NEWS01/709140318/1002/&GID=S8L8N66aimIMQTGkB65Acvo0E9Xvg2qPmfJh0EujNiU%3D 

 

 

You know you’re growing old when you can’t quite enjoy all the features of your cell phone and quart size Ziploc baggies are the coolest thing on the planet for organizing your stuff!

 http://www.hypercomics.com/comicbooks/grand_galactic/mycomicbook_13

 

Brody battling a Doc Ock toy in the garage!  (To view text better, click the + sign and then drag the picture around ala google maps)

Are you ready for some posts about music?  I hope so, ‘cause if you ain’t, you’ll be disappointed.  Following are several kid anecdotes following an unintended theme.

To start the festivities, a guitar lesson, lesson.

Jim, our instructor, the trainer to our Wyld Stallyns if you will, indicated that there would be no lesson next week.  Brody, in his ever sensitive way asked ‘Why not?’

Jim said that a friend of his had studio time and that he was asked to play guitar as they made a record.

Brody then asked what a ‘record’ was! 

Brody told us that after he gets better at the guitar he next needs to learn the piano. 

We asked ‘why’?

His reply:  ‘Because sometimes on your cd, you play sad songs and sad songs always have pianos; guitars are for happy songs.’ 

This past weekend, Dayna and I worked on the kid’s holiday list.  I like to chip away at over the next several months, so we wanted to get it together. 

For Brody, no surprise…’Star Wars’: he’s like the dog in the commercial.  ‘Bacon! Bacon-bacon-bacon. BACON!’

Just replace ‘Bacon’ with ‘Star Wars.’

He also seems to have some sort of Jedi radar.  While at the Renaissance Festival while we watched a family of Irish Performers fiddle and dance, one did the Imperial March on their accordion. 

Most impressive, while at the music shop for guitar lessons, Brody filled through the sheet music.  What did he find you ask?

‘Star Wars! Star wars-star wars-star wars.  STAR WARS!

Yes, he found several pieces of Stars Wars music…for Flute.  Which means it’s for Mom!  I gotta believe nothing will scare the padme out of your tatooine like the Imperial March (Vader’s theme song) like hearing it on the flute! 

Maura has expressed an interest in  drums, keyboards and vocals.  She is most fond of the Cheetah Girls or Bratz keyboards that come with a microphone.  She also enjoys trying to sing on Singstar on our PS2.  When she does sing, she is a storyteller in the vein of Bob Dylan, Tom Petty and Weird Al.  She basically just looks around the room and sings about what is going on.  So like a rapper who can make an album out of twelve songs about how great they rap; she can make an afternoon out of singing about singing. 

 

Move over Phish!  Grateful Dead: better consider yourself luck that you’re already dead.   There’s a new ‘jam band’ on the scene and they’re coming to a bedroom near you!

As Brody prepared to practice tonight, Maura asked if she could join us on drums.  Surprisingly, Brody was excited about it.  As I changed (I was in work clothes, I needed a sequined jump suit) they set up Maura’s drum kit. 

An empty Tupperware served as the floor tom, a smaller one as the tom-tom, an infant tambourine as the cymbals, a small plastic lid as the snare and a large Lego™ container as the bass drum with a pretend foot beater. 

Yes it was cute, it was creative but I was most impressed with the accuracy!  It’s not as if we have drum kits lying around!   On top of that, they set this up on Brody’s bed and I was instructed that we would be on the floor because the drummers are always in the back, and always ‘up high.’ 

That’s right!  That is how it is.

So we jammed out to well known oldies like 12 Bar Rock, Exercise 19 and Amazing Grace. 

Ever have one of those commutes where you’re either certain you’re on Candid Camera and/or are driven to sympathize with Michael Douglas in ‘Falling Down’?

On the way home, on the M-59, every time I went a mile I saw police and rescue gumballs lighting up the area and multiple lanes closed; of course resulting in a back up.  Four!  All total there were four.  What are the odds?

To make matters worse (For me.  I don’t really care about the folks who were in the accidents and who really had it worse…really, it’s MY blog, it’s ALL about ME!) I was behind the smelliest truck ever!  No matter how hard I tried, no matter how aggressive, no matter how many times I went to my automotive happy place and repeated my mantra, ‘drive it like you stole it’, I could not pass this truck.  I don’t know what it ran on, but it smelled just like an old bbq with charcoal briquettes simmering underneath a can of lighter fluid!   I was minutes from shoving the old skittles lying in the ash tray into my nose so the fumes would be at least a tad fruity!

Somehow, the truck finally disappeared.  I don’t know if Al Gore himself swung down in his private, French fry grease powered jet and blew the livin’ heck out of it or if it returned to the brimstone of hell from whence it came, but I was glad as I was certain I could feel tumors growing in my lungs with every passing mile.     

 

 

Maura loves dresses and Grandma Linda does oblige with the fru-fru whenever she can.  Here is a pic of her in an adorable sailor dress.

The kids and I were out playing yesterday, and many neighbor kids, also out playing, got into the act.  One young lady a couple doors down, who likes Brody, asked if she could ride his scooter.

I told her that IF Brody was done with it (as he was using it), I’m sure he’d share.  She then runs away.

Brody walks up the driveway and says ‘What did you do ‘that’ for?!’  Seems she ran up to him and told him that I had said he HAD to give it to her now.

When I clarified he grabbed my camera and said he had to get evidence that she lied and was using the scooter under false pretenses.

I don’t know if he intended to send these to Geoff Fieger, but apparently it was far more difficult to get the shot than one might think, though I think you can see where she tried to run him down! 

School (or as Dayna likes to call it, ‘Work’) has started and you know what that means!

The annual Witches Hat Run.  Yes, as a public school they do have an entire event celebrating witchcraft, sorcery, paganism, devil worship and of course, the deadly art of ‘running!’ (bum-bum-BUM!)

We have gone several years and inevitably Brody ends up in the wrong race (usually the one for kids older than he).  This year, Dayna ensured we arrived early and everyone was in the correct event.

Mad Eye Maura was in the ½ mile (or ‘two times around the track’ for you metric folk)

Bouncing Brody was in the 1 mile

Both kids did great, had team members accompany them and had a blast.