Happy Holidays, Internets!

So we sort of neglected to do holidays cards this year. Maybe we were intimidated at the prospect of trying to top the picture we used on last year's cards. Or maybe we're just lazy.

Anyway, season's greetings y'all. Hope they treat you right.

Rainy Day Donuts

I own an umbrella now, but I didn’t when I woke up last Saturday. I swear we used to own umbrellas. Two beat-up little fold-up numbers, black, full of holes, but still more protection than any halo could ever afford. We spent the summer forgetting we ever needed them, but now that the rain has found its way back, we realized that our old umbrellas are nowhere to be found. Perhaps they felt unappreciated. Maybe they found each other in the dark depths of our closet, fell in love, and moved somewhere where they could be of use. Maybe we’ll get a postcard from Seattle.

The Ash and I were in Fredericksburg last weekend on something of an all-day date/one day vacation while the boys stayed with my Mom. It was raining and we were umbrellaless. It’s true, there’s a certain romance to being a couple in the rain, darting hand in hand from awning to awning, giggling at each other’s soggy dog impersonation. But after a while it gets old and you ask a kindly shopkeeper to point out the nearest umbrella vendor. We bought the last two umbrellas that this little store had on the rack. They were the long kind that The Penguin was so fond of with a J-hook handle for catching wayward geese and a point at the end for pressing elevator buttons from a whole three feet away.

My umbrella was in my car this morning when I awoke to the sound of rain. With both boys ready and myself as ready as I’d ever be, I ran out to get it, then ran back to the house, then walked the two of them out to the car. It was Friday morning, so we had to get going, for Friday is Donut Day. Donut Day is something of a tradition I’ve established with the little guys ever since Pablito’s, the little family-owned bakery up the road, opened their doors. The people there know us, and they know to expect us every Friday morning. Donut Day gets Henry to bed on Thursday nights and wakes him on Friday mornings. Donut Day does not get put on hold just because of a little rain.

I managed to get both boys strapped in while holding the umbrella mostly over my head. Now that I type this, I realize I could have done the actual strapping part from inside the car, but obvious solutions, much like witty retorts, have a way of escaping me when they’re really needed. We pulled into the parking lot of the strip center where Pablito’s is located and they were….closed? Their doors were open, but it looked like a bunch of their furniture was outside, their Open sign was turned off, and the place was full of carpenters. I have no idea what was going on, but they didn’t seem to be open for business. I sincerely hope that’s temporary because there’s nothing quite like the neighborhood bakery.    

Pablito’s aside, there was still the question of Donut Day. Pablito’s may have inspired Donut Day in the first place, but Donut Day is bigger than that now. Donut Day lives on with or without Pablito’s. And besides, the baby was crying. “I’m not crying,” Henry pointed out. Thanks buddy. Daddy needs the break.

A baker’s dozen or so minutes later, we were at another donut store. It was completely out of our way and not quite as good as Pablito’s, but they had donuts dammit. I was already late for work, so our donut consumption happened in the car rather than in the doughy oveny warmth of the donut shop. I dropped the boys off at daycare around the time I normally man my cube. Another Donut Day, successful in spite of the odds.

I would have gone with The Hospital Bombers myself

So I'm sorry to be posting one of those crappy youtube videos where it's just a single image all the way through, but I didn't get around to researching a better way to put a song in a post, but at least this way you get a look at the album cover, for what it's worth.

This is my current favorite song, and it has been stuck in my head for like three weeks now. Perhaps it's because I grew up in Texas, and thus can recognize Jeff and Cyrus so very well. They're good kids, just a little misunderstood, and probably smarter than you give them credit for.

Two boys with wills of their own

My memory must be shot. That's all I can figure. That might be an odd thing to say while in the midst of this little x365 project of mine which relies so very much on my memory, but here's the deal: it seems like every time my youngest does something new, I ask myself, "Did Henry do this when he was this age?" And most of the time, I simply can't remember. For example: now that Simon is crawling, he has demonstrated an intense attraction for all things dangerous. Place him on the floor equidistance from a teddy bear, a stack of hundred dollar bills, and the button to activate the doomsday device, which by the way is covered with lots of jagged metal edges that are in turn covered with germs, and he'll go for the button every time. I seem to maybe recall Henry being this way, but it may very well be one of those false memories that got intermingled amongst the real ones. Blame the government. All I know is that I can't leave Simon alone in my beartrap closet for a second.

Sunday, I let The Ash win that round of The Great Who Gets To Sleep In This Beautiful Weekend Morning? Debate, which isn't really all that noble of me since she lets me win it all the time, but I will accept your praise anyway. I know that doesn't sound like such a fantastic way to start the day, but a few hours of playing with the boys first thing in the AM put me in a pretty splendid mood. Henry has turned into a not yet three year old teenager as of late, and while such a creature may be preferable to a zombie or a werewolf or a recently laid-off badger, it is not necessarily pleasant to have around all the time. Many sentences out of his mouth end with "RIGHT NOW!" I swear he's almost mastered the Sneer Of Disgust With Absolutely Everything, Especially You Old Man. So it was just nice to have some straight-up fun with him and his baby bro.

In the afternoon, our house was host to a gaggle of gardening moms who came over to talk about gardening and momming. One lady brought over her son, who was just a little older than Henry. She promptly entrusted him to my care without so much as a background check or a thank you. But hey, it's cool I watched the both of them play while Simon looked on, eagerly wishing to get in on the action. And may I offer an observation? Other people's kids are just weird. They do weird stuff. They say freakish things. Don't misunderstand, I don't mean to say that my own children represent the baseline for normality. Nothing could be further from the truth. When I say "other people's…", I mean it as the kind of phrase any parent could use. Your kids are weird to me. My kids are aliens to you. It doesn't mean they're not totally awesome.

Boyos

Littlest dude is just under a month and 11.5 pounds. The way he's gaining the poundage, he'll be asking to borrow my clothes in a couple of weeks.

This morning I woke up, as I have many recent mornings, to the sound of Henry calling to me over the baby monitor. I went into his room, picked him up, along with his favorite blanket and his stuffed animals, and brought him back into our bed to snooze off the rest of the morning. It used to be only one stuffed animal, a nice little Elmo doll that, God bless it, doesn't sing or dance or say a single solitary thing. Sidenote: It's shocking how hard it is to find a quiet Elmo, they all seem to have shit to say. As I was saying, Elmo now has a friend, a bear, who is also as silent as a made man under interrogation. Who knows how many of Henry's stuffed little friends I'll have to carry with me in another month. This is developing into something of a ritual, one which I won't complain about too much since it typically affords about another hour in the sack.

The Ash drove me to work this morning so that she could have the car for the day. Something about going places, doing things, running things over, or some such. It is astounding how long it takes to get two little people ready to go anywhere, even if one of them is immobile. I can only imagine what it will be like when they can both run off and hide.

After work, the whole family arrived to rescue me. Driving along, Ash was telling me about her day, and she mentioned something about "the boys." I laughed and pointed out how our life was now such that we would be referring to "the boys" regularly in sentences. The boys this, the boys that, the boys, the boys, the boys. Little things are awesome sometimes.

We stopped by the store on the way home to pick up some stuff for dinner, Ash and Simon waited in the car while Henry and I went inside. We've been trying to do little things like that to reenforce Henry's big bro status and remind him of all the cool stuff he can do that the baby can't just yet. I'm getting the feeling that Henry's looking forward to the day that Simon gets his legs under him.

On the way home from the store, we passed by some kid who was running around with a toy lightsaber, which inspired the following bit of "Return of the Jedi" chit-chat.

HOLMES: Hey, that kid's practicing to be a Jedi.

HENRY: Jedi!

HOLMES (ala Jabba the Hutt): Ho ho ho. Jedi.

HENRY: Ho ho ho.

HOLMES (ala Bib Fortuna): Ay-wonna-wonga.

HENRY: Wonga-wonga!

HOLMES: Jabba-no-bodda.

HENRY: No BODDA!

Strong in the force is this one.

Lord of the Flies was no joke

It is a very chilling feeling to realize that the large group of children who were supposedly under your control and guidance have now turned their collective will against you.

I don't know what made me think of this. Perhaps it's the fact that I'll soon have not one but two boys calling me Dad. Daddy. Pops. Gimmesomeicecream. Whatever name suits at the time.

In the summers that I worked at Boy Scout camp, experiences like this were few and far between, but they did happen, and it always served to bolster my cynicism regarding humanity's penchant for mob rule. I'm a peaceful man, but goddammit, every time I think about some of this shit, I'm glad that every major city has a S.W.A.T. team.

Like this one time, I was leading a bunch of kids on a little hike we called The Death March. It was maybe five miles, so there was little chance of death, though some of the more rotund scoutmasters that came along for the hike sometimes made me worry that we'd have to deal with a heart attack in the middle of the Texas hill country. But this one time, as we were walking down a rather narrow trail, I looked down a few steps in front of me and saw a snake crossing the path. I stopped the hike to let it cross the trail out of our way, but as soon as the kid behind me laid eyes on our reptile friend, the battle cry went up: "Living thing! KILL IT!" The rocks flew like crazy, a fully-automatic murderous assault on this poor snake who just happened to be on the wrong trail at the wrong time. I managed, with my teenage voice, to bark out the order to cease fire in time to prevent any injuries, but I'd be lying if I said I wasn't ready to just leave all those little bastards out in the woods to fend for themselves.

And then there was this other time that I was trying like hell to get this one troop to pack up their shit and get out of camp. As employees, we basically had off from Saturday after the last troop left until Sunday when the next week's troops arrived, so kicking people out on Saturdays was a highly motivated affair. Everything was going smoothly with these guys, everything that is, until the scoutmaster's son's backpack inexplicably fell open and spilled a hefty pile of porno mags onto the ground for all to see. And for some reason, the sight of those provocatively airbrushed covers lying there in the dirt caused all hell to break loose. Suddenly the scoutmaster and his son are engaged in a heated argument, other kids start fighting, another adult is yelling at some other kids, and all I can see is the minutes of my free time slipping through the hourglass. I think even then I knew that asshole was only pissed at his son because those were his mags from his private stash.

Oh and then there was the time that the chaplain came out to tell the kids some ghost stories. See, every week, we took the kids who were signed up for the wilderness survival class out to this spot in the woods to let them build their own little lean-to survival shelters and sleep in them overnight. We'd build a fire and sit around and shoot the shit until it was time for the kids to hit the sack, er, ground. And one week, our chaplain volunteered to come along to help. And gathered round the fire that night, he asked if the kids would like to hear a ghost story. Sure chappy, tell your little story. Turns out this guy had the ghost story telling skills of a hook-handed Irish drunk...which, truth be told, he was only one chainsaw accident away from being. A properly told ghost story will leave you trembling in your trousers. It's an art, I tell you. This guy scared those kids so bad that we thought they would never go to sleep. And after a while, their fear somehow morphed into some kind of strange little boy hostility, and in the middle of the pitch-black night they started a rock war! Which is exactly what it sounds like: a war fought with rocks. What is it with little boys and rock throwing? I did it too and I can't say why. Readily available ammo, I guess. It lasted all of maybe five or ten seconds before we re-instituted peace, and nobody got hurt, but those were some scary seconds.

Good times. I'm setting the conch down now.