Big Daddy Paul

Our car window. Our Honda Accord is almost ten years old, and it is starting to show signs of wear, most notably the fact that the driver’s side window is broken. Whenever I need to roll down the window and talk to someone on the street, I instinctively push the button to make the window go down before realizing that I now drive a hooptie and am one step away from having a car whose door handle is an old piece of rope. If you think it easy communicating with a parking lot attendant through a tiny crack in an open door it’s not. It’s embarrassing, and makes me mad. Sure, I could spend the small fortune it would take to fix the stupid thing, but if I did, the terrorists would win. Surely.

Pretend baseball. Everyone’s kid does something all the time that at first is kinda cute, but then starts to annoy you to the point where you wish you never stopped contracepting. For us, that is now pretend baseball. About thirty times a day, Malcolm asks who we are rooting for, and then names two teams (the most popular being the Floridelphia Marlins and the Cinfernatti Reds.) He then proceeds to run around the house pretending he is playing and then invariably tells you that the team you were “rooting” for lost by some large margin (last night the Giants lost to the Dodgers 130 to 0 and I am still pissed about it.) Eventually, he suckers you into playing catch and then actually playing the game itself, where you have to be the catcher, the umpire, and all of the other team. About the time you realize you are doing most of the work, you tell Malcolm you don’t want to play anymore, which leads him to start whining and forces you to look into a full time nanny.

The stuff in our house. Our house is in a state of disarray which leads guests to the conclusion that we are about to be featured on an episode of Cops. There are piles of shit everywhere and I fear there may be small rodents lurking about in them. I would get rid of the piles except for the fact that I have no idea where to put anything. So, most of the stuff in our house eventually makes its way to our office, which has the same role as the dead pile on a farm. Every year or so, I clean the office and promise that it will never get that bad, making Amy roll her eyes before turning her head at the rustling from the pile of papers in the corner. Most of the time, she utters, “Damn Varmints!”, and I am not sure if she is referring to the rodents or me.

I can't even see my feet anymore!

My boobs. I have the boobs of a perky high school freshman and if I don’t make any changes soon, I will one day be the prom queen. (I should also be quite upset at my muffin top of a belly that allows entire knit sweaters to lurk in my belly button instead of mere clumps of lint, but I can’t get past looking at my rack in the mirror. Yowza!) There are some people who “work out” by going to a place called a “gym,” but those are the kind of people who having working car windows, love playing with their kid, and don’t live in mortal fear of the accumulated stuff in their house. I am not that kind of person, but one day I hope to be. Until then, when you see me constantly moving so that you never get a profile shot of  my “Heavage,” you’ll know why.

What’s annoying you?

Actually, having read that I change my mind. There is an “I” in Yosemite. There is also a “me,” (spelled backwards) which means that you won’t be hearing about all the natural beauty of Yosemite on our recent trip there. No, you’re going to hear all about me and the wonderful choices I make in life.

The first wonderful choice I made was to skip buying gas outside the park. I am not a brave man, and can easily see myself wetting my pants in the face of real danger, but for some reason, I love to test the limits of a tank of gas. Besides my love of fried food, binge drinking and the occasional murder of a postal delivery worker, it is my only vice. It also explains why we have run out of gas as often as we do (no fewer than three times in the last two years!)  Our trip to Yosemite was no different, and although I had ample opportunities to stock up on gas prior to heading into the wilderness area, we found our arrival at our Yosemite cabin greeted by the “You’re out of gas” beep from the car and no way to make it to the nearest gas station. We called AAA, and had to pay nine dollars a gallon to partially fill up the tank, but honestly, I haven’t learned my lesson. I will test the gas tank again someday…

The next wonderful choice I made was to not have an 18 month-old baby. There were a number of toddlers with us at the cabin, and holy cannoli, they suck! People say that Malcolm was once that age and I have a number of pictures of Malcolm documenting it, but I must have blocked it all out of my memory. For good reason, too, as they are constantly stumbling around trying to either kill themselves by falling down stairs or eating something terribly dangerous. Of course, if you have the temerity to thwart their destructive plans, you are congratulated for your efforts by loud shrieks or even a spoon in the eye. I could have been more helpful to the toddler parents in attendance, but honestly I couldn’t think of a way to placate the little monsters. I don’t know how we survived toddlerhood, but I am glad we never, ever have to go back.

The last choice I made was, indeed, a good one. At the last minute, while packing the car, I thought, wouldn’t it be nice if we brought our bikes and went on a bike ride together? I did some quick research on the internet and found that biking in Yosemite is a easy/fun thing to do and, even though we hadn’t really ever travelled with our bikes before, we loaded them on the back of the car and set out.

Which is larger, El Capitan, or my backside. You be the judge!

When we go to the park, we took two rides and had a fantastic time. Malcolm isn’t riding a bike yet, but we attached a jump bike to the back of mine, and we rode around seeing the sights of Yosemite, getting to see places we never would have got to if we had to walk. The really good thing is that Malcolm totally enjoyed himself and even got the hang of working the pedals. I know that this was only one event, but we all liked it so much that I think we are going to be bike vacationers going forward. Of course that will require us finding a toddler free vacation spot and actually having enough gas to get there, but at least we have plans. Big ones.

I went biking again today. Between the holidays and all the rain in the past few weeks, I haven’t been able to head out for a while. Determined to not the mistakes I have made in the past, I set out for some fun in the sun. My plans were almost shanghaied when my bike had two flat tires and I couldn’t find the tire pump. I knew it was in the garage but our garage looks like the inside of my colon, except with more spiderwebs. After poking around for 45 minutes, I found the pump, pumped up the tires, and decided that cleaning our garage was way overdue. (I remain blissfully ignorant about the ramifications of my colon being in its current shape.)

I started in a bit of a deficit when I noticed that I had grabbed Amy’s biking gloves for my outing. Since they are only partially frilly, I didn’t care all that much. I did feel just a tad extra pretty knowing that I was wearing ladies accessories. When I finally got out there, I had a great time!

An otherwise nice day

My Ipod expertly selected my favorite songs  (which sadly include selections from Twisted Sister, 2 Live Crew, and Erasure) while I nimbly navigated between the hordes of walkers that were enjoying the nice morning. I got a great workout, and knew so because I, for some reason, feel like I need to spit when working hard, and I spit many times during the ride. I also didn’t have to get off the bike and walk up any hills, so the outing was almost a complete success.

Almost is a pretty big word though for me, and I had another one of my moments. Blazing away around a turn singing (out loud) Weird Al’s opus to Star Wars, I encountered two women walking in the path. I announced my intention to pass on the left, but for some reason one of the women hopped right in front of me. Being a bit rusty, I jammed on the front brake. This had the foreseeable consequence of causing me to do a reverse wheelie and ended up ejecting me over the handle bars. I landed with the soft thud a pork shoulder makes when thrown onto the scale at the butcher, but managed to avoid any serious injury. Anxious to prove that I wasn’t hurt, I hopped right back up, looking at my legs to see if there was any residual damage. At precisely this moment, I realized that my fly was down (as it oft is) and immediately took corrective action. I also noticed the numerous trails of spit that had been collecting on my shoulder. I looked at them, they looked at me, and one of them asked if I was alright. I quickly hopped back on my bike, apologized for some reason, and then sped off. I was a tad irked afterwards, but smiled when I considered the story the two women would be relating to their friends:

A chubby cross dresser came barreling around a corner singing about Queen Amidala, screamed, “ON YOUR LEFT!” and then jumped over his handlebars. Then, he stood up looking like a confused monkey, zipped his fly, wiped his mouth on his shirt, grunted, “I’m sorry” and sped away. It was honestly the first time it had ever happened to me.

I think I am going to choose a new path next time I ride. Or maybe I’ll just find something to do that is less embarrassing.

Don’t worry, there isn’t anything weird in this post, I just thought I would relate the somewhat comical night that Amy and I had the other night. One night last week, I got home late and found Amy asleep already. Our sheets evidently never made it out of the laundry that day, so Amy was sound asleep atop the comforter with the guest bedroom comforter on top acting as her blanket. Amy took the good spare, so I was left to fend for myself. I ended up using a thin, cheap blanket the quality of which you’d find in a crappy motel. It wasn’t much better than a beach towel, but it was late and I really wanted to go to sleep.

After crawling into bed, Amy said hello to me and then announced that her body was a rope and that she could feel the connections all up and down her body. ”Oh,” I said. “That’s nice,” not really knowing how to respond to such an announcement. This was not the first strange conversation Amy and I have had in the middle of the night, as Amy has bountiful history of sleep talking. Once, she screamed at the cat, “What do you think you are, some kinda chicken?” and after poking me in the ribs at 3am once and asking whether I was asleep, she smiled at me and just said, “Ha!”

While soaking up the connections in my wife that would lead her to believe that she was a rope, I noticed the smell of jasmine. Some might be comforted by such a smell, but to me it served as a reminder that I am a lazy homeowner. Over the summer, we left our bedroom windows open all the time. While open, our neighbor’s night blooming jasmine plant started growing towards our bedroom. When we finally tried closing the window, the plant got stuck. The plant is now trapped on the inside of the window, sealed between the window and the screen. It has become part of our bedroom. It wouldn’t be so bad, except that since the plant blooms at night when the weather is warm, it has mistaken our warm bedroom for a nice summer night and floods the room with its jasmine scent. Nice smell for some, but I can’t get it out of my head that we have plants overgrowing our room. I am also somewhat afraid that it is going to try and kill us while we sleep.

I was quickly snapped from killer vine fantasy by Amy starting up another conversation. “Nurse Nancy needs nets,” she exclaimed to my surprise. My mom, Nancy, is a nurse, and I found it odd that Amy would be alliterating about her in the middle of the night. I looked at her quizzically, and she continued. “Nurse Nancy needles noses. Naps. Necks. Nights.” I started giggling and Amy turned over and promptly returned to a peaceful slumber. I didn’t get much sleep that night, and it is not hard to see why. I was freezing, the room was overrun with potentially homicidal weeds, and I couldn’t figure out what the fuck my wife was dreaming about.

So, there you have it. Nothing weird about this post eh?