Jamie? Adam?

Last night I pulled into the driveway at Handsome's house with a backseat full, and I mean full, of groceries. There was stuff piled in on top of other stuff until I couldn't see out the rear window. Handsome and I got out of the Jeep and started to load ourselves up for the first of many trips inside with the groceries. As I leaned into the backseat to pull out yet another bag, I saw from the corner of my eye a two-liter bottle of Diet Pepsi slip from the plastic 4-pack holder and slide out the door. I took a breath to shout to Handsome to try to head the bottle off before it rolled down the driveway (which is a pretty steep little hill) and into the busy street beyond, but I never got the chance.
There was a crack as the plastic bottle hit the tarmac, and then a sudden loud Ffssshhhhssssss sound. Fizzing Diet Pepsi sprayed my legs, Handsome's legs, the Jeep, the driveway, and all the way into the garage through the open door. I leapt back, abandoning the bag I was trying to retrieve, and looked at Handsome in surprise. I looked around the driveway, but saw no sign of the bottle. There was Pepsi everywhere, but no bottle.
"Where the hell did it go?"
"Over there," Handsome laughed, pointing down the driveway.
I looked in the direction he was pointing and saw a trail of Diet Pepsi. It led away from us and down the driveway, all the way across the street (which has a breakdown lane on our side, so technically it was across three lanes) to the bottle, which was on the sidewalk over there, easily 50 feet away.
I looked at Handsome, who was a bit drippy with sprayed soda.
"How did it get over there?"
"It just ... went!"
Apparently the short fall from the floor of the Jeep behind the backseat was enough to shock all of the carbonation out of the soda at once. I found the cap beneath the Jeep, and it wasn't even cracked, it had been forced off due to the extreme pressure. The pressure had turned our bottle into a runaway rocket that had jetted across the street. Luckily there had been a break in traffic, or it could have been much worse.

Where the hell are the Mythbusters team when you need them to explain something?

Talk to you later!

Nametag

This morning, Handsome found some 'tattoo tape' in a bag in my room, something he must have left behind on a previous visit. It's basically a long thin strip of temporary tattoo that looks like a long vine with small flowers curling off it, all in black. You can tear off strips and apply them to yourself anywhere you like.
I was working here at my computer and I heard some odd noises. I turned to  find Handsome standing behind me, the front of his shirt pulled up and tucked beneath his chin. He was tearing off short strips of tattoo and sticking them to his exposed chest and stomach in an odd pattern.

"What are you... are you writing something on yourself?"
"Yup."
"Well, what are you writing?"
"Hello, my name is Handsome," he said.

I buried my face in my hands, remembering a time when the worst I had to worry about him doing was filling his pants when there was nowhere convenient to change him.

Wrestling starts tomorrow.
This should be ... interesting.

Bend Your Knees

Sometimes, I know I have mentioned it before, Handsome and I go to the local Roller Rink and skate for the afternoon. We started a few years ago, and while he was learning to skate for the first time I was trying to re-learn what I had forgotten more than 20 years before. I did pretty well, too, and I've had one fall in the 3-4 years we have been going there. hat wasn't really much of a fall, either. It happened right after we started going there, and I was skating behind little Handsome trying to act as a living safety net. The little guy went down, and I went down while trying to catch him. I wound up catching myself on my palms and feet, trying not to crush him.

That was barely a fall. 

So today, as I was skating around, I was offering advice to some of the younger kids out there. 

"Bend your knees," I would say as I swept past some poor kid who was stiff-legged and trying desperately to keep his balance through arm waving. "Stay lower!"

I told several kids through the course of the afternoon. "Bend your knees! Bend your knees!"

Well, I bent my knees. And my back, my neck, my right arm and my left rear cheek. And some ribs, in there somewhere, it feels like. I finally fell down, and when I did, it was huge! I started out moving fast, but then I rolled. I sprawled. I slid. It didn't hurt that much when it happened, but there was plenty of time for people to notice me falling, and then time for people to see me landing, and the look on people's faces as they watched me skid to a stop was Holy @#$%! I think he's dead!
I popped right back up.
"Oh my God, are you ok?"
"Oh, sure, I'm fine. You just have to stay loose."
Luckily it was time for Handsome and me to leave, because I was talking out my bruised and painful butt. I walked out the door, and then limped the rest of the way to the Jeep.

I am going to be so sore tomorrow!

Talk to you later! (If I can get out of bed, that is...)

By the Job

I may have mentioned somewhere along the line that Handsome has decided he needs to make some money.

Does he want chores?

No.

Does he want an allowance? 

No.

He wants day work. He wants to come to us with little jobs that he feels he can do, and make a bid on it.

My boy, the Independent Contractor.

So last weekend I went to their house and was going to try to take care of the yard a bit. I grabbed the rake, and set to work on the leaves. Not two minutes later I heard a voice behind me. It was Handsome, and he was looking at me with his huge blue eyes and doing his Oliver Twist voice (he's never seen the movie, but it's the pitiful voice he uses to beg for something, and whenever he uses it all I seem to hear is 'please, sir, may I have some more?).

"Dad? Can you stop doing the leaves, please?"

"What?" I said. "Why?"

"Mom's paying me $10 to get up all the leaves."

Well, I went in to ask about that. It seems it's true, his mom is paying him $10 to get up all the leaves.

"Well, when's he going to start?"

"He started yesterday," she answered. "He says he has a three-stage plan."

A three-stage plan? For the leaves? That sounded complex, and well thought-out, quite surprising from my nine-year-old. When I heard that, though,  I had but one thought:

Scam.

"Did he get the money up front?" I was smiling, but curious.

"No, I told him he had to do the work first, then he gets the cash."

So, he's still an inexperienced con man, I thought. Good.

So that afternoon I showed him where the leaf-blower is kept, and what extension cord to use, and where to dump all the leaves this year ( tend to stagger where I put them in the woods out back. I don't want to build up the forest floor too much in one spot.) and let him have at it. 

Eventually he asked for a little help moving a pile he had gotten together, so I helped  him shift it. Then I needed to make an adjustment to the leaf blower, and I used it a bit to test it and make sure I had it the way I wanted it. after I had been blowing the leaved for a while, Handsome asked me how long I was going to be doing that.

"Just long enough to get me a discount," I said.

"What!"

So I stopped. That was almost a week ago. The yard is still pretty full of leaves.

Tomorrow he has a play-date. While they are in the house yelling and playing the wii, I'm going outside to rake up some leaves.

Hell, I can always use ten bucks!

Talk to you later!

Something to be Thankful For

Happy Thanksgiving!

Dinner was at my in-laws' house, and everything was quite good. Swollen bellies and drooping eyelids abounded. When it was all over, and the table had been cleared, Handsome and I retired to the back yard with gloves and ball for a little game of catch.
"Be careful," we were warned. "Don't let the ball go over that fence behind Handsome. That's the KS's yard over there, and they're the mean, Grinchy people in the neighborhood! If the ball goes over there there could be trouble."
"We'll be careful," we promised, and the catching commenced.
Back and forth the ball flew, sometimes whacking into the fence, but more often than not being caught.
Then I chanced to throw a nice fast one, right about chest high on Handsome, glove side. He snapped his glove up, but too quickly; he hadn't opened it wide yet. Rather than catching the speeding ball in the pocket of the glove, he back-handed it from below. Slapped higher, the ball hopped up about two-and-a-half more feet.
-Just high enough to clear the fence into KS territory.
I opened my mouth to say "Oh, no!", but before I got the chance Handsome was already shouting.
"Good one, Dad! Way to go!"
"What?" I said, incredulous. I hadn't thrown the ball over the fence, he had hit it -
"Way to go, Dad!" he shouted again, shooting a glance at his grandparent's house.
That's when I got it.
This day, people all over the world find things to be thankful for.
My boy was just thankful I was there to take the blame.

Happy Thanksgiving!

Talk to you later!

Laryngitis

If you've never had laryngitis, well good for you. I've lost my voice before, and each time is a trip! So, for those of you who have never lost your voice entirely, here's a few things you've missed out on.

• The strangest cough you're ever heard. It sounds a little bit like a cat hacking up a hairball, bit it's nowhere near as productive. Lots of air comes out, not much sound, and it's about as satisfying as scooping up what looks to be a delicious piece of fruit or candy, only to find it's made of wax. Lots of wind up and anticipation, matched by lots of disappointment.
• Do not try, as I did, to just cough again and again, hoping for a different result. All you get is a sore throat, and Satisfaction seems to be off enjoying somewhere sunny.
  
• Friends and co-workers who think it is the height of humor to wait until you are in the middle of saying something, then lean right into your face and yell "What!?" at the top of their lungs.
• Do not try, as I did, to ask them not to do that. All that happens is you get a second face full of "What!?"
  
• Friends and co-workers who do not find it funny at all that you have lost your voice, and show that concern by asking what happened.
• Here's how it goes:
• She : "Oh my God, have you lost your voice?"
• Me : Nod.
• She : "That's terrible! How did it happen?"
• Me : Stands there staring at her, quietly wondering just how the Hell she expects me to answer that?
  
• Trying to explain something to someone, where there is no give-and-take in the conversation but instead a long, whispered monologue by you, actually becoming physically debilitating.
• In trying to be heard by the party you are explaining to, you tend to try to stage-whisper, in other words you are whispering as loud as you can. This, apparently, takes quite a bit more air, thus quite a bit more breath, than does normal speech.
  If you keep blowing out, and blowing out, constantly like that without taking some sort of break, you can make yourself a little dizzy, and you will have to have a seat. If you are already seated you can unknowingly make yourself quite dizzy indeed.
  If this happens, do not, as I did, attempt to get up. The results can be disastrous for you, though it appears they are amazingly funny to one's son.

There's probably more, but I may have forgotten it due to lack of oxygen when I almost passed out explaining Handsome's new wrestling program to him.

Talk to you later, and have a Happy Thanksgiving!

The Great Communicator

Last night there was a parent's meeting about the wrestling program Handsome is interested in joining. I got out of work and tore to the house to take a quick shower and see him before I went to the meeting for 7:00.
"I'm just here for a quick bite and a shower and I'm going to head out," I whispered to him. I still have laryngitis (See yesterday's post), so a whisper is pretty much all I can manage.

"Are you going to come back?" he whispered in return.

"Wait a minute," I whispered. "I have to whisper. My voice is gone. You don't have to whisper, you can talk!" (the exclamation point does not denote volume, merely emphatic whispering)

"Sorry," he said, with more or less normal volume. "I can't seem to help it. If someone whispers to me I have to whisper back!"

So we had our strange conversation, me whispering and him whispering about half the time. I ate, took a shower, and went to the meeting. After the meeting I simply went home rather than going back to Handsome's. As I explained in our strange conversation, I was tired and did not feel well, and I couldn't very well read him a story if I couldn't talk.

When I got home, I decided to call him up and tell him goodnight, and that I had a lot of information about wrestling for him. Wife put him on the phone, and I heard a nice, clear "Hello?"

"Hi Handsome," I whispered as clearly as I could. "I just wanted to call and say goodnight. I have a whole lot to tell you and Mommy about the wrestling program, but I think I'll wait until I'm there tomorrow to tell you since I think it's easier to understand me face-to-face."

There was a long pause, and then he whispered "What?"

I did not know this, but apparently when I laugh hysterically in the middle of a bout of laryngitis I sound very much like Ernie from Sesame Street.

Now I know.

Talk to you later! (Maybe... or maybe I'll just whisper to you...)