What is that?

As with most families, odd situations pop up in our house continually. People tend to believe that these things only happen to them, when in reality we all go through these experiences. At least I hope. Otherwise, our family is very odd.

The other day, I stepped in the shower and prior to turning on the water, I looked down to notice a brown smeary glob by my feet. Now, I didn’t have my contacts in at the time so my vision was blurry. I couldn’t make out what exactly I was looking at, so I stepped back out to retrieve my glasses.

No longer legally blind, I still saw just a smudged brown mess in our bathtub. The hairs on my neck stood up as I considered the possibilities of its origin. Without sounding too crass, the substance in question resembled what might be left behind from a bathing individual who had intestinal issues. With this thought, my own stomach churned a little bit.

The dark gooey matter didn’t rinse out when I turned on the shower. So, I opted to stand straddling it, careful to not step on it. I usually take long showers, but on this day I voluntarily sped up the process. I felt icky just sharing the same space with it. Had our tub been reduced to a poor man’s bidet? Our kids are past the potty training stage (ages, 4,6 and9) but the youngest child has had some incidents in the past that might suggest her possible guiltiness in this situation.(stories for another day)

I dressed and walked downstairs to the kitchen. My wife was busy cleaning up after breakfast. Before I had the chance to mention to her about the disturbing circumstances that I just witnessed, she provided some information.

“By the way, that is a chocolate chip in the bathtub,” she interjected matter-of-factly.

Momentarily, my mind eased a bit. She chuckled at my obvious expression of relief. With this revelation, I no longer needed to locate rubber gloves, ammonia, and bleach. However, her news also raised another question.

“Sooo, why is there a chocolate chip in our bathtub? That’s not exactly normal,” I contended.

Sadly, at that time she didn’t have an answer for that one.

The word on the street right now is that one of the kids had been eating a cup of chocolate chips as a snack. One fell on the ground and rather than throwing it away, perhaps into something called a "trash can", they chose to place it in the bathtub instead. Makes perfect sense, eh? Weird.

My wife just shrugged and continued her kitchen cleaning. I too shook my head and went on about my day. In this house, you kind of just learn to roll with things. Personally, I’ve also adopted a motto to live by in situations such as this.

WHEN IN DOUBT, DON’T TOUCH IT

Lydia

El Stupido

My kids ask many questions. Many, many questions. Unfortunately for me, these inquiries just sometimes serve as constant reminders of just how stupid I am. So, on occasion when one of my children asks a question that I do not know the correct answer to, I do the best that I can.

I lie.

To them I then sound smart and they leave the conversation satisfied. It's just good parenting. It's what we call in the parenting biz, "a win/win situation".

Anyhow, yesterday during a casual dialogue, my little girl asked me if I knew what "El Nino" was. I said, "Well heck yes I do."

Now, El Nino has been a household term for approximately 15 years now it seems. I probably should actually know what it is. I kind of do, but to explain it to somebody is another thing. So, I proceeded to inform her of the following...

"El Nino has to do with weather - mostly rain, the temperature of the ocean, climate changes and patterns, Mexico, and the number 9. It's very complicated, dear," I told her.

She looked noticeably confused. So was I. She didn't respond for a moment but I could see her mind working overtime. I thought for a second that I might actually get away with the load of nonsense I just fed her, but then she responded.

"The number 9? What? I don't understand, dad."

"Oh sure, 'El Nino' is Spanish for 'the nine'," was my response. I would have been okay had I not added the whole "number 9" part. Idiot.

Still obviously confused, she said, "But Dad, I thought the number nine in Spanish was 'nueve'?".

"Honey, go to your room. I think about nueve minutes should be sufficient."

Of course, I didn't actually send her to her room. I think making her head spin with serious concerns about her father's mental capacity was punishment enough.

She'll think twice before she poses a question to me again anytime soon.

Stay-At-Home Dad's observation #13

Here's a laundry tip in case you weren't already aware of it.

If one load of laundry takes approximately 3 hrs to dry, and it doesn't include a large amount of towels, check the lint trap.

The specimen shown in this picture is real. It also is now serving as a comforter on our bed.

Yikes.

Road Rage

On occasion I screw up as a parent. No, no, it's true. I have days when I'm less than perfect. As I mentioned in the previous post, we went to the zoo on Friday. On the way home, we ran into some heavy traffic which spurred my latest poor display of behavior.

Traffic had basically came to a very slow methodical pace. We were in the middle lane, keeping a car's length behind the person in front of us. To our right was a semi truck. I looked in the rear view mirror to see our children all asleep. I was fighting the notion to do the same given that my wife and I were both exhausted from our excursion.

As I looked out towards the semi, I noticed it was getting closer. I jerked to attention because I thought I had drifted toward it. I then figured out that I was not moving toward it, rather the truck had decided to change to our lane. The problem with this was that the enormous vehicle was going to run right into us.

We were forced into the left lane, and fortunately, the driver in that lane noticed the situation and made a complete stop allowing us room to transition over. I was furious. We were very close to being pinned under the trailer of the semi. What an idiot. The next chance I got I decided to share my criticism of the semi driver's abilities.

The passenger side window was down so I leaned over my wife's lap and yelled up to the rather burly man behind the wheel. I can't remember exactly what I said, but it felt good to say it. He in return shouted back at me, but the truck's loud engine drowned out his voice.

I like to think that he simply stated, "My apologies, good sir. You have every right to be upset with me. I do not know what I was thinking to force my way into your lane. You are an awesome driver and I am not. By the way, your minivan is sweet." However, by the accompanying gestures he was making, those words were nothing like what he said in reality.

The traffic tempo picked up and soon we were traveling at a normal speed. I was still fuming a little bit about our near death experience when I heard a tiny voice pipe up in the back and ask, "Daddy, why did you yell at that man in the truck?"

Crap.

My wife glanced at me with an amused look on her face. "Well, Daddy, why did you?" she said tauntingly.

Double crap.

"Well, dear," I said thoughtfully. "It's because that man driving the truck did something very dangerous that almost hurt us. I just let him know that I was not happy about it."

Silence.

I could see in the rear view mirror that she was really thinking hard about everything. I began to feel guilty. To be honest, not so much that I yelled at the idiot in the truck, but rather that my little girl witnessed it. Man, I really thought she was asleep.

I can sense when she is uncomfortable with certain things, and this was one of those moments I feared. I think my sudden burst of anger kind of freaked her out actually. She was entitled to a further explanation. Some sort of life lesson could be made out of this experience I thought. She needs to know that Daddy's behavior is not how you interact with other people. So I contemplated what I was going to say, hoping for wisdom in the situation. And then it came to me.

"Who wants ice cream?" I shouted.

Cheers erupted from the back of the van.

Problem solved. She never said another word about the idiot in the truck.

The zoo

Every once in awhile, my wife and I have a day when we feel like we are fantastic parents. Not often, but occasionally this is the case. Friday we had that satisfaction - we took our kids to the zoo.

The children thoroughly enjoyed the 6 hours we spent there. It was fun, but after hour #4, the magic starts to wear off and I start to lose interest. My ADD starts to kick in and I begin pondering such things a "I wonder what that animal would taste like grilled?" Mmmm....meat.

There were only a few animals that we didn't see. We hit all the major ones though. i.e. polar bears, elephants, tigers, lions, gorillas etc. There were a few highlights to the day of course. One of which, was that our youngest daughter voluntarily held a boa constrictor. A zoo employee was holding the snake, allowing people the opportunity to hold and pet it.(At least, I hope he was a zoo employee. Now that I think about it, I did think it was odd he was stationed in the parking lot sitting in the back of his van that had a Wizard mural painted on the side of it. It seemed unprofessional of him to not wear a shirt as well. hmmm...)

She hopped right up to him and allowed the man to put the snake on her lap. My wife and I both looked at each other in amazement. She's so unpredictable. I was very proud of her bravery. I, on the other hand, would not do that. You see, I hate snakes, they scare the bicripson out of me. The zoo employee informed us that the snake was harmless to humans, and assured us that most snakes do not pose a danger to humans. Whatever, man. If I see a snake around my house, I will scream like a little girl and if I have a shovel, I will chop its head off. He said that people kill snakes out of ignorance. If so, consider me an idiot. Ick.

The other highlight of the day occurred at the weasel display. My wife said to me, "Have you seen what's going on in there?" as she pointed to the animals behind the glass. I looked up to see 2 creatures, ummm, "wrestling" with each other. The children apparently accepted the explanation that the weasels were "wrestling" as they eventually moved on to the next exhibit. That was a lot of nature happening in there. It was funny watching people's reaction to the "wrestling match". Adults would stroll by, trying to figure out exactly was going on with the tangled pulsating clump of grey fur, and once the realty of the situation hit them, their eyes would widen and uneasy laughter soon followed. Kids were pointing with quizzical looks. Whispers and giggles filled the room. Parents hurriedly ushered their children past the amorous activities. The scene would've made a great video for Captain and Tennille's "Muskrat Love".

6 hours at the zoo is plenty. Some might even say 3 hours too long. Overall, the kids loved it and my wife and I enjoyed ourselves too. We felt like we had successfully performed our parental duties that day. Lord knows there are many days when we fail miserably.

At the end of the day, we recapped the kids' favorite animals. The 4 year-old stated she really liked the owl("coz it's head turned all the way around"), the other 2 really liked the condor ("because it flapped it's wings really wide"), and they all liked the zebras for some strange reason. Personally, I view them as just uniquely painted horses.

As for me, I liked the polar bears. For being so huge, they really are graceful creatures, especially as they swim laps in the water. Also, the gorillas are incredible animals that are somewhat mesmerizing to watch. Both were very impressive.

But neither are nearly as entertaining as weasels.

Hair gum

Just out of curiosity, does anybody out there have a home remedy for removing gum from hair? I have one, but it involves a pair of scissors, a bowl of ice cream, and convincing a 4 year-old to not tell her mother what happened.

It would've been one thing had it been her gum. Without going into specifics, I'll just say that what seemed at the time to be a funny spontaneous joke, quickly turned into not being funny as well as a "there's no way I should be a parent" moment.

* The usual Friday post will probably not happen this week since we will be spending the day at the zoo. Instead, I hope to add to the blog on Saturday, undoubtedly talking about our family's day trip.