No Day at The Beach

LMJ got some water wings and spent the day in the pool today. We had another busy day. We spent today at our good friends’ house. Yesterday the beach, today the pool, you have no idea how hard my life is. LMJ had a blast. She is a dyed in the wool Florida girl. Water? Let’s get in. She was in this floaty thing we have for her, and I was dipping up and down under the water and blowing bubbles, trying to teach her how not to drown. She thought it was the funniest thing ever. What I thought was funny is every time I came up she was darker. When we got in the pool around 1:30 she could pass. At 1:45 she would have needed to move to the back of the bus. Y’all know what I’m talking about. She doesn’t just get darker, she changes ethnicities. She got in a little Italian girl. She got out some kind of New Zealand aborigine. She has a really cool blue swimsuit/rashguard that’s begging for a surfboard. I’d throw some pictures up, but they’re on Mama’s camera and she’s gone to bed with the baby girl. Like I said it was another long and tiring day. We went over to the G’s house to offer some moral support to EG who has ripped a hole in his brain stem and is literally flat on his back bored to tears. He bounced around with us in the pool and hot tub. Oh, I didn’t mention the hot tub? Like I said, every day is rougher than the one before it. EG bounced around and drank Mountain Dew – per doctor’s orders – and hopefully had a good time. LMJ certainly did. She learned how to jump off the steps and into our arms. It’s a miracle we got her out of the pool at all. And since there’s no rest for the wicked, we have a huge day tomorrow too. In celebration of Jesus crawling out of the grave we’re going to try to go to church, and we’re having brunch afterwards with my parents, hopefully. It’s a good thing I go back to work Monday. I don’t know how much longer I could keep up this pace.

I Need To Be Active Every Single Day

I’m sitting here with writer’s block. I think it’s because I surfed the internet all day. I didn’t do anything productive or even interesting, nothing but Facebook to Sherdog to ESPN to the television. I watched a great basketball team outlast a great basketball player in the NCAA tournament – Blake Griffin is a beast – and LMJ rocked her first ponytail. These were the exciting portions of my day. We’ve put LMJ’s hair in a ponytail before but she’s never left it alone before this afternoon. I didn’t think it was possible, but she’s prettier with her hair pulled back. I think it also suits her down to business personality better. She doesn’t have time to be putting her hair behind her ear. She’s got stuff to do. I think my brain hurts because I spent too much time on the bulletin boards. I shouldn’t expose myself to that much stupidity all at once, no matter how funny it is. North Carolina beat Oklahoma in basketball today and less than an hour later keyboard warriors were threatening each other’s lives. It’s not like there’s even a rivalry between the schools, and the game wasn’t close or ever in doubt. Basically, North Carolina shot well and Oklahoma didn’t. These discussions always – ALWAYS – play exactly along stereotypical lines. The Tar Heels fans started making fun of the Sooners fans about being rednecks and the Sooners fans responded by calling the Tar Heels fans homosexuals, which lead to the Tar Heels saying the Sooners were poor and one Sooner came back with “I’LL F**KING KILL YOUR FAMILY!!!” I thought that was a bit of a leap, especially since OU is a football school and they barely care about basketball. I also thought it was funny that people from North Carolina were calling other people rednecks. Hey kettle, you’re black! Sincerely, pot. Maybe there’s a distinction between a redneck and a hillbilly that’s too subtle for me to discern. It’s not a good day when the most intelligent discourse I engage in is with a stoner explaining the real reason for the success of the UFC. Oh well, there’s always tomorrow.

Small Talk, Big Steps

We had an eventful Saturday. We went to breakfast at Panera and enjoyed it immensely. LMJ was incredibly well behaved. We also had a birthday party on the schedule for the twins of a former coworker of MJ’s. She’s a vice principal, which is weird for a couple of reasons. The first is that I’m older than she is. How am I older than a vice principal? The second is that she’s attractive. I thought that automatically disqualified a person from being a vice principal. The vice principals I had were too ugly for Lord of the Rings. I think it’s a good thing that she’s at a middle school because I honestly think she would have a problem at a high school. She’s not Halle Berry but she warrants a second look in passing. I remember a PE teacher who was a former volleyball player. She wasn’t particularly pretty, but she was tall and slender with long legs and wore shorts everyday and we were sixteen year old boys. She had a real needle to thread when dealing with us. This is neither here nor there. LMJ got a chance to go on her first sugar bender. It was an ice cream and cupcake party. She took it in moderation though. Her favorite part was the toy kitchen in the little girl’s room. It had a sink, an oven, and a microwave. We took her to the party so she could interact with other children and we could interact with other parents. MJ talked shop – SURPRISE. I’m not really interested in people. They tend to annoy me, especially when little boys between the ages of four and ten are running around near my baby girl. They’re destructive little monsters with no reverence for LMJ’s greatness. That attitude isn’t good for anyone, which is why we went to the party. I talked to the birthday children’s dad. He’s a bigger meathead than I am. He’s a personal trainer, so we talked about bodybuilding and getting older. LMJ is a trooper and had the best time at the party. She goes about her business, and isn’t intimidated by bigger kids, which makes me happy to no end. I would much rather teach her not to be a bully than to stand up to one. After the ice cream and the frosting on a cupcake we came home and the little girl took a nap. Mama had some corn chips. I had some beer. We’ll call this a good day.

What lead my daughter to the Tribe or I'm Not Racist. You're Racist for Thinking I'm Racist (part II)

My daughter discovered latkes about ten days ago and loves them. What’s not to love, but she’s just a little girl. My wife likes to say she, my daughter, has a sophisticated palate, but there were onions in the latkes, and what 19 month old likes onions? I guess mine does. If you click on the latke link you can see a picture of her enjoying her fried potatoes Chosen People style. When LMJ chooses Judaism as her way to serve God I’ll look back to this moment. There’s no real downside. There may have been more of a downside if she was a boy, but since she’s a girl there’s no circumcision anxiety. Lisa Bonet, Lenny Kravitz, and Jenny from the Jeffersons have already blazed the biracial Jewish trail for her. She’ll have one day of penance each year on Yom Kippur as opposed to forty days of Lent. There’s no need to pay retail in sin. That last sentence is a total rip-off of a John Stewart joke from his act from fifteen years ago. Her mother is already instructing her in the mysteries of voicing one’s true suffering so LMJ is going to be way ahead of the game. There’s a good chance I’ll be sending her to Hebrew school anyway, just because kids have it too easy these days, and I remember growing up that none of my Jewish friends liked missing out on soccer and kickball to learn the language of the prophets. Finally, if she’s a Jew she’ll have the stereotype Royal Flush. She’ll have the gifts of a big booty, crazy athleticism, and rhythm from my people. Her mother’s people give her the gifts of a work ethic, organization, and brutality on a historic scale. The Jews will give her an overdeveloped sense of self and a nose for money. Plus, since all Blacks know each other and all Jews know each other LMJ will know everybody, and it’s all due to a tasty treat.

You Have Something On Your Shoe

I'm trying to lose twenty pounds before the holiday season so I can put in all back on during the holiday season. I'm down five in seven days due in large part to my long walks with LMJ. We walk a five mile course - I walk, she rides in the stroller - that takes between an hour and fifteen minutes and an hour and a half. We were three miles in yesterday, and as far from home as we get, when she decided it was time to get out of the stroller. We were walking around Memorial Park, so I figured why not let her run around. It will tire her out and make bedtime much easier. Side Note: Ultimately, this plan is not going to work. Her body is going to get used to the activity, and she's going to stop sleeping all together. I've seen it happen with puppies. I released the beast into the wild where she managed to find each and every fire ant bed in record time. She was frustrated that I wouldn't let her scoop up hand fulls of ant bed, and tried to head fake me a few times. I think it would have been a good instructional device, "What'd we learn?", but I don't think that MJ would agree, and I also don't think I would have an acceptable answer for the questions: Why does the baby have ant bites all over her hands? Why did you let her scoop up hand fulls of ant beds? and How stupid are you? If I responded, "I bet she won't do it again," there's a good chance I would be physically attacked. LMJ was having fun running around and chasing anything that caught her eye. I had my running watch on and she covered a full quarter mile, which is pretty far for someone 2'8". When she gets tired she sits down wherever she is. She did and that's when I saw it, then I said it. There was canine scat on her shoe. Fortunately, I saw it before she saw it and took her shoes off as quickly as I could. I put her back in the stroller and found a napkin and wiped as much poop off of her shoe as I could. Then I started thinking about hunting down the jackass that didn't curb his dog, and beating him to death with LMJ's filthy shoe. Side Note: It is sooooo hard for me not to curse in front of my little girl, but I bit my tongue. As we were walking home I became more phlegmatic about the shoe dooky, and chalked it up to a baby girl first. Too bad I didn't take any pictures. Aww, remember when she stepped in her first steaming pile? Oh how time flies.