We are the people that rule the world

Me:  Alright, Kiddo, we have an early day tomorrow so you need to go get ready for bed.

Mr M:  **Goes and puts on basketball shorts over his jeans**

Me:  Uh, dude, what are you doing?  Go take your pants off first.

Mr M:  Whoa, whoa, Dad, at least take me out on a date first.

No shirt, no shoes, no problem

A few days ago my sister called to see if I wanted some hand-me-downs for Mr M.  I told her I did, so she said she would send a box of clothes with her husband to drop off if I could go pick them up at his business location that's closest to me.  So I went and picked them up, then took them over to my kids' house so Mr M could go through them.  There were a lot of shirts that he really liked, including a couple of sleeveless t-shirts.

Mr M has always been one who likes to show off his 'muscles' so I said, "You should be happy about having all these muscle shirts, right?"

He answered, "Well, I don't want to have too many muscle shirts because it can be ghetto, depending on the situation."

"No, Dude, it's always ghetto.  No matter what the situation is."


So yeah, another quality piece of fatherly advice goes into the books.

Your daddy's trippin'

The weekend before last I took my boys out to buy them new coats.  Just in time too because we got several of inches of snow last week, and daytime temperatures have now dropped into the 20s and 30s. Togers got his first, then we had to shop around a little while before Mr M found one to his liking.  When we finally found one for him, we paid and left, and walked past a couple of cute girls in the parking lot.

Togers:  We left at the wrong time, Dad.  Did you see those girls?

Me:  I did, but those girls are way too old for you.

Togers:  No they weren't.

Me:  Yes they were.  How old do you think they are?

Togers:  Younger than 26.  I know the law.



He is his father's son.

And into the darkness we all go

I'm currently in Arizona visiting my kids. Mr M was on Spring Break, so I figured I'd try to come down take advantage of the last day or so before school started back up.

The first day I was here, Togers brought my ex-wife a Buddha statue (she's fascinated by anything from Asia).

She asked him where it came from.

He jokingly said, "Mom, I'm not going to tell you."

She asked again.

He insisted on keeping the joke alive. "Mom, you don't understand. I had to do things I'm ashamed of to get that for you."

"Well, I hope you brushed your teeth after."

I got game

Tonight, Togers and I taught Mr M how to play Mancala. In one of the games I started beating him pretty handily, and started taunting him*.

In a sing-songy voice I said, "I'm going to win. Ha ha ha ha ha ha."

He said, "Maybe not. I have a trick up my sleeve. It's called flipping the board over."







*Because I'm such a great father.

I'm in hate with the size of a desert

Yesterday my ex-wife called to tell me that when she was picking the kids up from school, Mr M got in the car and the first thing he said was, "Did you know that you can dump dead bodies anywhere in Arizona because it's the desert."

She said, "You can?"

He said, "Yeah. You can dump bodies, or dig a hole and bury them, and nobody will find them because it's a desert landscape."


Is my son going to be the next Shane Botwin?

Guns in the sky

Mr M came home from school last week and said he was feeling sick.

My ex-wife asked him if he thought it might be because he wasn't drinking enough water.

He told her that it wasn't that. It was because if he couldn't think about guns he has a nervous breakdown, and he can't think about guns when he's at school.

In related news, my parenting goals just changed: If I can get my kids raised without one of them being involved in a school shooting, I'll feel like a success.

Purple toupee will show the way when summer brings you down

One of the good things about facebook is that one can steal pictures from one's child's profile to use for blogging purposes.

Togers has spent the better part of a year growing his hair out to look like this:




Now it looks like this:




Don't worry. I've drawn the line and told him that under no circumstances is he going to be allowed to get a swastika tattoo*.









* Not that he'd even want one**.

** At least I hope not.

All the kids are staying fat

The problem with me spending time with my kids is that the only posts you're going to see in the near future are going to be about them. Like this little tidbit from Mr M while we were driving to my sister's wedding.

Mr M: Dad, if a fat girl was lost in the forest, what would a tree say?

Me: I don't know, what?

Mr M: How about lose some weight, fatty.

I probably should have explained to him that it's not nice to make fun of people. Instead I just laughed.

Shakin' like a dog shittin' razor blades

This morning I baked a cake. For those of you keeping track, that's three cakes in the past ten days. In other words, not enough cake. (Is there ever enough cake?) As I poured the cake batter into the pan, I wanted to find out if any of my kids wanted to eat the rest of it that wouldn't come out of the bowl.

Me: Alright, who wants to lick the . . .

Tortellini: Me!

Mr M: I do. I do. I get the bowl. I get the bowl.

Me: Neither of you let me finish my sentence. As I was saying, who wants to lick the dog's butt? You both do. Ha ha!

I want to lay my heavy head tonight on a bed of Califoria stars

I spent last weekend in Santa Monica. I usually try to send my kids postcards when I go on trips like that. Here's the one I sent to Togers:



I'm not sure if this makes me the best dad in the world, or the worst. I am, however, certain that it's one or the other - there can be no middle ground.

Cut my life into pieces, this is my last resort

A little while ago Togers updated his facebook status: What would you do if I joined a gang? Became Straight Edge? Joined a band? Got five inch gauges? These are all very important questions.

Being the good father that I am, I commented that I would kick his butt if he did any of those other than join a band.

Then he asked, "What if it was a Straight Edge band?"

Then his mom chimed in:
Way to stick it to the man dumb butt. Why dont you start wearing a cross and saying hail marys too? Oh, I've got one! How about this? Maybe you should not worry bout living up to any kind of standard and just live your pathetic life? How about that? Or do you need to be a part of some kind of group to feel special? Oh. Ok, then I support you! :)

She followed that up with a second comment: And by pathetic I mean really, really, really pathetic :)

The next time I talked to Togers on the phone, I told him that I thought his mom's comments were hilarious. He did too. Then I said, "You should tell your mom to be careful though. We both know she was joking, but someone else could see that and think she was cyberbullying you. They prosecute people for that. Like that lady they tried for cyberbullying that girl who ended up killing herself. In fact, you know what you could do if you really wanted to get your mom in trouble? You could totally slit your wrists tonight and leave a note saying it was because of her comments."

He laughed and said, "Yeah. But I probably wouldn't even need to leave anything about cyberbullying in the note. I'm pretty sure I could ruin her day just by trying to kill myself."

"Yeah, you're probably right. It'd ruin my day too. So, as your father, let me go ahead and say this: If you kill yourself tonight I'm totally going to kick your butt."

And I believe there's a way to describe the silence as sound

Today I accidentally hit the 'notes' button on my ipod touch, and saw a few notes my kids wrote while we were en route to my grandmother's funeral in December.

Like this one from Tortellini:

Hi Dad you suck. Just saying. I hope you never get this because you're such a butt face. And I can't believe I have to sit here next to you on this ten hour road trip. You suck, you suck, you suck. Even [Togers] and [Mr M] think so but they won't say anything because they're too chicken. Also, they don't have the itouch. Because I am cool so I get to choose the music. And you're not cool, because you're a loser. And now we're listening to "Know Your Enemy" by Rage Against The Machine. Do you want to know why I chose this song? Because I know my enemy, and it's you. So shut up. Oh yeah, and the real reason [Mr M] has to pee every ten minutes is because I'm giving him super pee drinks. Bye.

And this one from Togers:

Hi Dad, it's [Togers]. I just thought I'd let you know that you are a butt. Not a butthead, a butt, because butts don't have heads. And just by the way, you aren't fooling anyone, we all know that you are a dinosaur. If I had a dog that was as ugly as you I'd shave its butt and teach it to walk backwards. So shut up you buttface. Go poop your pants or something.

But this one was my favorite:

RAAAAAAAWWWWWWWWWWRRRRRRRRRRRRRRR!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!

Bahahaha I know I scared you ;)

I miss my little brats.

I'm pretty sure that boy is staying in tonight

Over Thanksgiving weekend, Togers decided he wanted to try jumping into the pool. You know, because he just couldn't wait to see what forty degree water felt like. He didn't stay in the water long, and when he was done he placed his wet shorts on the fence in the back yard to dry. A few hours later my ex looked out and saw them there.

Ex: [Togers], go get those wet shorts off the fence before someone comes along and steals them.

Togers: Why would someone steal boys' shorts?

Ex: They might. People steal women's underwear all the time.

Togers: Yeah, but that's women's underwear. That's a little different.

Me: Not necessarily. You don't think there are any pedophiles around? They might be interested in stealing your shorts.

Ex: Yeah, [Togers]. You've always been a pedophile's favorite.

It's a new generation telling it the way they feel

I logged into facebook a couple of days ago and saw this as Togers' status update:

"This one time, I beat up a hooker, she was bleeding everywhere. One Shamwow, cleaned up the whole mess. Ring it out, you could do it again"

It shows how up to date Togers is on not so current events.

It may be my proudest moment as a father.

Come on children, you're acting like children, every generation thinks it's the end of the world

Sometimes parenting calls for teaching your kids important life skills, whether they're old enough to learn them or not. Sunday afternoon we drove out to the dry lake bed so I could teach Tortellini and Togers how to drive. The complicating factor? My car has a standard transmission. Call me crazy, but I firmly believe that everyone should know how to operate a stick. Besides, they're both a lot older than I was the first time I drove a motorized vehicle with a clutch. I was eight. (Hi Mom. I bet you didn't know that, did you?)

I explained everything on the drive out, and demonstrated how to work the clutch and gear shift. Once we got there and they started driving there were a few times I thought my car was going to die out there in the desert. It didn't. And at least we had no traffic to worry about.

Tortellini went first. Her biggest problem was learning how to start out. She killed the car a few times, then just figured that she could get going easily if she peeled out rather than trying to take it slow. Periodically she'd forget to take her foot off the gas when pushing in the clutch, so the engine would rev until I pointed that out, but that was only for the first few minutes.



Togers asked to go second. Apparently that was because he wanted to learn from Tortellini's mistakes so as to avoid looking foolish. His plan seemed to work because he figured it out almost immediately. His biggest problem was recognizing when he was about to hit a bump and slowing down for it. That definitely made me glad we weren't out on the streets. My poor car's shocks.



And of course Mr M wanted to take a turn, so I let him sit on my lap and steer while I operated the pedals. I decided that as long as I have a say in things, that kid will never get his license. He asked if I could drive faster, so I did, then I saw a little look on his face, knew exactly what he was thinking and said, "Don't you dare turn that wheel hard while we're going this speed." He was disappointed, but asked if I could slow down enough for him to do it. That seemed to satisfy him.



By the end of the day, Tortellini and Togers seemed to get it all figured out:

Then we went home. The end.

There is blood in all the things you say, I won't hate you if you go away

Last weekend Tortellini's boyfriend came to town for a visit. It was the first time she got to see him since they moved here last summer, so she was very excited.

Mr M, on the other hand, was not. It seems that he doesn't like to have to interact with anyone he's not familiar with, which is basically everyone outside of my, or my ex's family.

About an hour or so before [Boyfriend] was supposed to get to their house, Mr M held up a toothpick then looked at Tortellini and said, "If [Boyfriend] tries talkin' to me, I'm goin' to poke him to death with this."

Looks like I don't have to be the dad sitting on the couch cleaning his gun* for intimidation purposes. Mr M's got it covered for me.








*Which is a good thing because I'd need to go out and buy a shotgun.

You're older than you've ever been, and now you're even older, and now you're older still

Post Office Clerk: How far away is [Town Where My Parents Live]?

Me: Oh, about four hours.

Post Office Clerk: Four hours? Why are you even sending these gifts? Just drive them up there. That way you get to see your family too.

Me: That's what I should do, but I just don't think it's going to happen this year.

Post Office Clerk: Why not?

Me: A number of reasons. Time contraints. Money. Also, my daughter doesn't want to leave because her boyfriend is coming to town for a visit and she feels like she needs to see him while he's here.

Post Office Clerk: Man, you don't look old enough to have a daughter with a boyfriend.

Me: I'm not.

I'm your Testarossa, first gear, watch me go, keep 'em in fear

Driving Togers to school this morning we started joking around about what he wanted for Christmas. I told him all he was getting was a pack of gum. Cheapest. Christmas. Ever. I then joked about how some kid in his class would get a plasma tv for his room, complete with surround sound, all three video game consoles, and a Ferrari, even though they're only twelve. Then he could say, "Oh yeah? Well check out this pack of gum! It's spearmint!"

Togers then told me that there is a kid in his class who has a Ferrari, and it's his own, not his parents'.

Did I mention that they're only twelve?

I've failed as a parent.

The last thing I told him when he got out of the car: "Have a good day. Go make friends with [Ferrari Kid]."

Stacy, can I come over after school? We can hang around by the pool.

Tomorrow morning I'm going to Mr M's school for a parent-teacher conference. Friday he brought home a note from his teacher. It read:

"Appropriate Dress Attire For Parent Volunteers/Visitors
When volunteering/visiting at [School's Name], parents are expected to wear attire that reflects the boundaries outlined in the [School's] Dress Regulation for students. We ask that parents do not wear spaghetti straps, shorts or skirts that are shorter than fingertip length, or clothing that exposes the midriff and/or the chest area."

The fact that they send this note home tells me they've had trouble with parents showing up in inappropriate attire. This being Vegas, I can only assume there are strippers with children at the school. Seriously, I have got to meet some of the other students' mothers.